Yesterday Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is testified before Congress regarding the LIBOR scandal and available Fed policy tools that could be used to help prop up our flagging economy. As is usually the case when he speaks publicly, the market moved south. (Interestingly, the market moved higher later in the testimony and ultimately finished the day higher.) What traders want to hear are concrete plans for a new stimulus plan, or a QE3. The absence of such an announcement is viewed as a negative. To me, that’s a positive. There’s little, if any, true long term value ascribed to further monetary expansion policies. In fact, it will only further debase our currency end set the stage for even more punitive problems, like rampant inflation, down the road. As a nation, we need to accept our medicine and deal with our problems rather than try to put our thumbs in the dike that is our growing budgetary problem. But there is little collective will in this country, either among the population or our elected leaders, to accept hard times in the short run in order to put our country on a better footing for future generations. As a father of three teenagers, I worry about what life will be like for them and for my future grandchildren. It infuriates me to see how gutless our leaders truly are, and how they invariably pander to the monied special interests at the expense of the people who asked them to look out for their best interests. And I fear that this election will only bring us more of the same, now that the Supreme Court voted to allow unlimited donations to PACs. So the super wealthy like Sheldon Adelson can almost literally buy himself a president. It makes me want to puke.