America, did you hear about the recent tax increase?
Yeah, we just had a tax hike and it was pretty damn big. You must be confused, what tax hike, nothing happened in Congress. Well in case the picture does not give it away, this tax increase was not done by Congress, it was done by the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. He announced it yesterday and here is the relevant information: The Committee will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings. In addition, the Committee intends to purchase a further $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month. This will be done because our economy is struggling and housing is depressed, a rather bleak economic assessment, but one that is strangely similar to that of 2008. After all the spending and all the Fed's machinations we are still struggling and still searching for a recovery, yet instead of reversing course and exploring a different strategy