Did the Fed Cause Unrest in the Arab World?
By Barry Ritholtz - February 3rd, 2011, 8:02PM
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Tweet
Facebook
Reddit
Digg this!
Comments
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
February 3rd, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Bernanke’s Black Swan.
February 3rd, 2011 at 11:47 pm
As sure as it will cause unrest in the western world too.
February 4th, 2011 at 3:55 am
When the home tab for Mr Bernanke’s can kicking comes in, he’s going to have a safety problem.
February 4th, 2011 at 9:41 am
Excuse me? Where is the data? An allegation of correlation, but only one chart (showing only food prices) presented? Lots of assertions, but no explanation of the mechanisms?
Remember: Correlation is NOT the same as Causation! (and they haven’t even proved correlation!)
February 5th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
@ Cardinal Ram:
I agree with you. Mr. Ratigan’s report offers no evidence showing how an increase in the U.S. money supply (i.e., M2, perhaps) causes the rise in global food prices. I would think a good way to compare and contrast the two variables would be to overlay a graph of the growth rate in M2 to the FAO Food Index over a ten year period to see whether the relationship has any merit. I would argue the more likely culprit of higher food commodity prices is weather related (i.e., floods and droughts), causing supply disruptions to basic food stocks like wheat and sugar, where demand for such foodstuffs remains constant given the increases in emerging market populations. I could be wrong, though.
February 6th, 2011 at 5:12 am
Looks like Serbia is next on the list?
http://www.euronews.net/2011/02/06/serbia-opposition-hold-huge-anti-government-rally/
There hasn’t been some sudden massive increase in EM population, and if the markets are only now reacting to the population of EM’s then that is yet another nail in the efficient market hypothesis.
Sure correlation is not the same as causation, but are we expected to believe this is
coincidence?
Secondly shouldn’t the onus be on Bernanke who in a recent Q&A basically took the credit for the inflating stock prices, yet at the same time deny that inflating commodity prices have anything to do with fed policy. That seems intellectually dishonest to me.