This man has been wrong about EVERYTHING! Fuck him and horse he rode in on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INmqvibv4UUFrom
http://market-ticker.org/archives/1671-The-Black-Hats-Strike-Back-Bernanke.html">Market Ticker:
...snip...
You "arrested" the crisis through lies, chicanery and papering over the truth of insolvency. Not one step has been taken by The Fed since the inception of the crisis to address the root causes of the collapse, which are:
- Excessive leverage - specifically, dodges and cheats on reserve ratios and Tier Capital, including but not limited to Sweep Accounts (first put in place by Greenspan), off-balance-sheet vehicles (Citibank alone has nearly a trillion dollars of alleged "assets" hidden in them) and advocacy of mark-to-myth rather than a strict standard of mark-to-market.
- Shifting of apparent risk via derivatives purchased and sold without proof of ability to pay in the event of default. This was the proximate cause of the near-collapse of virtually all of the major banks in this country. While you did not have the authority to prohibit AIG (and others) from transacting in these instruments without sufficient capital to pay dollar-for-dollar of exposure, you did have the authority to prevent banks under your regulatory umbrella from transacting in them and counting them as valid "hedges" against other positions. You willfully and intentionally failed to do so, and still are willfully and intentionally failing to exercise your existing regulatory power to demand that each and every derivative be either with a counterparty that is proven to be able to pay or is disregarded as being "money good" by the bank under your jurisdiction.
The right reform for the Fed
By Ben Bernanke
Sunday, November 29, 2009
For many Americans, the financial crisis, and the recession it spawned, have been devastating -- jobs, homes, savings lost. Understandably, many people are calling for change. Yet change needs to be about creating a system that works better, not just differently. As a nation, our challenge is to design a system of financial oversight that will embody the lessons of the past two years and provide a robust framework for preventing future crises and the economic damage they cause.
These matters are complex, and Congress is still in the midst of considering how best to reform financial regulation. I am concerned, however, that a number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions. Notably, some leading proposals in the Senate would strip the Fed of all its bank regulatory powers. And a House committee recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence. These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States. The Fed played a major part in arresting the crisis, and we should be seeking to preserve, not degrade, the institution's ability to foster financial stability and to promote economic recovery without inflation.
The proposed measures are at least in part the product of public anger over the financial crisis and the government's response, particularly the rescues of some individual financial firms. The government's actions to avoid financial collapse last fall -- as distasteful and unfair as some undoubtedly were -- were unfortunately necessary to prevent a global economic catastrophe that could have rivaled the Great Depression in length and severity, with profound consequences for our economy and society. (I know something about this, having spent my career prior to public service studying these issues.) My colleagues at the Federal Reserve and I were determined not to allow that to happen.
Moreover, looking to the future, we strongly support measures -- including the development of a special bankruptcy regime for financial firms whose disorderly failure would threaten the integrity of the financial system -- to ensure that ad hoc interventions of the type we were forced to use last fall never happen again. Adopting such a resolution regime, together with tougher oversight of large, complex financial firms, would make clear that no institution is "too big to fail" -- while ensuring that the costs of failure are borne by owners, managers, creditors and the financial services industry, not by taxpayers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/27/AR2009112702322.html?sub=AR
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