Father Fed Not Coming to Locklear's Aid

It does not take an abundance of super smarts to know that the level of trouble we are in today is infinitely higher than the level of trouble the nation was in yesterday. When you pop open your google news page and Heather Locklear is depressed, Shaq is losing his job (as a pretend lawman with the Maricopa Sheriff's Department), and Tiger is getting operated on for an ACL tear, and two of the three events are happening in your state, you realize it's a different world from where you came from yesterday.

The drop in housing prices that have wiped out four years of gains? Not so important. It was 1.4% from March to April, and 15.3% year over year, though the decline was smaller than expected, so sugar in your bowl of esparagus.

Nariman Behravesh, of Global Insight, said of house prices: "The pace of the price drops seems to be slowing a little bit, which suggests we may be approaching a bottom ... the market has other things on its mind, mainly oil prices, inflation and what the Fed's going to do. It's almost like the housing and sub-prime crisis are old news."

(Guardian/UK)

What's interesting here- aside from whether Shaq will get his job back as times are pretty hard and I don't want him to lose income or anything, even if it's just the psychological paycheck of playing cop- is that people might be imagining what the Fed will do.

The Federeal Reserve of the United States of America will do nothing! Remember that. Obviously rates are not going down any time soon given inflation sitting on the Fed's action hand, nor can the Fed raise rates at a time when so many (meaning banks, not us little people) seem to be struggling. The Fed will strike that contemplative pose with furrowed brow, hand firmly stroking beard, and continue to stroke and stroke.

Father Fed's face and tone and words may be soothing, as though the weight of economic knowledge is brimming through that head and fine tuning just so, but the lack of actual action will hardly be reassuring for our delicate psyches. Impotence is not bliss, for the Fed or us.