At 8:30am ET Tuesday, the U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) data for February will be released. The consensus forecast on Wall Street is that PPI will drop -0.2 pct Month over Month because – we are led to believe – that energy and food prices from the producers actually fell.

Without food and energy components being priced, the PPI is supposed to rise by +0.1 pct M/M.

Tomorrow we will be told.

Tonight Ben Bernanke is expected to tell a dinner gathering of the Economic Club of New York that all is well in Bernanke’s world.

So with cues from PPI and Bernanke leading investors to believe that interest rate hikes will not be too high or too long, the equity markets are rallying. Of course the other side of that coin is that the economy is not cranking out enough tax dollars for the Treasury to meet its obligations, so the ‘Snow’man has to print those dollars.

You see, there are so many USD floating about in the world, but they are outsid

Anne Picker, International Economist for Econoday, has a clear explanation of the $USD weakness last week in her International Perspective (Friday March 17). I like her work a lot. It's simple, direct and has no-spin.

Without doubt, in my mind at least, Ben Bernanke may be the most intellectually brilliant of U.S. central bankers to lead the Fed. That’s good because these are trying times, and the future is going to become even more challenging for Americans.

So, even though Bernanke is believed to speak more directly than his predecessor, his rhetoric will become an important piece of work for all of us to understand.

Last evening, Bernanke delivered a short speech to the Economic Club of New York. Today, it will be the subject of much discussion and spin by Wall Street. Here is a link to the speech.

After re-reading his conclusion, I gather that he’d like to see Fed policy a matter of “trust me, you’re in good hands”. You see, he’s saying maybe the old indicators work, and maybe they don’t.

In my mind, that’s acceptable – but only on one condition, which is

The U.S. PPI data is out. It will be controversial. Just remember that this data is for February and energy prices escalated in March. I’ll have more to say later in the day, but here is the MarketWatch report, and you will find an independent analysis soon at Econoday.

According to a report dated today (March 21) from a company calling itself Middle East FOREX, several Mid-East central banks said today they would seek to switch reserves from USD to Euros.

Unfortunately, I noted that the report from Middle East Forex is the same one that came from a company called the Middle East Times dated a week ago (March 15).

So, you may be interested in the story, but it pays to know who is publishing it. The story could be fact or it could be fiction. With the Web, this problem is going to become pervasive.