Bad Timing Award
The Globe’s lazy Business reporter Steve Bailey gets the bad timing award of the week with his column today on the new Boston Fed Governor.
He sings the praises of Eric Rosengren for being the lone dissenting vote at the last FOMC meeting. Eric wanted a half percentage point cut in the rate instead of the quarter point cut we got.
The argument for the bigger rate cut is that a slowing economy is the biggest worry. The argument for a smaller rate cut is that Inflation is the biggest worry.
Bailey compares Rosengren to a previous Boston Fed governor Morris who wrongly opposed Chairman Volker for pushing up rates to stem inflation.
Keep in mind that inflation is the single biggest destroyer of wealth there is.
Bailey, sings the praises of Rosengren for standing up against Bernacke while acknowledging a previous Boston Fed Governor who did the same thing which we now know was flat out wrong.
Right on Queue we get new economic data today that the WSJ reports:
Friday’s report, particularly coming on the heels of the import price and producer price data, appears to justify the Fed’s modest rate cut — which disappointed many on Wall Street — and its decision not to cite slow growth as a bigger risk than inflation, as many analysts had thought it would.
Bailey’s new “Boston Leader” so far looks like a dolt. But in Bailey’s world doing something, anything, even if it’s wrong is to be admired:
“What I am encouraging the organization to think about as we gather the data and do the analysis,” Rosengren said, “is that the end point is not doing a working paper, the end point is not doing a speech, but having some tangible impact.”
Here in Boston, we’re forever wringing our hands about the dearth of leaders. We may have been given a good one in Eric Rosengren. Sitting atop the Boston Fed at the age of 50, the man now has a decade or more to make a real difference. What an opportunity.
What an opportunity all right. An opportunity to destroy an economy.