Right on the Money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing, and the Ways of the Real World with Louis James

Chapter 2

Doug Casey on Bernanke: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid (Part Two)

December 15, 2010

Louis: Quicksand, if not lies. That Jon Stewart link I provided last time shows that Bernanke himself called quantitative easing “printing money” in his previous 60 Minutes interview, even though he denied the very same thing in this new one. Throughout the whole interview, aside from the quivering lip and the quavering voice, he seemed to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth, in terms of content. On one hand, he repeatedly sounded his warning that the economy is not out of the woods, and that’s why printing more money was necessary; but on the other, he said the risk of a double-dip recession was very low.

Doug: I find it amazing that anyone pays any attention at all to what the man says. Except for a brief time waiting tables in school, he has zero experience in the real world. His whole life has been reading abstruse books written by people like himself, and doing complicated math formulas that are supposed to describe economic phenomena, but have absolutely nothing to do with the study of human action. He’s a character who should appear in Alice in Wonderland, or Through the Looking Glass.

For instance, he claimed that another leg down for the economy was very unlikely because “cyclical” elements, like housing, were already very weak.

L: He actually said they couldn’t get much weaker!

D: He’s either a knave or a fool—possibly both. But the odds are he’s just an educated fool, an ...