Good Riddance Ben Bernanke

Today Fed chairman Ben Bernanke will give his last press conference as Fed chairman. Mainstream media is fawning all over Bernanke and what he has done as Fed chairman. I say, good riddance.

Phil Izzo at WSJ reminds us of how great an increase in the monetary base has occurred under Bernanke:

 No matter what the Fed decides to do today with its $85 billion of bond purchases a month, the assets on its balance sheet are likely to surpass $4 trillion for the first time this week.

Assets on the Fed’s balance sheet sat at around $3.99 trillion as of Wednesday Dec. 11. The level has climbed by more than $1 trillion over the course of 2013 as the central bank continued its bond-buying program launched in September 2012.

The balance sheet is up from less than $1 trillion prior to the recession.

A good chunk of this money has ended up as excess reserves at the Fed and is not in the system, but it is a massive overhang that  threatens to deliver a giagantic wallop of price inflation if it does enter the system.

Meanwhile, the new money that has entered the system has distorted the economic structure of the economy, which has resulted in a booming manipulated stock market that will ultimately result in a crash. Nice job Bernanke. Good riddance.