Hit the back button on your browser right now, clear your cache immediately and unbookmark our site posthaste — because Charlie Gasparino has declared that mocking Ben Bernanke is “bad for America“. And if you watched that Quantitative Easing Explained video that Jason posted this weekend, you’re even more at fault, because how dare someone compress the concept of QE into something digestible – and reveal why it’s inherently mockable? Well, says Gasparino:
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.
FED CHAIR’S CREDIBILITY UNDERMINED BY CARTOON BEARS would be a hell of a headline. Gasparino also repeats the rumor that’s been going around about Bernanke resigning in 2012 because he’s tired of the cheap shots at his beard, though he acknowledges in the next sentence that – gasp – QE2, Electric Boogaloo “probably won’t do much to spark an incredibly weak economy”, so really, not sure why he would think Bernanke resigning and giving the (possibly) new administration a clean slate is talked about as if it’s a bad thing.
The second page of the article goes through Bernanke’s qualifications and background, which is fine, because the dude has a resume, no doubt. Then Gasparino goes on to say that attacks on the Fed are fodder that allows the Tea Party to spread, but I agree with this only in the sense that the Tea Party shouldn’t have a monopoly on critiquing an organization with such dangerous policy tools. Then he moves on to the idea of accountability, citing Mike Pence’s recently proposed legislation to curb the Fed’s powers, and accountability doesn’t sound like a bad thing either. He closes with this:
My guess is that Republicans will like what they hear: That the president’s economic policies are failing, and that we need fiscal stimulus such as extending the Bush-era tax rates. But what’s happening to Bernanke now isn’t accountability, it’s a feeding frenzy. And for the good of the country, it should stop.
I’m leaving the tax issue out of this, because that is an entirely different inferno. But – is the thesis OMG STOP MOCKING THE BEARD, YOU RABBLE-ROUSERS ARE DRIVING CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM THAT MIGHT LIMIT HIS AUTHORITY? I mean, you can’t even say we didn’t give him a chance, because there was already QE, and we’ve been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.
Honestly, I think it frightens the people in charge that the average person nowadays not just refuses to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, but that they’ve got a voice on the internets, and maybe here or there in Congress, even. We had pointed criticism during the 1930s in the form of Herbert Lewis Block, for example – and the medium might have changed, but not the message. Internet blog critics and Xtranormal videos aren’t a threat to the Republic. It’s surprising and almost relieving, though, to learn that someone thinks they might, almost, be a check on its power.
wild // Nov 17, 2010 at 4:10 pm
ok I’m only going to post this once here on LOLFED, yes there is another Utubed explaination of economics…of which I caught over at alphasomething the other day. the guys name is Damon Vrabel and here is his website, its not as funny as the bears video, and he doesn’t seem to have T-shirt sales yet…instead, he explains stuff RIGHTLY I think.
wild;)
wild // Nov 17, 2010 at 4:11 pm
oops heres the site url http://csper.org/bio.html
linnen // Nov 17, 2010 at 11:53 pm
“…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 scorn [sic]?
A) Scorn of teh “Serious People” who constantly get things wrong? Or is it the scorn of the shrill, like Krugman, and everyone else? And
B) How did this fellow miss Greenspan?
lavacake // Nov 18, 2010 at 11:15 am
Funny. They’re freaking out that there’s people willing to explain in layman’s terms what the Fed is doing so that those in the populace, who are willing to pay attention, understand the “mysterious” ways of the Fed. And realize the Fed Chairman is full of crap. After all, you can’t easily steal money from an educated population; they start making a fuss so that even the politicians have to appear concerned. We’re unpatriotic if we don’t allow the government to give Goldman Sachs billions more dollars.
mr3 // Nov 19, 2010 at 7:46 pm
I saw that when it came out. Gasparino is just another soulless drone of a partisan machine. This one early comment sums his angle up: ” once considered a sage for saving the banking system during the 2008 bank meltdown,”. I wouldn’t have been able to stop laughing at that if I hadn’t heard the joke parroted n times before. The rest of his article removes any doubt that he shares the opinion and then some. I couldn’t stay my typing hand from their comments section. If people want to sell their souls for an agenda that’s fine, just don’t talk it up like it has any relation to truth and expect not to get called out.
When someone takes a popular claim or set of views at face value, with no effort to question the probable political intent behind it, and even worse parrots the thing like it’s a fact–effectively spreading misinformation–they deserve to get called out for what they are.
The fact is, no one knows what the effects that really count–the long term effects–of the bailouts or current policies in general are. Yet. No one knows what the effects of removing the penalty of careless, reckless, moral-less business policy from big business is. Yet. Worse, no one knows what the real effect of the government’s policies as a whole–the notion of borrowing and spending your way out of a depression–in reaction to the depression are. Yet. We could have easily dodged a level 2 earthquake of a financial collapse via bailouts while promoting an inevitable level 5 one in five years when our debt and money games catch up to us. That theory is just as sound as any other I’ve heard paraded around as truth.
But that’s not what people who play partisan games say. People for months have been bragging about the corporate paybacks of bailout money to the government and current policy in general as though the short term results are some kind of meaningful partisan trophy about policy. People even go on now about how the deficit is being cut, if you can believe that.
The idea as a whole of raising short term results like those over your head like a trophy is about as absurd as it is ignorant…if not disingenuous. The only thing more sad is how time will likely make it obvious.
The Federal Reserve Plunders America - Hope to Prosper // Nov 19, 2010 at 10:16 pm
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