Word: doesn
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...Republicans clap? Liberals and some White House aides have given up on ever getting meaningful cooperation from the opposition party on a legislative agenda. Obama doesn't have that luxury. GOPers will not like much of what the President says - and they smell both blood in the water and victory in November's midterm elections. But Obama has to find some areas of common ground to renew his campaign pledge to reduce the partisan bitterness and lack of cooperation that has come to dominate Washington and the nation's politics...
...find the right tone? How Obama needs to come off: optimistic, confident, resolute, gracious. What he has to avoid seeming: defensive, negative, churlish, sarcastic. Behind the scenes, Obama has been evincing some frustration with the media coverage of his first year in office; like most Presidents, he doesn't think he is getting enough credit for his hard work, nor enough patience for evolving efforts. But 2010 needs to be about the future, not grievances of the past - and that includes an end to blaming the Bush Administration for the problems Obama inherited...
...doesn't he do something about it? Why talk so much about the eventual need to undo his extraordinary money-easing interventions and not at all about additional interventions? The mostly left-leaning doves believe that Bernanke, as bold as he was during the crisis, is now being outrageously cautious. They want him to buy even more mortgages and pump even more liquidity into the economy. They would welcome a little inflation, which could make Americans feel a bit poorer but could also encourage lenders and investors to put more money to work rather than hoarding it. Some of them...
...Still, doves want to know why he isn't providing even more gas. Part of the answer is that he doesn't seem to think that pouring more cash into the banking system would generate many jobs, because liquidity is not the current problem. Banks already have reserves; they just aren't using them to make loans and spur economic activity. Bernanke thinks injecting even more money would be like pushing on a string...
...rest of the answer is that Bernanke believes a Fed chairman needs to act like he's worried about inflation - and actually worry about inflation - even when he doesn't think it's around the corner. Inflation fears may not be justified by data today, but they can be self-fulfilling tomorrow, and the hawks who harbor them are quite influential on Wall Street. If markets and Chinese bondholders start to lose confidence in the value of the U.S. dollar, that could trigger another panic, regardless of the rationality of their fears. A little inflation might be a good thing...