狂升暴跌支持 QE 3

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress that the central bank isn’t currently ready to embark on a third round of government bond-buying to stimulate the economy.

“We’re not prepared at this point to take further action,” Bernanke said today, in response to a question from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota. Johnson asked Bernanke why the Fed wasn’t immediately starting a new stimulus program given the weak economic recovery and rising unemployment.

Stocks fell, driving the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to the lowest level of the month. The S&P declined 0.7 percent to 1,308.25 at 1:18 p.m. in New York after rising as much as 0.7 percent. Gold futures pared gains after reaching a record $1,594.90 an ounce.

In House testimony yesterday, he said the Fed still has tools to spur growth, and that “we have to keep all the options on the table,” driving share prices higher. Bernanke told Senators today that policy makers want to see if the economy rebounds as anticipated in the coming months, and that they are keeping a close eye on inflation.

Should the economy turn out to be weaker than expected, the central bank may provide more monetary stimulus, Bernanke said. A third round of quantitative easing, or QE3, is an option if a recent economic slowdown persists and deflationary forces re- emerge, he said.

“We just want to make sure that we have the options when they become necessary,” Bernanke said. “But, at this point, we’re not proposing to undertake that option.”

Bernanke said the Fed faces conditions that are different today than they were last August, when he signaled a second round of large-scale asset purchases. At that time, the economy was in danger of stalling, he said, and the Fed was concerned the country may experience deflation, a widespread and prolonged ｄ ｒｏｐ in prices, wages and the values of assets such as homes and stocks.

“Today the situation is more complex,” Bernanke told lawmakers. “Inflation is higher. Inflation expectations are close to our target,” he said. “We are uncertain about the near-term developments in the economy. We’d like to see if, in fact, the economy does pick up, as we are projecting.”

Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the committee’s senior Republican, told Bernanke that he has concerns that additional bond purchases would fuel inflation.

“It appears that the Fed may be going in the wrong direction,” Shelby said, referring to Bernanke’s testimony of today and yesterday leaving the door open to additional stimulus should the recovery appear to be fizzling out.

“The last thing our weak economy needs right now is an inflation scare,” he said.

Shelby criticized the Fed in November when it launched a $600 billon bond-buying program to rejuvenate the economy, saying the purchases, which ended last month, could trigger an inflation surge. Shelby also said bond buying by the Fed could prompt a wave of speculative buying on Wall Street, leading to asset-price bubbles.

As he emphasized yesterday in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Bernanke told lawmakers today that the Fed must be flexible and prepared to shift in either policy direction. The Fed may tighten credit if inflation were to rise more than anticipated, he said.

“We’re not proposing anything today,” he said. “The main message I want to leave is that this is a serious situation. It involves a significant loss of human and economic potential.”

The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June, the third straight monthly increase. Employers added 18,000 new jobs, the fewest in nine months.

Bernanke yesterday predicted economic growth would pick up in the second half of this year at a pace above 3 percent. He estimated the economy expanded at a 2 percent rate during the first six months of this year, or slightly less than necessary to reduce the unemployment rate.

引用：http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-14/bernanke-says-fed-has-no-plans-at-this-point-to-make-more-bond-purchases.html

Obama vs. Cantor: Tempers flare as debt ceiling negotiations take a dramatic turn

President Obama and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor engaged in a high stakes test of wills at Wednesday's debt ceiling negotiations in the White House, trading dramatic ultimatums in the most intense round of talks yet. With tempers boiling over, Cantor took his grievances public in an unprecedented press conference after Obama issued a veto threat and told the Republican lawmaker he'd had "enough."

The meeting began normally enough, with Obama welcoming the eight congressional leaders from both parties to the White House. He made opening remarks and then called on Cantor. Cantor griped that the number figure in cuts has been shrinking since last week. Last Thursday - when Obama and House Speaker John Boehner proposed a grand bargain that Cantor helped bring down two days later in the face of a revolt from the right - the President had offered $1.7 trillion in savings, Cantor said, as a baseline of agreement.

After the failure of the big $4.5 trillion deal, Cantor took over the negotiations for House Republicans. Suspiciously, he said, the baseline started shrinking. "When we were there yesterday somehow the number became 1.6 to 1.7 to 1.8," Cantor said he told the President. "So all of a sudden we are now drifting further downward and today we now look to be below $1.4 trillion." Democratic sources say the number, which came from the talks led by Biden - talks that collapsed when Cantor walked away from them two weeks ago - hasn't changed. It has always been $1.5 trillion as a base with an additional $200 billion in health care savings that Republicans wanted and that the Administration had agreed to push for with congressional Democrats.

But Cantor wasn't done. Not only was the baseline number shrinking, he said, but the details had changed: the White House wanted $80 billion in Medicare spending and another $50 billion to fix the dual eligible problem in the Prescription Drug Program. "That's something we never agreed to in the Biden talks," Cantor said.

The President replied that though the White House still advocated for the $1.7 trillion figure, House and Senate Democrats could not support it, especially without revenue increases. The President added that the new conditions also came from congressional Democrats. "Maybe they ought to get it straight and see if they can get to $1.7 trillion," Cantor told reporters in an unprecedented press conference outside of House votes in the Speakers Lobby after the White House meeting. (See TIME's graphic: "Is College Worth It?")

Given that the two sides are so far apart - House Republicans have long demanded the value of any increase to the federal borrowing limit be offset by deficit reductions, and it will take at least a $2.4 trillion hike to get through 2012 - Cantor offered to back off his insistence that there be only one debt ceiling vote. (Some context: up until this point House leadership aides had always said that the reason they were resistant to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's suggestion of multiple votes is because they knew more than one vote would never pass their conference - ie, they didn't consider it a concession, but a necessity.) "And so, I said, 'Really, Mr. President, if you look at where we are right now we are very far apart," Cantor told reporters. "And if you want the full $2.4 trillion increase and you won't sign anything else, I don't know if we can get there. And so, I said I was willing to come off of my insistence that there be one vote that perhaps we could avoid default. That's when he got very agitated."

Democratic sources coming out of the meeting allege that Cantor rudely interrupted the President three times - an accusation Cantor's staff hotly disputes ("Eric waits to be recognized before speaking to the President," says Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring). Democratic sources say that it was the third interruption that sparked the President's temper.

The following paraphrased account of what President Obama said next is cobbled together from Democratic and Republican sources:

What we're seeing here confirms what the American people think is the worst about Washington: that everyone is more interested in posturing and political positioning and protecting their base than solving real problems. Eric, I could get well above the numbers the GOP is talking about with revenue increases. I am not afraid to veto this and I will take that message and defend it to the American people. If we default, it will be a tax increase on every American. My responsibility is to the American people. I have reached the point where I say, 'Enough.' I have sat here long enough and no other President - Ronald Reagan wouldn't sit here like this. I've reached my limit. We've reached the point where something's got to give. You've either got to compromise on your dollar for dollar insistence or you compromise on the big deal, which means raising taxes. Eric, don't call my bluff. I will go to the American people on this. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this.

According to Cantor, Obama then shoved back his chair and stormed out of the room. Democrats present at the meeting said there was no shoving or storming involved, he simply got up and said, "I'll see you tomorrow." (See TIME's photoessay: ("Showdown in Wisconsin")

"I was somewhat taken aback because, you know, I was compromising," Cantor told reporters. A Democratic source involved in the talks scoffed at Cantor's "compromise." "We're not a banana republic," the source said. "We're not going to deal with this every three to six months. If you think it's hard now imagine how hard it'll be in the middle of an election."

The episode illustrates how far apart the two sides remain, even as the nation stands at the brink. But perhaps almost as troubling is Cantor's litigation of this tension in the press. I have never seen negotiations broadcast so openly. It's not a good sign. For every major successful bill I've covered on the Hill - Medicare Part D, the Bush tax cuts, the 2005 energy bill, CAFTA, the pension overhaul, TARP, the stimulus and health care reform - the principals always came out of the room and said, 'We're making progress,' or 'Nice try, but I'm not going to negotiate with you,' or even, 'I'm not going to negotiate with myself.'

An agreement on raising the debt ceiling will not come from winning a spin war. If talks collapse, both sides will be blamed and whatever they're saying now really won't matter much in the face of economic disaster. The only solution at this point is to bite the bullet and draft a deal everyone is unhappy with. And the more public the process is - both for Cantor and the President - the harder it will become to reach a deal behind closed doors. Don't get me wrong, I like getting the story as much as the next reporter. And if something big happens, we usually find out. But when talks blow up there's a real risk: if negotiators can't trust each other not to snipe in the press - and this goes for both Cantor and the President, who has given his fair share of press conferences during this - how can they trust each other to join arms and enact something as painful as deficit reduction?

引用：http://news.yahoo.com/obama-vs-cantor-tempers-flare-debt-ceiling-negotiations-132033325.html