re: In honor of Ben's last FOMC meeting, let's appreciate Bernank the Tank

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and without question the effects of the monitary policies need to play out before you say he is a saint

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This is true, we won't know all the effects for years.

My worry going forward really has nothing to do with high inflation, its more the Fed balance sheet stock. The universe of short-term securities (and actually most sectors) is shrinking by sheer market technicals. The Fed has bought a large portion of high quality assets from the market, and with most derivatives moving to exchanges you'll need "high quality" assets to use as collateral. You essentially create an environment where you have a feeding frenzy for high quality assets which will keep returns on these assets low.

The Fed kind of countered this with their fixed rate full allotment reverse repo facility that just ended its testing period. If the counterparty list becomes more robust, this becomes one of the Fed's best monetary tools. They can reverse repo their balance sheet back out to the market, in a way, this is kind of like the Fed "issuing" their balance sheet. This will also keep a floor on short-term market rates, and controlling the "market IOER".

We shall see, but for now lets give a dude props for doing insanely more for the country that us message board know it alls.