Now I'm a believer?

According to Sunday's NY Times, new Fed chair Ben Bernanke has made believers out of "the markets".

"Could an Ivy League academic like this ever have Street credibility? But as Mr. Bernanke meets with Fed policy makers this week to set interest rates, the answer is clear: yes, yes and yes again. If anybody has had to learn on the job, it has been Fed watchers and investors rather than Mr. Bernanke."


The article also claims that, despite having underestimated the housing mess, Bernanke has engineered a masterful economic soft landing where inflation falls gradually without a recession and growth picks back up soon. Second quarter growth for this year is being noised about at 3%.

There is at least one economist who doesn't agree, the emphatic Nouriel Roubini.

Me? I'm still stunned that academic economists don't automatically have mad street cred!