gold, page-48877

Bernanke LOL

Ben Bernanke, August 10, 2007:

"Our goal is to provide liquidity not to support asset prices per se in any way. My understanding of the market's problem is that price discovery has been inhibited by the illiquidity of the subprime-related assets that are not trading, and nobody knows what they're worth, and so there's a general freeze-up. The market is not operating in a normal way. The idea of providing liquidity is essentially to give the market some ability to do the appropriate repricing it needs to do and to begin to operate more normally. So it's a question of market functioning, not a question of bailing anybody out."

Ben Bernanke, August 16, 2007:

"So I wouldn't say that a rate cut is completely off the table, but my own feeling is that we should try to resist a rate cut until it is really very clear from economic data and other information that it is needed. I'd really prefer to avoid giving any impression of a bailout or a put, if we can. Therefore, what I'm going to suggest today is to offer a statement updating our views of the economy that will give some signal about where we think things are going but to stop short today of changing rates."

Then there's more.........

“The amount of currency in circulation is not changing…the money supply is not changing in any significant way.  What we’re doing is lowering interest rates by buying Treasury securities.”