Last year I jokingly complained that I got No Jackson Hole Invitation.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City is sponsoring its big economic symposium in Jackson Hole at the end of this week and I’ve not been invited. There’s no skiing this time of year but I’d still love to be there. It’s a tough ticket with only about 100 invites going out to the Fed members and other “prominent central bankers, finance ministers, academics, and financial market participants from around the world.” Obviously, I would never expect to be in this crowd and I have no idea what really goes on there. But my impression is that it’s groupthink at its worst. One economist debating with another economist might lead to an economics lesson, but I wonder what it means for the rest of us. For example, Chairman Bernanke’s Friday morning lecture is entitled “Housing and Monetary Policy” and while I am sure the past few weeks have provided a few good revisions to the final draft, what will it do? Who will hear it but a bunch of the same people who have contributed to the mess that we now have?

Guess what? I didn’t make enough (read none) friends at the Fed lately(read never) to garner an invite this year either! It’s funny even thinking how long I would be able to hold in the laughter if I was there listening to these brainiacs or how long it might take to blurt out a few “BULLSHIT!” interruptions as they discussed their policies or economic predictions. It’s better for all of them that people like me are not there. After all, would you really want to compare thoughts and predictions on the likely consequences of government intervention policies and economic statistics from someone like me to the leading economists on the planet?

Speaking of that - maybe you should reread last year’s Jackson Hole speech by Bernanke(click here) and now that we have the benefit of hindsight (and lots of it) to determine whether he said anything so insightful last year that helped us out over the past 12 months. I didn’t find much other than this nice comment about half way through:

Ben Bernanke ……”It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve–nor would it be appropriate–to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.”

Oh well, none of this is important. What matters is the perception that he and his Jackson Hole buddies know what to do. HMMMMM!?! I am having flashback hell right now.

Rewind to last year…on the day when Bernanke spoke. Here is what I wrote about getting impressed by Knowing What We Should Already Know.