Bernanke a ‘key architect of the Bush economy,’ Sanders says
Bunning to Bernanke: You are ‘the definition of moral hazard’
A bipartisan effort to block the confirmation of Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve means the White House will face tougher obstacles reappointing the man it says is the right person to lead the country’s central bank.
Since last year’s financial collapse, Bernanke has been severely criticized by some as playing an instrumental role in allowing the creation of the asset bubbles that caused investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers to disappear, and forced a $700-billion bank bailout on taxpayers
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (November 29th Washington Post) does not want us to know any of the details of the Fed’s secret operations. This position is not surprising and has been typical of all central bank chairmen.
Bernanke’s stated goal in his editorial is “To design a system of financial oversight…” that will “provide a robust framework for preventing future crises.”
During its 96 years of existence, the Federal Reserve has played havoc with our economy and brought great suffering to millions through unemployment and price escalation. In addition, it has achieved what only a central bank can: a steady depreciation of our currency. Today’s dollar is now worth four cents compared to the dollar entrusted to the Federal Reserve in 1913. Read the rest of this entry »
Imagine you as a private citizen are applying to buy a house.
You need a loan from the BANK during volatile times, much like the markets have seen in the last 1-2 years.
The BANK wants to know why it should lend you its trust, or money to you to the buy the house. Recently many of the BANK’s customers have not been able to pay back their loans to the BANK, so it wants to know as much as it can about you and your abilities to pay the loan back. Read the rest of this entry »
Although I don’t share the optimism in Obama that Micheal express’ here, I agree with most else of what he says. He maintains a fairness to the current administration but ultimately he confides that to him “it looks like fox’s run the hen house.” -ed
A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just “put to sleep. They put the pillow over the face of Lehman Brothers and they put her to sleep.” The question is, why?
The Lehman bankruptcy is widely considered to be the watershed event that changed the rules of the game for those Wall Street banks considered “too big to fail.” The bankruptcy option was ruled out once and for all. The taxpayers would have to keep throwing money at the banks, no matter how corrupt, ill-managed or undeserving. As Dean Baker noted in April 2009:
Even if you don’t believe that Bernanke, Greenspan, Paulson and others didn’t artificially create the economic build-up and collapse, they weren’t smart enough to see it coming! Why would you reappoint these people? Another question is why do they need appointing? It was Alan Greenspan that said the Federal Reserve is an “independent agency,” and ” no other agency can overrule.” -ed
OAK BLUFFS, Massachusetts (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will nominate Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve on Tuesday as the economy shows signs of recovery, a senior administration official said on Monday.
Bernanke, whose appointment as head of the U.S. central bank must be confirmed by the Senate, has led the Fed and the U.S. economy through its most tumultuous period since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Obama’s Democrats control the Senate.
Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat who has been very critical in the past of Fed actions takes it to Bernanke today regarding foreign central bank lending. If the 90 or so Democratic cosponsors of Ron Paul’s HR1207 bill doesn’t convince you that Fed transparency is bipartisan then Grayson’s grilling of Bernanke should.
What I find especially horrid about this is that the U.S. is bankrupt and the Fed is not only printing money and handing it out to U.S. financial institutions, but is handing it out to foreign central banks so they can hand it out to their own financial institutions. Meanwhile the value of the dollar takes more of a hit exacerbating the “hidden” inflation tax on every person in the world who holds dollars.
Editor’s note: Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has no idea when the Federal Reserve was established
Posted by Brian 
