trichet said he'd stay on the sideline until there was movement on the fiscal or political side and tothis is a fascinating game of chicken going on and it's a lousy reason to do monetary policy. >> to me it makes me think it's less likely bernanke will do anything because he can't look like he's bending to political pressure either. >> more to the point, what can the fed do to counter a 4% contraction in fiscal policy? >> bernanke has said nothing. he might do something to counter it. >> has this happened before, by the way? >> what? >> have there been conversations -- >> in the time i've been covering this beat, which is about 12 years now, the willingness of politicians to talk about monetary policy has gone like this. they used to be very reluctant, they'd dance around the edges, wouldn't comment so much on them. am i right about that, dino? >> you went from actually talking about it a lot, 25, 30 years ago, and then during the clinton era it went down and they didn't talk about it at all. remember in the h.w. bush era, brady was leaning on the get and during the reuben era it went