Toil and Trouble

AITOOW wonders if Bernanke is trying deflate the burdgeoning housing bubble or if it is just a casualty of economic engineering? Was he just trying to slow the commodity and equity appreciation he caused by castrating fixed income (zero fed rates =  almost zero fixed income yields =  forced $ out of bonds) and housing got in the undertow? Or was the real fear the appreciation in housing prices? Did he let the stock and commodities markets appreciate so long because he feels the "little guy" doesn't participate in them any longer and could not be harmed directly if it lost value? Is he worried that we were repeating the past with regards to housing and the danger was more real in that area so he wanted higher lending rates to cool it down or was he trying to switch the market's capitalization to more fixed income? The funny thing is now we have the same old game of pick your poison and I say people do what they did in the 90's. They choose real estate again. They eschew the risk of the stocks and equities they were forced into owning over the last 5 years. They flirt with fixed income but it moves too slow and too minimally for most investors per usual. However, they big asset class shift is to real estate. Because they either need the investment itself for practical reasons (escape rising rents) or want it for financial reasons (the others are maxed out or too low yielding). If he was trying to stop a housing hysteria, I hope he didn't cause collateral damage to any of the asset groups unintentionally because I don't think it will stop the groundswell behind it.