Excuse Me While I Rant On Bernanke

Fed Debates New Role: Bubble Fighter (WSJ) “Not so long ago, Federal Reserve officials were confident they knew what to do when they saw bubbles building in prices of stocks, houses or other assets: Nothing. Now, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke faces a confirmation hearing Thursday on a second four-year term, he and others at the central bank are rethinking the hands-off approach they've followed over the past decade. On the heels of a burst housing-and-credit bubble, Mr. Bernanke now calls financial booms "perhaps the most difficult problem for monetary policy this decade."

Excuse me while I rant….

Um, dear, dear, dear Mr. Bernanke. Could it be that the deregulation of tried and true market methods like:

• Removing naked short selling rules, to remove the necessity of covering your shorts - along with other important market regulations which YOU removed in 2004 and 2007, and which allowed bear raiding of perfectly good companies, as well as a risky derivatives markets
• the Mark 2 Market accounting schemes,
• the government and banking industry sanction for the creation of new and risky loans for homes, and the creation of “no matter your credit!” as well as “just state your income – no proof required!” rules
• that were further complicated by new and risky derivatives that go BUST the minute something happens to even ONE of the units within the derivative (in this case ONE single mortgage housed inside a derivative comprised of 100 mortgages, goes belly up) which in turn causes said derivative to instantly become a junk bond due to those very same M2M accounting schemes,
• along with the creation of insurance products (CDS's) that aren’t called insurance products for the express purpose of avoiding insurance regulation rules of those VERY SAME INSURANCE PRODUCTS (that aren’t really insurance) that could maybe….. possibly….. perchance… be the problem?

While we are at it, MR. Bernanke, why not mention the facts that soon after you accepted the position of Fed Chairman:

• YOU stopped the rate increases that were designed to slow an expanding bubble.
• You also well understand that the repeal of Glass-Steagall opened the door to the financial bubble. (After all, you are a “Depression expert”, are you not?)
• That YOU know that the Commodity and Futures Modernization Act opened the door for commodity bubbles. AND THAT YOU DID NOTHING TO FIX ANY OF THOSE ISSUES, KNOWINGLY and COMPLICITLY?
• And at the risk of being repetitive you certainly ought to know that forcing banks to make sub-prime loans is not healthy, for the bank or for the home-buyer.
• If YOU are such an expert on the Depression, the mark-to-market rules have got to be ringing in your ears….as well as the dismantling of uptick rules, unless of course you are as adept at lying to yourself as you are to the American people, the president’s, the world and the Hill.
• YOU knew banks were selling CDS derivatives with a vengeance. YOU are well aware of the whole mess and YOU did nothing…except of course help your buddies at Goldman get their money out of AIG.

In other words dear Mr. Banker Bernanke sir, couldn’t it be YOU, along with all your redistributive (from our pocket to their own), tax stealing, loss publicizing, gain privatizing buddies at all the chop shops on Wall Street (all of whom are right there alongside you) that are the major problem? YOU who STOLE so very many trillions out of the pockets of unsuspecting citizens in the largest “transfer of wealth” event in the history of transfers of wealth? Yep. You betcha!

Honestly Mr. Bernanke - Do you truly believe that we the people are so stupid that we don’t understand what is going on? That we aren’t already about 99.9% certain that it is YOU and YOUR BUDDIES Geithner and your best bud Larry Summers (whom you so adeptly quote today and who is so wrapped up in Citibank it isn’t even funny, as well as the mess at Harvard, the muni bonds and so much else) who orchestrated this whole mess to begin with?

As you blithely sit before the Senate Committee, while all of you in this administration hold our feet to the fire, may God judge you severely for your complicit greed and avarice.

While you are leaving WE THE PEOPLE afraid to make a move in our companies and in our personal lives for what is sure to be coming down the pike tomorrow, in the forms of new banking regulations that are so far reaching as to be nothing but money guzzling big government; not to mention all the other ways we face uncertainty in our businesses and our lives, i.e. new taxes, fees, healthcare insurance, cap and trade or the signing of the Copenhagen treaty (whichever comes first) that we are facing because of your collective efforts to steal our wealth, I simply cannot understand how you live with yourself. Do you honestly believe that we can just freely go ahead and participate in the free market at this time? While you boss is out there doing a “JOBS Summit” with EXACTLY TWO CEO’s in attendance? Really? Do you think we can recover this economy and recapture our wealth in an environment as obviously greedy as this one?

NO! We can’t Because YOU WON’T LET US!

Stop messing with the system so that your buddies at Goldman Sachs can manipulate the markets and all will soon return to normal! LEAVE US ALONE TO FIX IT! The people can fix themselves if you and all your cronies will get the heck out of the way!

You sir, need to go. Not only do you need to go out of office, you need to go to STRAIGHT TO JAIL! Shame on YOU!

Bunning agrees with me….Bunning Statement on Bernanke: ‘You Are the Definition of a Moral Hazard’ A MUST Read/MUST Disseminate Article “It’s highly unusual for us to find a lawmaker’s statement at a hearing to be particularly informative, even rarer for it to be entertaining. At Senate Banking Committee hearings, Sen. Jim Bunning has at times proved the exception on the latter. The Kentucky Republican has firmly staked out his spot on the field as the primary attack dog against the Federal Reserve, its leadership and much of how it operates.
We’ll leave you to grade his statement for content at today’s confirmation hearing for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. But we’ll gladly give him an A for effort. He’s got zinger after zinger, a citation from prior hearings and even a reference to his baseball career (before he became a Hall of Famer). Some members of his party have tried to quietly nudge Sen. Bunning out of office — he won’t run for reelection next year — so this was his last opportunity to oppose a Fed chairman’s nomination. As a sort of parting gift to him, and to you, we offer his full statement from today’s hearing, as prepared for delivery. (Just remember that one of the leading candidates to replace him is Rand Paul, the son of Texas Republican Ron Paul, the House’s leading Fed hater.)”….

Text of the statements are included in this article.
Here is the opening salvo: “Four years ago when you came before the Senate for confirmation to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I was the only Senator to vote against you. In fact, I was the only Senator to even raise serious concerns about you. I opposed you because I knew you would continue the legacy of Alan Greenspan, and I was right. But I did not know how right I would be and could not begin to imagine how wrong you would be in the following four years.” It gets better from there! Read it, you will enjoy it!

SONG THAT SAYS EXACTLY THIS. Hat Tip Cheryl. It is perfect!

Everyone – CALL TODAY and SAY NO TO BERNANKE! 4 more years of him and we may as well throw in the towel.

Related - Exclusive: Republican To Place Additional Hold On Bernanke In Senate Banking Committee “As Ben Bernanke’s confirmation hearing begins in the Senate Banking Committee, a source tells FDL News that one Senate staffer and an outside source confirmed to him that at least one Republican on the committee will also place a hold on the Federal Reserve chairman, throwing the process into potential turmoil and giving Chris Dodd a difficult series of choices to make. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of his work behind the scenes on the Bernanke confirmation, told me that two separate sources assured him that the Republican hold would be made public after today’s hearing. One staffer said that two Republicans would place the hold, while the other said it would just be one. The source said that the trans-partisan nature of opposition to Bernanke, with a conservative Republican and a socialist independent uniting to block the appointment, shows the intensity of the feelings on the issue. “It’s great to see everyone come together – Democrats, Republicans, progressives and libertarians, against this Federal Reserve, which is not federal, and not a reserve, just a group printing money and giving it to their buddies,” the source said” Woo HOO!
Bernanke defends his Federal Reserve record Oh just gag me!

GRRRRR - Goldman Takes Offensive on Pay “Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc.—known for its outsize profits and unapologetically handsome pay packages to go with them—has begun meeting with major investors in an effort to ward off an investor backlash over its record compensation pool. The private discussions are a first for Goldman, several shareholders said, as the Wall Street firm finds its self on the defensive over its pay, where employees are on track to earn an average of more than $700,000 apiece this year. The meetings are expected to last several more weeks and come as shareholders are filing proposals aimed at restricting pay ..."