Central bankers are missing the point ... like liquor salesman at an AA meeting

[WhiskeyGirl]

Central banks lower interest rates to try to gin up some activity. They set up another round of drinks, hoping the party will get going again. The Fed cut rates decisively (if a bit slowly) in the '30s. Japan's central bank went further - taking rates down to near-zero and leaving them at that level for years. The U.S. Fed, meanwhile, has already hacked its key rate down to 1%. It's ready to cut more…if need be.

But the central bankers are missing the point. They're like a liquor salesman at an AA meeting. Everyone is desperately trying to sober up - not go on another bender. Of course, the feds will get a few people to take up the bottle again…but these poor saps will be even worse off.

In this type of correction, people need to correct the mistakes of the late bubble. That means getting balance sheets back in balance. And that means spending less and saving more.

(Is our government planning on spending less?  Making every dollar do the work of two or three dollars?)  Even if governmen taxes rich people, are they pi$$ing all that money away? 

In the coming U.S. downturn, (we say "coming" because the worst of it is still in the future) consumers are likely to pull hard on their belts and send the rate of saving soaring. Maybe not the 20%-30% you see in Japan and China, but at least back to the 10% we saw before the 1990s. That will remove more than $1 trillion from the economy. Directly. Indirectly, it will remove a lot more.

(Hide your money in a shoebox.)

"Ten years ago, this place was booming," said the guard. "Hard to believe isn't it? Back in '85 I used to work for General Motors fitting radios and cruise-control switches to the dashboards of cars. But they moved the factory somewhere else and that was that. Now I do security. Although what they're guarding this for, I do not know. There's nothing here."

(I wonder how many people the automaker has already left behind.)

"It's time to wake up, America," continues the reporter, "this dream has become a nightmare."

http://news.goldseek.com/DailyReckoning/1226605552.php

I'm not sure what the answer is, all I see is a continued spending spree.