Following his inconvenient truthiness yesterday, Andrew Huszar appeared [2] on Bloomberg TV today (having dismissed the comic-book-written discussion he faced in CNBC's Fast Money yesterday). As usual Bloomberg gave him more time to speak, listened, and challenged some of what he said, but we were struck by the man-who-ran-the-Fed's-mortgage-book's points that "we are eerily similar to 2008." Simply out, he implores, "the structure of our economy has not changed," and his apology (on behalf of the Fed), is because the Fed "helped squander an opportunity to see change in America." The fact of the matter, this was folly, "The Fed does not have the ttols to help the economy."
What else could Bernanke have done?
QE1 at the time was defensible... but as we progressed, very quickly we began to see it was not working
So why wasn't a decision made then to change course?
That's a very good question and why I felt compelled to write this apology to America...
This was a program that was devised to help mortgage lending in America... mortgage lending decreased in that time...
Instead what we saw was massive Wall Street earnings
When should the Fed have stopped?
The Fed should have stopped after QE1 - when it was clear it wasn't working - instead it has bought $2.5 trillion more bonds and put itself in a position where the exit is very uncertain...
...
Ultimately the tools [the Fed] has at its disposal don't work, and what it has done instead is enable a "crisis-driven" political system
Must-watch follow-up to his Op-Ed... [2] Ensure you listen to the last 60 seconds... "What the US needs is reform and change - not more easy money."