Getting your player ready...
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, at right, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, left, may be working at cross purposes. One is buying $400 billion in longer-dated Treasury bonds to reduce yields, and the latter is selling them to decrease the Treasury’s reliance on short-term borrowing.
Bernanke may have “a pretty limited effect” on long-term interest rates and the economy, according to James Hamilton, a professor of economics at University of California at San Diego: “We shouldn’t have any illusions that it will radically change things in any great hurry as far as the economy is concerned.” Bloomberg News
