It's people like you who live in ivory towers that should keep their mouths shut about the economy. What do you have to worry about with your income and savings? Who the hell are you to say to the rest of us that the economy's weakness is exaggerated? Do you really cut back on the amount of driving you do or just pay the price to fill your tank at the pump while most of the rest of us just put in twenty dollars worth of gas? Have you taken the time to count the number of contractors that have had to shut down construction projects because they know they can't sell the homes the want to build? That new homes already built are not selling? That existing home sales are significantly down, all because of the Fed's insatiable appetite for interest rate hikes?? You sickeningly remind me of the first President Bush who, while in office as president of a country mired in recession, was quoted as saying that he didn't see any problems with the economy. Well, sure, if you're George Bush or Donald Luskin, multimillionaires, you certainly wouldn't see any problems. The problem with you and this other blockhead Bernanke is that you're both two effete individuals whose livelihood doesn't now or probably never did depend on the strength or weakness of the economy. You have nothing to lose regardless of its direction, so you sit back and pontificate as though you actually know what you're talking about. Do us all a favor and shut the hell up. And when you see that other insufferable and arrogant buffoon, Alan Greenspan, who set out to wreck the stock market in 2000, did it, put small companies out of business and cost millions of people their 401K retirements, tell him I said to drop dead.

Dean Klein
Los Angeles