A change we need

Dear Editor:

Is everyone totally stupid in Washington, D.C.? How could the “geniuses” in Treasury and elsewhere not see that this “perfect economic storm,” a category 10, was coming?

If I told you that the Federal Reserve Board had raised interest rates 525 percent in four years, would you be concerned? Well, that is exactly what happened. I saw this coming two years ago and I tried to sound the “alarm.” I wrote Bush and Congress. Nothing.

Even now no one will criticize the Fed. How can we learn to avoid this crisis again if we don’t know what caused it?

There are 75 economists at the Fed’s Washington office. They knew all about adjustable-rate mortgages that were approved with “teaser” rates and large variable-rate loans by many mortgage companies, etc. Why didn’t they sound the alarm as rates were going through the ceiling?

The Bush administration failed us because they think the “Fed” is a “scarecrow.”

What’s wrong with low interest rates? A question never asked.

Cheer up, this could get worse. I predict 10 percent unemployment before this is over.

There already is chatter about the Fed’s chair up for reappointment in 2010. And, well, there should be. Greenspan said “I didn’t see it coming.” Bernanke said “let’s fix it” (or something like that). They caused the crisis.

The Fed must stop doing the same thing and expecting different results (an Einstein quote). The plan is the Fed made up of bankers. I urge Obama to appoint a businessperson. Maybe Buffet or Gates. And Congress should approve the new Fed chair and its board members, not bankers or economists.

Obama! This is one of the most important “changes we need.”

P.S. The Fed board and chair should resign now! If not, what will we have learned?

Richard C. Goodwin

Snowmass Village