Several readers suggested the Fed chairmans predicament as a topic. Highlights: "I hear a lot about how Ben Bernanke is doing it all wrong. IMO: he has the third hardest job in America right now. It’s easy to criticize. How about this: What would YOU do if you were the Fed Chair?"

"Do you go slow and steady with the 0.25% raises? Do you hit the market with a 0.5% raise to show them you mean business? Do you do a little pause, and assess the results of the previous 16 rate hikes. Or do you do something different, like Bitch Slap David Lereah and chief of NAR research Suzanne? It’s easy to criticize. Time to put up."

A reply,"How did we get to the point were we are playing word and guessing games with unelected leaders. Do we run our own housholds like this? 'Gee Honey, I INTEND to put enough money in the checking account to cover our bills, but I MIGHT pause if my paycheck bounces?'"

One says take your medicine."I’d do what ever it takes to send this country, and world, into the healing recession that it needs, and should have gone thru after 2001. We would have been well on the way to recovery had not Mr Greenspan decided to flood the world with liquidity and drop the rates to zero. All he gave us was a short reprieve and created a monster of a bubble."

Another said, "I agree;…Recessions always have significant casualties but my fear is that if we don’t support the dollar (Higher rates) we could see a complete meltdown of our economy/country? Depression?"

Another has a quote. "I like the quote in Milton Friedman’s book 'The Fed has given its heart not to controlling the quantity of money, which it can do, but to controlling interest rates, something it does not have the power to do. The result has been failure on both fronts: wide swings in both money and interest rates. These swings, too, have had an inflationary bias…the Fed has been much quicker to correct a swing toward a low rate of monetary growth than to correct a swing toward a high rate of monetary growth.'"

"'The financial public, too, believes that the Fed can control interest rates, and that belief has spread to the Treasury and Congress.'"

"The Fed needs to put the brakes on the money supply, which I guess it is actually doing; there was a link posted a couple of time a month or so ago to a story about how the Fed is beginning to put pressure on Banks to slow lending."

One notes Greenspans role, "Bernanke is in an impossible position, not of his creation. Greenspan’s liquidity pumping over the years has created a series of ever-larger asset bubbles. I doubt that they can be deflated without serious pain, especially in the US. But activist central banking has been the problem and is not the solution. Bernanke should return to targeted money supply growth (target growth of M1) rather than targeted rates, let rates fall where they may, and fortify his building."

Another sees a bigger picture, "I’d even argue it’s not Greenspan’s creation either. The freakishly high and accelerating productivity we’re seeing is deflationary. Greenspan was right in his description of a 'new economy' he was just early."

"The Fed is losing its grip because they’re running out of options to combat these enormous deflationary pressures. Rates were at all time lows for a reason. I’d argue they’re already too high."

"Most people are using old broken linear models which, when you plug in our current numbers, scream inflation. They’re hiding the M3 because most people will mistakenly panic if they see how high it is. So they have to create enough liquidity to combat deflation while preventing a dollar crash from mistaken investors who aren’t wondering about the productivity connundrum."

"The problem with housing is that even with rates at zero there is no way to make people buy. Prices will drop until they’re re-attached to fundamentals. The problem for the economy is that even with an exploding M3 the money isn’t raising median wages. Businesses are raking in huge profits but consumers have to rack up debt to buy products. That may be the 'pushing a string' problem from a different perspective."

And one is more laissez faire. "As for what I should do were I wearing his dress? Well, I would correct the crime of un-backing our dollars with actual gold by linking the fed fund rate to the price of gold. Then I would go surfing and let the market regulate itself."