How much damage can one man inflict and still be treated like a saint and savior in Washington?
Ben Bernanke’s career answers that question. The Establishment media has rallied around the current Fed chairman as if his reign was the triumph of wisdom and goodness – instead of a debacle of bursting bubbles and ruined lives.
Even though the Federal Reserve is supposedly independent [insert guffaw here] – Bernanke will not be permitted to continue in his job unless the Senate votes this week to grant him another term.
Sen. Russell Feingold, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and Sen. Byron Dorgan announced last week that they will vote against another term for Bernanke. Unfortunately, I doubt that most Republican senators will have the courage or gumption of these Democrats on this vote.
The Senate will be voting on Bernanke while having little or no idea what the Federal Reserve has done in recent years. That is why Congress must pass Ron Paul’s legislation to Audit the Fed.
These are only first steps, but they would be a giant leap back in the direction of fiscal sanity. The Federal Reserve has been bankrolling the war machine in this country for decades, and a loss for the Fed would make it more difficult to use a charge card for the current or next war.
This has always astonished me. I have never, ever seen anyone get fired from a government job for being no fucking good at it.
The august Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, a man who one churl once quipped “has all the charms of a Clam”…he pronounced the marching orders of the GOP this past Sunday by brushing off all this feverish talk about bouncing Helicopter Ben. Auditing the Fed sounds good in concept, but who is going to audit the auditors? Unfortunately, it’s like hiring the bookies to audit the boys back in the numbers parlor.
But, one must admit that reviewing an audit of the FED would be Gothic Entertainment indeed.
Dirk, every now and then the bosses screw up and an honest guy is hired as an auditor or investigator.
Even pulling back the Fed curtain by 20% could provide enough sparks for an early Fourth of July….
Jim, You’re preaching to the choir here but overall, anything having to do with Washington today is akin to establishing a Human Rights Commission on Devils Island at the turn of the last century: Best intentions and Noble Sentiments surrounded by
hungry alligators.
On the bright side, at least the Beltway think tanks offer uplifting visions for America’s future….
[Is there an icon for sarcasm?]
Funny you should ask, somebody actually has thought of this and offers a software program with some kind of icon accompanying the greatest hits of snarky comments. They are even commodifying sarcasm today, is there no end to the injustice?