“Some Will Rob You With A Six-Gun, Some Will Do It With A Fountain Pen”

December 20th, 2009 - by: danny

How is it possible?
Ben Bernancke?
Time’s Person of the Year?

• Senator Bernie Sanders: We Need a Change at the Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve has four main responsibilities: to conduct monetary policy in a way that leads to maximum employment and stable prices; to maintain the safety and soundness of financial institutions; to contain systemic risk in financial markets; and to protect consumers against deceptive and unfair financial products.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has failed in all four of these responsibilities. [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

• Bernie Sanders Calls On Obama, Senate To Pick Another Fed Chair

[snip]

Of Bernanke’s recent Time magazine “person of the year” award released today, Sanders said, “what I find most interesting is that Time Magazine acknowledgesÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ quote ‘Bernanke was as clueless as [Alan] Greenspan about the coming storm. He dismissed warnings of a housing bubble, he insisted that economic fundamentals remain strongÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ in March 2007, he [Bernanke] assured Congress that ‘quote the problems of the problems of the sub-prime market seems likely to remain strong.’

Sanders asked, “does anyone seriously believe that with a record like that, that this should be a man that’s reappointed as chairman of the Fed?”

• Ten Reasons Bernanke Should Hit the Road by Nomi Prins

1) His view of what constitutes “transparency” is dubious.

2) He’s managed to raise more anti-Fed sentiment than any other Fed leader.

3) Bernanke didn’t have a clue or a prevention strategy during the buildup to the second biggest financial crisis in U.S. history.

4) He abetted the notion of too big to fail.

5) He invited investment banks to come under the federal subsidy tent.

6) As far as Main Street, Bernanke’s accuracy is about as bad as Dick Cheney’s with a rifle.

7) He lied about loosening credit.

8) Bernanke said the government shouldn’t “bail out failed investors, as doing so would only encourage excessive risk-taking,” and then went overboard doing it anyway.

9) He doesn’t understand what risk is.

10) He’s taken credit for a job well done, while orchestrating the next crisis. [Read all of it here Ã¢â€ â€™]

• Ben Bernanke is Time’s Person of the Year. Is he doomed?

In picking Ben Bernanke as Person of the Year, Time magazine hopes to do better than the last time it anointed an economic mastermind.

So, Ben Bernanke is Time’s new Person of the Year. Let’s hope it turns out OK.

The last time the august publication honored a national economic mastermind, it was 1933. And things ended badly.

Brig. Gen. Hugh Johnson seemed a good choice at the time. True, he seemed a fan of Mussolini – he distributed the writings of one of the Italian dictator’s fascist economists. But he had also helped set up the World War I draft and the Army’s war procurement from the private sector. An avid New Dealer anxious to root out destructive competition, he was President Roosevelt’s choice to administer the National Recovery Administration. [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

Danny sends the following:

• RED ALERT FROM GREATER EUROPE ANTICIPATION BULLETIN: SPRING OF 2010 WILL BE THE TIPPING POINT

GEAB N °40 is available! Spring 2010 — A new tipping point of the global systemic crisis: When the slip knot around public deficits is going to strangle Western states and their social security systems

LEAP/E2020 believes that the global systemic crisis will experience a new tipping point from Spring 2010. Indeed, at that time, the public finances of the major Western countries are going to become unmanageable, as it will simultaneously become clear that new support measures for the economy are needed because of the failure of the various stimuli in 2009 (1), and that the size of budget deficits preclude any significant new expenditures. [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

• DAVE COHEN: 2009 IS A YEAR WE WILL LIVE TO REGRET

• JAN LUNDBERG: THE FAILURE OF THE COPENHAGEN CIRCUS MEANS IT’S ALL UP TO US TO THINK AND ACT LOCALLY

• PENTAGON’S ROLE IN GLOBAL CLIMATE CATASTROPHE IGNORED

• 7 MORE BANKS IMPLODE RAISING TALLY TO 140 THIS YEAR

• 4 BIG MORTGAGE BACKERS DROWNING IN DEBT

• HEALTH “REFORM” BILL IS NOTHING LESS THAN TERRIFYING

• HOW BANKS PREY ON AND SCREW THE UNEMPLOYED

• INSIDE THE HEART OF DETROIT–AMERICA’S MOST ABANDONED CITY

• MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM CITIBANK — Suspends Foreclosures For 30 DAYS; Foreclosures up: 1.7 million

A Song And A Story Updated For These Times — dissectrix

Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie

If you’ll gather ’round me, children,
A story I will tell
‘Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.

It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.

There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger,
An’ his wife she overheard.

Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.

Then he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.

But a many a starving farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.

Others tell you ’bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand dollar bill.

It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:

Well, you say that I’m an outlaw,
You say that I’m a thief.
Here’s a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

The News Dissector