If only the joke wasn't on everyone other than Wall Street.
Even today, there's a complete disconnect between the political class and the rest of the country who are still fuming over the easy ride for the people who caused the crisis. Everyone has a laugh at big meetings but in this case, the coziness of the Federal Reserve is something that should disturb everyone. They were asleep at the wheel and blew it. It's time to gut the Fed and bring in people who are much more serious about protecting the best interest of the public and not just the banks and bankers. The public is stuck with this poor excuse for an economy and if we're through it by 2020 we should feel lucky. Ha, ha, isn't this funny?
The blog, The Daily Stag Hunt, tracked the times “laughter” was recorded by the Fed’s stenographer during the FOMC meetings. In 2001, the FOMC averaged 16.5 moments of guffaws per meeting. In 2006, there were, on average, 44 outbreaks of laughter. As found by the blogger, one of the more TV sitcom-like moments came during the Fed’s January 2006 meeting when then-Vice Chairman Tim Geithner said to the departing Greenspan during his last gathering: “I’d like the record to show that I think you’re pretty terrific, too. [Laughter] And thinking in terms of probabilities, I think the risk that we decide in the future that you’re even better than we think is higher than the alternative.[Laughter] With that, the economy looks pretty good to us, perhaps a bit better than it did at the last meeting. With the near-term monetary policy path that’s now priced into the markets, we think the economy is likely to grow slightly above trend in ’06 and close to trend in ’07.”
