Bernanke Set to Take Questions, Ron Paul Esquire Profile, Trouble in China, and Obama Investigates Oil Speculators

Bernanke fielding questions from the media next week?  This will be good.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Next Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will do something no Fed chief has done before: Stand before a room full of journalists after officials conclude a policy meeting and answer questions about the central bank's decisions.

So what would I ask the Ber-nank?  For starters, how plausible is this picture?

                                              (inflation will solve childhood obesity)
Clearly Bernanke is taking a queue from Michele Obama.  Maybe he could explain why silver hit $46 today?

Perhaps he could explain this hilarious picture:

Free helicopter inside!? I bet it is filled with loads of greenbacks!
More importantly, he could explain why the Fed is paying 8 times the market rate for banks to keep their excess reserves stocked away with him.

Seriously though, I doubt the media will push him too much.  They will ask about inflation, he will say some b/s about emerging markets and Middle East turmoil and assure everyone he has everything under control. *Yawn*

Maybe he should read his arch-nemesis' bio in Esquire today:

See, it's not about him. Ron Paul doesn't think that way. It's about this neat idea, principles versus incrementalism. That's why he's taken more lonely stands than any other politician in American history: against the Iraq war even though he's a Republican, against the Defense of Marriage Act even though he's a conservative Christian, against farm subsidies even though he represents a rural district, against the Texas Medical Center even though he's from Texas — the list goes on and on. He refused to award congressional medals to Rosa Parks, Ronald Reagan, the Pope, and Mother Teresa. After Hurricane Katrina, he voted against sending federal help to Louisiana.

The bio is great with the exception of this line:

If we had stuck to what Congressman Paul views as our founding principles, we would have undoubtedly been a smaller and poorer and less consequential country, but also purer and freer and more peaceful.

Undoubtedly? Really? I would love to see proof of that.  John H. Richardson needs to stick to writing, not economics.  I believe it was America's semi-adherence to a free market that lead to our explosive growth in productivity and wealth accumulation.  To think we would be poorer with a free market lacks any basis.  I agree on one thing though, the U.S. probably wouldn't be as big of a country.  But we also wouldn't have the blood of a thousand native Americans and Mexicans on our hands either.

Going back to Bernanke, I would love to know what he thinks of this:

Chinese oil giant Sinopec has stopped exporting oil products to maintain domestic supplies amid disruption concerns caused by Middle Eastunrest and Japan's earthquake, a report said Wednesday.

The state-run Xinhua news agency did not say how long the suspension would last but it reported that the firm had said it also would take steps to step up output "to maintain domestic market supplies of refined oil products".

Get ready for another rise in gas prices.  No doubt Big Ben is looking at events like these as the race to the global currency bottom is being printed in front of our very eyes:

"A two-day strike over rising fuel prices turned violent in Shanghai on Thursday as thousands of truck drivers clashed with police, drivers said, in the latest example of simmering discontent over inflation. About 2,000 truck drivers battled baton-wielding police at an intersection near Waigaoqiao port, Shanghai's biggest, two drivers who were at the protest told Reuters. The drivers, who blocked roads with their trucks, had stopped work on Wednesday demanding the government do something about rising fuel costs, workers said."

So what are the chances of QE3?  Jim Grant explains:

Bernanke was hard put to explain why he chose to let Lehman go while acting to save Bear Stearns. He would be harder put to explain why he chose to implement QE1 and QE2 but, in another hour of need, refused to launch QE3." And "Sooner or later, gravity turns speculative markets into investment markets. When this transformation occurs, the Fed will confront the need to bail out the innocents it had previously bailed in. Hence, QE3."

To make matters worse, Obama is now trying to cover for Bernanke:

 RENO (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Thursday the U.S. attorney general was assembling a team to root out any fraud and manipulation in the oil markets that might be contributing to higher U.S. gasoline prices.

"The truth is, there's no silver bullet that can bring down gas prices right away," Obama said in prepared remarks for his opening statement at a townhall-style meeting in Nevada.

"The Attorney General's putting together a team whose job it will be to root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices - and that includes the role of traders and speculators. We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain," Obama said.

That's right, refuse to open up more federal land for oil drilling and invade an oil producing country which has the opposite effect of soothing turmoil.  Right, the speculators who are predicting a supply gut and bidding up prices are the ones who are screwing over the American people.

I will end with a few more tidbits of news.  First is Jim Rogers who announced he may be shorting U.S. Treasuries bonds if the price goes up anymore:

 "If the bond goes up another 3 or 4 points, I for one am going to sell it short," he told Reuters Insider in an interview from Singapore, where he is based.

Rogers was not specific about which duration bonds he was referring to, beyond mentioning 30-year paper in a comment about what he sees as a coming sell off.

Seems too late to me.  Next is Gary Johnson who has announced (to little fanfare) he is running for president officially today.  Check out this cheesy campaign video:

Also check out this video of Sandy Springs, Georgia (the town that outsourced everything) from Reason TV:

Greece's growing insolvency poses a huge threat to France and Switzerland according to The Guardian:

France and Switzerland have more exposure to Greek debt than any other countries in the world, and more than twice as much as Germany – perhaps adding fuel to the hesitance of the Germans to help bail out the troubled country.

And apparently Sen. Rand Paul challenged Rep. Paul Ryan's budget project before it was revealed behind closed doors.  From the HuffingtonPost:

WASHINGTON -- Before releasing his budget publicly, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) gave Senate Republicans a private briefing about the plan in early April. During that meeting, Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party-backed freshman from Kentucky, challenged Ryan in front of the rest of their party, according to two GOP aides briefed on the meeting.

Sen. Paul said Rep. Ryan's plan did not do enough to cut spending and relied on too much deficit spending for too long, according to the aides.

See my post yesterday for an interactive chart comparing Obama's budget to Ryan's.