Fisher Sees Downside With a 'Turbulent Ferocity’

It will take Congress, the new president, and the Federal Reserve Board to turn around the U.S. economy, which “is now geared to the downside with a kind of turbulent ferocity that seems to equal, if not better, the powerful tailwinds that drove both the United States economy and the rest of the world on its upward slope of growth,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas president Richard W. Fisher said yesterday.

The growth was fueled by “exuberant financial markets running amok … in the pursuit of the ever-greater returns,” Fisher said, according to prepared text of the speech released by the Fed.

“The task of restoring the credit markets, instilling confidence, and righting our economy ship will take many hands,” he said. First, the Fed has calmed “the tempest that is upon us,” he added, and now Congress in cooperation with a new president must follow up with “responsible and carefully calibrated fiscal initiatives.”

Fisher said righting the economy will be an “epic challenge.”

“But this much I know — we have been here before and we have overcome our problems,” he said. “We are a nation of risk-takers. Often we confront storms of our own making. We falter. We get blown off course. We lose some of our ships. But we never give up. We are a resilient people. We always come roaring back, recovering from our setbacks with an even more extreme muscle pattern and a leanness that would put that hearty bull that roams our pasture in Mount Vernon to shame. You don’t have to be irrationally exuberant to know that that is what makes America unique.”

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