Don’t Mention the Dollar
June 20, 2008 at 21:29 PM EDT
Last week, amid a stream of bearish economic news, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, asserted his priority on price stability and uttered the word “dollar,” as if turning a new leaf. He did that to get your attention. Fed chairs rarely ever say that word, for reasons that Greenspan learned on his first days in office back in 1987 — the same reasons that CEOs rarely comment on their stock’s valuation. Bernanke’s original remarks came before Friday’s unemployment report rained on Wall Street. But just in case anyone thought the weak report might have softened his stance over the weekend, on…