Janet Yellen took the reins at the Federal Reserve this Monday, the very day the Dow Jones Industrials broke its 200- day moving average, which is sort of the line in the sand separating a bull market from a bear market. Is this the curse of the new Fed Chairman at play again ? Bernanke took office to preside over the subprime crisis, Greenspan had his first rescue exercise shortly after he became chairman with the 1987 crash, before them Volcker was faced with out-of-control inflation and a skyrocketing gold price (crashing shortly thereafter), he opted for a radical regimen of interest rate hikes. Arthur Burns his predecessor saw a 20% drop in the stockmarket less than 3 months after he took the helm in 1970.
It looks like the first order of the day for Janet Yellen will be to try and soothe markets, then try to unwind her predecessor's extraordinary policies (which she 100% supported and even helped mastermind), all of this without the thing exploding in the world's face ! Good luck .
Will we remember him as Ben Frankenstein ? The emerging market turmoil is just one other unforeseen ill effects of Bernanke's use and misuse of quantitative easing
(btw I searched for instances of references to Bernanke as Ben Frankenstein and it seems like the first one to use it was Peter Boockvar formerly of Miller Tabak and highly respected . Here is what he said about the mess created by the Fed back in September : THERE IS O% CHANCE THAT THIS ENDS SMOOTHLY
