How to not keep up

When the U.S. Federal Reserve lowers its expectations, but has no policy response to match, investors, essentially, have a problem with that.

On Wednesday, the Fed played the "moderate" card, saying the economic recovery was slowing from modest to moderate, which is modest without any edge to it. Further, "We don't have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting," Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said at the second ever Fed press conference to explain a policy decision.

Cynics would say, "stay home," if the Fed has no policy change to announce and doesn't even know why hiring is at a near standstill. One of its two congressional mandates is to maximize employment; the other is to keep inflation at a sustainable level. So is Bernanke is saying the Fed is clueless concerning half of its job description?

The real answer, the substitute for clueless, is to say that the answer is too painful to discuss -- the federal budget is so out of whack that there won't be a dime of stimulus money available for the next two generations and the only way to help the job market is to wait for Baby Boomers to get out of the way. That puts the recovery on hold for 20 to 40 years.

Referring to cuts in the budget to address the federal deficit, as Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said recently, "In the context of our debt, which is nearly $15 trillion and is headed for $25 trillion, $2 trillion over 10 years does not do the job."

This means the narrow political mindset really is not enough anymore and that thinking outside the box is needed here.

Luckily, of course, people have been thinking outside the box all along and now they just have to recognize it.

For example, confronting China on its currency policy could be considered drawing outside of the lines. Confronting the skyrocketing cost of healthcare head on would be thinking beyond the obvious. Promoting alternative energy for cars, homes and businesses is anything but business as usual. These ideas are not new, but they are still not mainstream.

Ford Motor Co. said this week that it had sponsored a survey that annually questions 200,000 consumers about automobile choices and found one third of consumers indicate "fuel economy will have the 'greatest impact' on their next vehicle purchase."

"Consumers are telling us clean and green vehicles matter most because they are good for people's wallets and good for our planet," said Mark Fields, Ford president of the Americas.

"We hear what they are saying," he added.

This, of course, is the equivalent of a beer commercial that says, "drink responsibly," which is to say it is true without being honest.

To think seriously outside the box, Ford would not need federally mandated fuel-efficiency standards at all. Instead, they would and should be saying, "just try to keep up."

In international markets Thursday, the Nikkei 225 index in Japan dropped 0.34 percent, while the Shanghai composite index in China rose 1.47 percent. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong shed 0.46 percent, while the Sensex in India gained 1.01 percent.

The S&P/ASX 200 index in Australia slid 0.71 percent.

In midday trading in Europe, the FTSE 100 index in Britain was off 1.28 percent, while the CAC 30 in Germany was down 1.51 percent. The CAC 40 in France lost 1.68 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 600 gave up 1.12 percent.