The Bernanke Scandal: Full-Frontal Cluelessness

[G_j]

http://www.truth-out.org/bernanke-scandal-full-fronted-cluelessness/1307549746

The Bernanke Scandal: Full-Frontal Cluelessness

Wednesday 8 June 2011
by: Robert Scheer, Truthdig

How I wish that Ben Bernanke would get caught emailing photos of his underwear-clad groin. Otherwise we don’t stand a chance of reversing this administration’s economic policy, which is shaping up to be every bit as disastrous as that of its predecessor.

Indeed, the Fed chairman’s much anticipated remarks on Tuesday take one back to the contemptuous indifference of a Herbert Hoover to the public’s suffering: Bernanke dismissed the wobbly economy with its anemic 1.8 percent first-quarter growth as merely “somewhat slower than expected.” The rise in unemployment to 9.1 percent was “some loss of momentum.”

The problem with Bernanke is that he is utterly clueless as to the stark pain and fear endured by the 50 million Americans who have experienced, or face the prospect of, losing their homes. His remarks reflected the insularity of a ruling-power elite that is magnificently impervious to the damage that Bernanke’s policies in the current and past administration helped inflict on what used to be called the American way of life. This is a man who assured us there was no housing crisis, while his policies at the Fed encouraged the mortgage securitization swindles that caused the meltdown of the economy.

His full statement stands as a classic example of the limits of economic language as morally descriptive: “Overall, the economic recovery appears to be continuing at a moderate pace, albeit at a rate that is both uneven across sectors and frustratingly slow from the perspective of millions of unemployed and underemployed workers.” Frustratingly slow—how about going bat nuts with fear over not being able to make your mortgage payment and losing your home? Tell it to workers who must contend with stagnant wage rates and sharply rising gas and food costs as better jobs and therefore consumer demand move offshore. Bernanke takes low wages to be reassuring news on what he sees as the all-important inflation front: “subdued unit labor costs should remain a restraining influence on inflation.”


..more..

[aquart]

1. But WHY can't we hang him?

It would really hearten the people.

[madrchsod]

2. the french chopped off their heads....

[Kolesar]

3. Bad writing

"This is the Big Lie technique at work, employed by a huge banking lobby that stresses the direct cost of the TARP program while ignoring other programs that will not be paid back, as well as the additional cost of $5 trillion to the national debt that a proper Fed policy could have avoided."

What five trillion?

[Kolesar]

4. Good writing

Comment section: Dinoworldrs
1 comment
Let me clarify. The ultra-wealthy have the power to insist that the government in general and the Federal Reserve in particular to implement policies which serve their interests. Bernanke has the job because he is doing this. (As did Greenspan before him.) If he had a deep sense of compassion and fairness, he could never have risen anywhere close to his present position.

Robert Scheer suggests that if only Bernanke were gone, things would get better. But these problems are systemic, not the cause of some character flaw in B.

Every step forward in social justice is primarily a result of relentless pressure from those who bearing the brunt of injustice.

The idea that some warm empathetic replacement for Bernanke would ever exist or if (amazingly) he did, that he would be able to implement policies that go against the economic interests of the richest and most powerful is, in my view, not supported by events past and present.

[Cali_Democrat]

5. “subdued unit labor costs should remain a restraining influence on inflation.”

Basically Ben is saying that American worker's wages are stagnant (and have been for years) so we don't need to worry about inflation.

Fuck you, Ben.