Give Bernanke a break

Wall Street pundits should lay off Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his Federal Reserve Board colleagues for being cautious with interest rate moves. The Fed's primary job is not to protect stock prices and bail out investors following bad decisions; it is to conduct monetary policy in pursuit of full employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates, as well as to supervise and regulate banking institutions, maintain the stability of the financial system and contain systemic risk. That's much more complex than trying to support stock prices. The Fed chairman and his colleagues also must satisfy many more constituents than do Wall Street pundits. The nation's central bankers answer to Congress, foreign-currency markets, the banking industry, Wall Street, employers and, ultimately, everyone who has a dollar in his or her pocket. Pundits merely are looking after their own pockets and/or those of their clients. In addition, the Fed has a vastly greater array of data on which to base its decisions than Wall Street and generally must take a far longer and wider view. Yes, the stock market seems to be anticipating a recession, and the Fed has taken action to head it off. But it has tried to move carefully, possibly because members of its board of governors remember economist Paul Samuelson's famous observation that the stock market has "predicted nine of the last five recessions." Let's let the Fed do its work.