A foolish alliance

6 Responses to A foolish alliance

1. Svend says:

   January 23, 2010 at 1:08 pm

   The banking system, in current form, is a creation of the state. I’d prefer an entirely different system, but as Rummy said “you go to war with the army you have and not the army you want”.

   Without deep reforms (such as splitting commercial banks from investment houses) we won’t have a recovery. In a perfect world, these banks would be allowed to fail and their assets (which are our liabilities) would be auctioned off at fair value. In lieu of that, the systemic risk that these black-holes of capital create is far too dangerous to be left unmolested.

   I do not support Obama’s agenda re: health care and the rest. But the recent noise he has made about the banksters is entirely sensible.
2. John says:

   January 23, 2010 at 3:13 pm

   I completely agree. I was against the bank bailouts for the usual libertarian reasons, but if you’re going to do them, it is best to do them right, and Bernanke has been a competent Fed chair. Anyone Obama replaces him with would not be better than Bernanke in any way, and be considerably worse in other ways. The Fed has its faults, but it has kept inflation stable for the last 30 years, and is probably the part of the Federal govt. that functions best (except maybe the military). Let’s keep it that way.
3. Andrew Stuttaford says:

   January 23, 2010 at 3:38 pm

   Heather, you are, of course, quite right. And, here, making your point (if inadvertently) is Simon Johnson. http://baselinescenario.com/2010/01/23/paul-krugman-for-the-fed/. He’s arguing that Paul Krugman should get the job. Not for the first time, one is left wondering what some of these Republicans think they are doing….
4. Don McArthur says:

   January 23, 2010 at 6:42 pm

   “…all but guarantees a Fed chairman who would be more interventionist on behalf of debtors and consumers…”

   Thank God, eh?

   Hahaha…
5. kurt9 says:

   January 23, 2010 at 11:26 pm

   Any new fed chairman, regardless of personal political conviction, is going to be constrained by the foreign debt holders (Chinese, Japanese) as well as domestic political pressure to prevent inflation from getting out of control. The world’s currencies and economies are too interconnected for the Fed Chairman to do anything too psychotic.
6. Heather Mac Donald says:

   January 25, 2010 at 6:04 am

   Irrelevancy watch: “Still, we can think of current or former presidents of regional Fed banks who have hard money credentials,” writes the Wall Street Journal editorial page today in opposing the Bernanke renomination.
   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704562504575021704013095196.html

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