Let them eat iPad

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In a furthering effort to expose the FED’s utter disconnect from reality and the real economy we find this total belly flop by none other than the NY Federal Reserve President William Dudley.

Misjudging your audience is hardly unusual for those in positions of power. But its best not to cite the price of the new iPad as an example of why inflation isn’t a problem when you head into a working-class neighborhood like Queens.

As Reuters reported today:

[..]In Queens, New York, on Friday, New York Fed President William Dudley did just that. He got an earful.

After being bombarded with questions about food inflation, Dudley attempted to reassure his audience by putting rising commodity prices into a broader economic context — but that only made matters worse.

“When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?” one audience member asked.

Dudley tried to explain how the Fed sees things: Yes, food and energy prices may be rising, but at the same time, other prices are declining.

He then stretched for a real world example. The only problem was he chose the Apple’s latest tablet computer that hit stores on Friday, which may be more popular at the New York Fed’s headquarters near Wall Street than it is on the gritty streets of Queens.

“Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful,” he said.”You have to look at the prices of all things.” [..]

This kind of disconnect may be widely accepted uptown in the ivory towers that the banking elite live in … but the reaction was not well received out in the real economy.

[..]This prompted guffaws and widespread murmuring from the audience, with one audience member calling the comment “tone deaf.”

“I can’t eat an iPad,” another said.[..]

Memo to the Federal Reserve board … when reaching for analogy to explain FED policy of flooding the world with fiat currency … DO NOT use the Marie Antoinette quote “Let them eat iPad”