by Charlie Gasparino Info
Charlie Gasparino is a senior correspondent for Fox Business Network. He is a columnist for The Daily Beast and a frequent contributor to the New York Post, Forbes, and other publications. His latest book, Bought and Paid For, is about the Obama administration and Wall Street.
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Ben Bernanke is emerging as a high-profile scapegoat as critics ridicule his new "quantitative easing" policy. Charlie Gasparino on why mocking the non-partisan Fed chair is bad for America.
Here's how you know Ben Bernanke, the mild-mannered chairman of the Federal Reserve, a scholar of the Great Depression once considered a sage for saving the banking system during the 2008 bank meltdown, has suddenly found himself a target of ridicule lumped in with the financial morons and evildoers like Dick Fuld, Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the fat cats of Wall Street.
Go to YouTube.com, and one of the most watched videos Wednesday (more than 800,000 views the last time I checked) is an animation titled "quantitative easing explained." In it, two cartoon bears, which have been previously used to lampoon all manners of buffoonery, explain not just how the Fed's recent move to prop up the faltering economy is really all about printing lots and lots of money, thus setting the stage for another economic collapse, but also how the Fed has missed every economic malady over the past 20 years and has been right about "nothing."
And who is the guy behind such recklessness and stupidity? Its chairman, a man named "The Ben Bernak" who has "no business experience…no policy experience…has never run in an election."
"So what qualifies him to run the Fed…and play God with the economy?" asks one of the characters in the video. The answer: "I don't know, but maybe the fact that he has a nice beard."
"But my plumber has a nice beard," is the response, "but I wouldn't trust him to play God with the economy," before adding "the plumber is clearly smarter than The Ben Bernak."
It gets worse, and while it's easy to blow off a YouTube video as nothing more than a cheap shot created by someone with too much time on his hands, the fact that Bernanke or any Fed chairman has gone from relative mainstream obscurity—fed chairman for all the power in navigating the economy through their control of the country's money supply have never exactly been house hold names in the majority of American households—to an object of popular derision and scorn really says something about Bernanke's ability to remain an effective Fed chairman.
I should point out that I was told to download the YouTube video not by some dopey trader during a slow day in the markets, but by a CEO in New York City who runs one of the biggest financial firms in the world. Bernanke's senior staff has seen it too, I'm told, though a spokesman wouldn't say whether the chairman has.
Bernanke has gone from mainstream obscurity to an object of popular derision and scorn.
"This video is going fucking viral," the CEO told me with a laugh.
Down in Washington, so is Bernanke. His list of foes reads like a who's who of the Republican Party establishment (it's hard to believe Bernanke was appointed by a Republican), while some members of his staff are now questioning whether they should pull back on his quantitative easing plan altogether. Others in D.C. are now predicting that he'll resign after the 2012 presidential elections because he's tired of the constant attacks, a full-on bloodsport after the Fed announced its so called "QE-2," or its second round of quantitative easing—a fancy way of saying that the central bank wants to print money in the coming weeks by purchasing securities from the big banks, infusing the financial system with cash that will somehow find its way into the hands of business and consumers.
To be sure, QE-2 will probably work as well as QE-1, which means it probably won't do much to spark an incredibly weak economy staggering under the weight of 9.5 percent unemployment. But that doesn't mean Bernanke deserves all the crap he's getting. He doesn't because attacking Bernanke obscures some of the big problems facing the American economy as we conclude the second year of President Obama's hope and change agenda that clearly isn't working.
12 November 17, 2010 | 2:34am Twitter Emails
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You studiously avoid the fact that what Bernanke is doing is a hidden tax against working Americans. Devaluing the Dollar is no different than removing money from people's savings, reducing their salaries, and increasing living expenses. The bank bailout was criminal. If any normal individual tried to run the types of schemes the banks were running while they drove the country into the ground, they'd go to jail. Instead these guys made a fortune for themselves and their friends and Bernanke stuck the average American with the bill, and on top of it their was no transparency where the money went. No one criticized Greenspan's bubble machine because they were making vast fortunes from it. Instead of allowing natural adjustments in the economic cycle, they created bubble after bubble. Extending credit and mortgages to people who were completely ineligible to borrow, then bundling the toxic assets and reselling them. They knew it was a scam. So where is the justice? Who has been held accountable? No one. Instead these guys were rewarded. The amount of money that went for the bailout was equal to all the money spent on the Civil War, WWI, and WWII. And what has it bought America? Explain this to us while you're prattling on about protecting Ben Bernanke's image. Equating people's opposition to what's happening with a silly Youtube video and partisan politics is contemptible. You yourself admit QE2 will probably fail, another trillion dollars will vanish, and America will be in even worse shape. How about discussing the real issues instead of blowing smoke next time.
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