Quick Take: Hair-Trigger Ben and the Pointless Rate Cut
By
Seth Jayson
October 5, 2007
|
It was the economy, stupid! That's what we were led to believe, at least, when Ben Bernanke and the Fed cut rates by half a point last month. They didn't do it to bail out Wall Street crybabies like Jim Cramer. Of course not. They did it because the jobs picture was so bad! A negative 4,000 for the month of August.
Today, we know that was wrong. The Labor Department's latest figures add up to an 89,000-job gain for the month. Knuckleheads are looking at the September job number (up 110,000) and already speculating that the Fed was "threading the needle" with that cut, something I suggested -- completely in jest -- a couple weeks back. Now, the new job report shows clearly that there was no needle to thread. And Wall Street rallies again. Bad news is good news (because it'll mean a rate cut!) and good news is good news, because it means consumers aren't heading into the poorhouse.
Anyone else wondering where the sanity went?
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