Rising Interest Rates

[MediumTex]

I think it's unfair for someone like the Bernank to be in the position he is in in the first place.  No one person could know what he would need to know to make good policy in that role--there are far too many variables to try to synthesize and they are constantly changing.

History seems to have shown that central planning of an economy by a bureaucratic central authority simply doesn't work (see various communist "workers' paradises" for excellent examples). 

If we recognize that central planning of an entire economy doesn't work very well, I wonder why we are struggling to see that central planning of interest rate policy doesn't work very well either.

It's weird that something that seems so simple would get so little traction in a nation that thinks of itself as basically capitalist with an aversion to the idea of central planning in general.

It's a good thing that the PP has shown itself to be pretty well Fed-proof.  As HB said in one of his lectures, one of the problems with the Fed is that it turns rigorous economic analysis into a meaningless exercise, and the real money skill for the economist becomes predicting what the Fed will do next, rather than trying to predict what the economy will do next.