Some attributed the stock market’s less than miraculous recovery to the usual short-squeeze factors. And of course, there was plenty of that. But there was also Helicopter Ben, who was on Capitol Hill yesterday telling it like it is. Sort of.  We can’t recall ever seeing stocks tank on a day when a Fed Chairman was testifying before Congress, and yesterday was no exception. Not that Bernanke had much to say. He called the economy “resilient,” a description that would be hard to refute. It’s an understatement, really, considering that consumers appear to be chugging along even though the country is in the midst of the worst real estate downturn since the Great Depression.

A Coy Fed Chairman

Bernanke allowed himself a pat on the back when he asserted that recent easing by the Fed had put inflation and the risks to growth roughly in balance. But he was being a bit coy here, since, as everyone knows, a little inflation in the housing sector would be as welcome right now as rain in the middle of a drought.  Maybe it’s time to give the Fed chairman a new nickname, since the helicopter from which he supposedly stood ready to dispense hundred dollar bills to beleaguered debtors is never going to get off the launching pad, not as long as he continues to spout the oddly illogical argument of future inflation in a debt-saturated world. In fact, we are at the beginning of a deflationary collapse whose destructive power will come from more than $500+ trillion worth of metaphysical financial instruments currently in play globally. Under the circumstances, inflation is going to be about as big a worry as whether our house pets are getting enough fiber in their diets.