The Clueless Federal Reserve in 2008

A meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve on 29 - 30 January 2008 two months after the Great Socialist Recession began in early December 2007 was pretty sure that

• The USA would avoid recession.
• Export growth in 2008 and 2009 would be at a rate of 7.25% both years.
• Reductions in the Federal Reserve interest rates would return full employment by 2010.

This group that included Bernanke, Geithner, Yellen, and many other top Federal Reserve leaders was perfectly clueless.  As we all know, the USA not only did not avoid recession, that recession was two months old at that time and would continue even by the government's self-aggrandizing determination through June 2009.

US exports decreased sharply in 2008 and at the end of 2009 they were still below 2007 levels.  Finally, despite drastic cuts to essentially zero in the Federal Reserve interest rate, we have not come close to a recovery to full employment as of January 2014, let alone by 2010.

Federal regulatory agencies and commissions rarely do know what they are doing.  This clueless state is the general state of the Government bureaucracy and of the independent organizations it sets up.