Bernanke: Talks the Dove, Acts the Hawk

It has appeared to us for the past year that Bernanke-as-dove was mostly folklore -- wishful thinking by Wall Street. Once he arrived at the Fed, he took great pains to paint the economy as inflationary, even as the housing hurricane approached, in order to avoid lowering the funds rate. And now he is acting further in that M.O.: tweaking the discount window rather than kicking off inflation and dollar collapse through lowering the funds rate. But this plan, which is little more than jawboning, will not fix the mass economic problems. And unfortunately, a financial economy collapse is bad for the dollar on forex anyway. Lose-lose. We made the bad debt; now we have to pay the consequences.