This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
How Revisionism Saves Bernanke
Be Jeffrey Snider of Alhambra Investment Partners
How Revisionism Saves Bernanke
A shorter version of my prior post would have exclusively directed to Bernanke’s oped in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal; specifically one passage. If you haven’t heard, the former Fed chair has written a memoir that glorifies his courage and intellectual fortitude in overcoming a historical barrage of criticism (his perspective). Clearly, he feels that was unearned though by count and construction of his latter work a sinking worry on that part has surely set in. As Greenspan, the goal can only be rehabilitation of his reputation by selective highlighting (which, obviously, you wouldn’t need to do if you were confident in your position).
Most of the oped has been sufficiently challenged but I haven’t seen anyone take him at his own word right from the start.
What the Fed can do is two things: First, by mitigating recessions, monetary policy can try to ensure that the economy makes full use of its resources, especially the workforce. High unemployment is a tragedy for the jobless, but it is also costly for taxpayers, investors and anyone interested in the health of the economy.
He goes on to score his own efforts in the years after the recession while conspicuously omitting this first criterion. The performance of monetary policy is at least arguable during the “recovery” (though not especially convincing), but on this count it is inarguable, undeniable and incontrovertible – he failed spectacularly. In other words, if monetary policy can “mitigate recessions” why didn’t it? Bernanke has been given hero status based solely upon the other end, namely what happened in the worst days without ever explaining why there were worst days! Curiously (not really), that point is never answered in his work (not just todays).
If monetary policy was so effective then why did he clearly fail to use it in 2008, because if it was as effective as he claims there never would have been a Great Recession. And if it wasn’t properly deployed because he could not understand and appreciate the full scope of what was coming, then it is useless to be so dependent on fallibility in the first place. His whole claim to such honored glory is based on a lie; that all that counts was what he did after. It is as revisionist as it is constructive in how his legacy should properly be viewed. More than that, it is entirely purposeful about what we should still expect of central banking, central bankers and their ultimate impotence (on full display in 2008, 2011-12 and yet again in 2015).
The US economy, for all the supposed magic of monetary policy, got that “tragedy” of high unemployment anyway – a manifestation that clearly continues in any truly honest assessment of the recovery. Bernanke claimed to be the fastest, most useful gun in the West, so much so that the town neglected basic and personal security, but then he only used it after the black hat (market, in the orthodox view) bad guy pillages the local bank, burns down several saloons and steals all the horses; and still he expects to be treated as a hero, symbolically emptying his revolver only as that bad guy passed beyond range instead riding off into the sunset.
Most Americans can see the spoiling incongruity of his grandeur. He claims, somehow, to defend monetary policy as it supposedly removes and prevents all the really bad downside at the same time the world is still rebuilding from the last one while seriously contemplating the next one. As 2008 proved, timing was never his strong point; as his oped proves, duplicity is.
»
- 10420 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Most Americans can see the spoiling incongruity of his grandeur.
"the spoiling incongruity of his grandeur..."
is that what's in his beard?
you'd think someone would've told him by now.
ick
Didn't Bernanke get cancer? Oops......Blankfein, wrong jew.
>>>> Bernanke : PRISON.
>>>> Bernanke : long, healthy relaxing retirement.
<- Bernanke less than human excrement
<- Bernanke less than animal excrement
Maybe the author didn't get the memo.
He did "mitigate a recession", even though it was only for the .001%'ers.
But, of course, those are the only volks that count.
Some animals are more equal than others.
I think they call them Reptilians.
<<<< Bernanke: Flayed alive and served to Krugman's cat.
<<<< Bernanke: Flayed alive and served to other cats.
Remember shave cat before consumption.
Cats deserve better.
http://purestblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/how_to_prepare_kiwi.gif
I'm waiting for the Schrödinger's reference... somebody. halp.
with the knowledge that if it emerged from the box alive, the cat would be fed a meal of bernankes, it promptly committed suicide. hence, the cat is fully dead in the box, upending a classic theorem in modern physics.
He's applying for sainthood when he should be looking for a new home in a non-extraditing country......
Debating whether Bernanke succeeded at the Fed's official "mission" is like debating whether John Wayne Gacy succeeded at wearing clown makeup.
I love this guy.
Boris is recent watch Bernanke interview and notice Bernanke eyes is black hollow dot. Is this videographic aberation or is because of souless state of Bernanke?
prolly...
Bernanke’s Cockroaches
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/bernankes-cockroaches.html
The idea that Bernanke did a praiseworthy job has been widely debunked. Bernanke continued the “Greenspan put” that stoked speculation all across the credit markets. Every time you read self-serving justifications from the perps of the crisis, visualize cockroaches on a counter.
When the SNAP cards stop working nothing will save the bankers/financiers or their political puppets!
The SNAP cards will never stop working. When the SHTF that's ALL that will work.
recession doesnt happen - the fed is working!
recession happens - we need the fed to fix it!
economy is thriving - thank you fed!
economy is struggling - weather
As exciting as being backstage at a puppet show.
Not puppet, muppet......
Backstage at a Muppett show would be exciting, whereas backstage at a puppet show would be dull. Punch n' Judy vs. the Muppetts.
If Bernanke is a savior. And the greatest human of all Time. Then why do we have Mr. Yellen burping at us ????
because his heavenly mission is complete. And he has been invited through the gates of citadel.
Central Banks exist to enrich the .01% by skimming off the top of the productive economy. In that, Bernanke succeeded brilliantly. One could say he is the best central banker of our generation.
This is the same argument used to defend Bush "We weren't attacked after 9/11...so he defended the US." Ummm...the attacks happened while he was on watch...conveniently overlooked of course.
High unemployement helps boost bank profits
1) Pump up the economy with steroids (loans out of thin air) cause a bubble, people rush to take out counterfeit loans to buy things like houses and real-estate.
2) When it implodes you steal more money with bailouts.
3) You forclose on the entire country when deflation and jobloss hits
4) Profit?
You just got
-Free land
-Free money
-And everyone else lost their job, their house, and probably their dignity.
Banks win.
People lose.
Government doesn't care because its in bed with the banks doing lines of cocaine off the stripers ass (a recently unemployed single mother who now has to exploit her "assets" in order to feed her child).
This is the world you live in ;)
The BS about "full employement" being in everyones interest is bullshit.
The entire economy is a pump and dump scheme
everytime the bank and govt pump and dump free houses,booze, drugs, money, and 18 year old strippers come out of the box for them.
Then they wind the jack in the box up again and again until the spring breaks.
Then they blame it on someone else.
Im not sure which was harder to comprehend.
"I cant believe this is true"
"I cant believe people dont do anything about it"
I think that when we live in a little tiny cardboard box, and are fed only one kind of food, our view of life tends to be very narrow.
Bernanke may think that he is worldly and knowledgable, but my guess that his exposure to the world is very limited... same with them all.
"The Fatal Conceit" was all I could think as I heard him speaking on CNBC yesterday morning.
Thank God I was only listening on XM. Otheriwise, I would need a new tv.
Hey Ben you piece of shit, where is the $16 trillion you handed out to the Corps and Banks?
Here's some more information on the great Bernank:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmPUKy-3OfY&feature=youtu.be
And if you have an hour or so, here's a follow up on the Financial Crisis, and points out more blantant fraud by Wall Street.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2327953844
And the Justice Department prosecuted how many of these cases of fraud ?
None, that's how many
.
Bernanke's a lying sack of shit. Sure they have a policy of "mitigating recessions". But it has everything to do with keeping banks and their owners whole, and nothing to do with unemployment or wages. If the Fed really cared about regular people they would start paying a decent return on savings accounts and stop giving free money to financial institutions. They would be for regulation of derivatives. They would outlaw High Frequency Trading. They would promote a transaction tax. They would end manipulation of precious metals markets and other markets. They would also be vocal opponents of TPP and TTIP, which will lead to more US unemployment and lower wages. The Fed's policies deliberately cause financial repression for the vast majority of the world's inhabitants. Don't expect the liars to admit it.
A tool and a fool, and he brags about it. As bad as MAObama, who unfortunately knows precisely what he is doing: spanking the United States for all of its crimes past, present, and future.
Bernanke sees guillotines, pitchforks and torches in America's future and he's gone into CYA mode.
lets hope for slow and cruel
After seeing the Air France execs yesterday, Ben is having a " this too could be you, or worse" moment.
Hey Ben, go buy some new Nike's, they won't help, but you'll "feel faster."
I hate this fucker, I hate this fucker, I hate this fucker. I will piss on your grave one day Ben you fucker
"Most of the oped has been sufficiently challenged but I haven’t seen anyone take him at his own word right from the start."
So how does revisionism save Bernanke?
Typical Bureaucrat (Keynesian) - the only measure permitted is that which is seen. It's like being the pope - he is infallible...
Tell it to Bastiat!!!
"if monetary policy can 'mitigate recessions' why didn’t it?"
Because it must do so only in theory. Whether it does, in fact, is entirely irrelevant to academic economists and other politicians with inflated egos.
There's a very interesting insight from ancient records of trade showing how little human economics and financial engineering has changed since c.1800BC: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/magazine/the-vcs-of-bc.html
Economists were once again surprised to learn from these records how little they actually know for sure -- a fact plainly obvious to everyone else but themselves.
>In other words, if monetary policy can “mitigate recessions”
>why didn’t it?
Bernanke would say it *did* mitigate it, what we saw *was* mitigated over what it might have been. While there can't be any proof for a claim like that, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, that the Fed's printing $4,000,000,000,000 bought some short term peace at the price of some longer term chaos.
>Bernanke has been given hero status based solely upon the other end,
>namely what happened in the worst days without ever explaining why
>there were worst days!
The 2008 crash was a confluence of a lot of stuff, much of it originating ten to thirty years earlier. You Alhambra guys are pretty smart, I think you can fill most of it in. But then I don't know why you'd make this silly statement. If you're saying that Bernanke is not being straightforward for his role in those bad things to balance his good points, well yeah, sure, ok.
Because he was too stupid to see it coming. It was almost right on top of us when he uttered the quotes: "we don't see a housing bubble" & "the FED doesn't see a recession". They were utterly clueless about what they had wrought so he focuses on his financial-industry-serving solutions as a real manly man.
I'm not a violent guy but would gladly pull the guillotine lever on this cunt Bernanke. I would then kick his head like a football
Economic theory depends on truth. Wall Street is made of small lies, middling lies and outrageous lies; nothing else.
Bernanke refuses to acknowledge all the little people sacrificed to the unlimited greed of his friends and his ilk. ZIRP has produced Zip- a foundation of quicksand, an economy that produces nothing but shuffling paper.
Monetary Policy is too important to be left in the hands of criminal bankers and economists.
Speaking of guillotines, I think Americans are more inclined toward strong rope and a tall oak branch.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-04/and-scene-ben-bernanke-says-more-people-should-have-gone-jail-causing-great-recessio
And Scene: Ben Bernanke Says More People Should Have Gone To Jail For Causing The Great Recession
Bernanke was selected to be the figurehead of the single greatest institution in the world that is built upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks. The EXISTENCE of the Federal Reserve Board, as the American King of Fraud, demonstrates the ways that the application of the principles and methods of organized crime through POLITICAL FUNDING drives vicious spirals of ENFORCING FRAUDS.
It seems IMPOSSIBLE to fix the MAD Money As Debt systems, other than through their own MAD self-destruction. That "We the People" gave away the power to make the public "money" supply to privately controlled banks, which banks could then legally make that public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, as FRAUDS ENFORCED by governments, was due to the persistent and prolonged application of the methods of organized crime through the political processes, which has driven the entire political economy to become criminally insane.
That any banksters superfluously engaged in any particular activities which were still criminal according to the established laws is NOTHING compared to the ways that the entire financial system is based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks. That whole system is based on legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. The whole system is psychotic, because the whole system is based upon fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems.
There would be no significant difference made by scapegoating any particular banksters. The only thing that would be sufficiently significant would be a real, radical revolution to change who has the power to issue the public money supply. Since money is measurement backed by murder, to change the public money supply would require changing the public murder systems that back that up. However, since the public money supply has already been about 99% privatized, while the public murder system has been roughly 75% privatized, it appears to be way too late to fix any of those problems within those established systems.
The EXISTENCE of the Federal Reserve Board symbolically represents the overall globalized institution of DEBT SLAVERY, whose structure automatically and necessarily has driven itself to manifest debt insanities. It is politically impossible within the systems whereby POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCES FRAUDS to fix their own problems. Therefore, it now looks like there is nothing left but to wait and watch, as the debt insanities get worse, faster, and provoke death insanities as their consequence ...
William K. Black's book, "the best way to rob a bank is to own one," was about a time in history when control frauds still resulted in some individuals going to jail. However, in retrospect, nothing was changed, other than the banksters developing their abilities to continue to corrupt governments even more, so that nobody significant would go to jail for the excessively successful frauds that precipitated the 2008 financial crises.
There are no good reasons to believe that enough people would understand enough that MONEY IS MADE BY LAW, but the only connection between human laws and natural laws is the ability to back up lies with violence. Of course, Bernanke was spectacularly wrong in many of this most important predictions. He was selected to become the Fed Chairman because he was the best available professional liar and immaculate hypocrite to take that job.
For general elaboration, see my recent replies under:
Will The Failure Of Central Banking Lead To Global Bloodshed: The French Revolution Case Study
Bernanke kept the established systems going by doubling down on creating "money" out of nothing as debts, which therefore deferred those debts on future generations. Since the debt controls were backed by the death controls, what he was also actually doing was deferring the death controls onto future generations.
By and large, most of the articles on Zero Hedge tend to present relatively superficial views of what is going wrong. The deeper reasons are that civilization has always been controlled by being able to back up lies with violence, which abilities have been pumped up and UP by many orders of magnitude by prodigious progress in physical science, while political science has done nothing more than entrench itself into an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that has applied the progress in physical science through sociopolitical systems based on sophisticated, integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, whose excessive successfulness necessarily drives civilization as a whole to become more psychotic and criminally insane.
The next rounds of financial crises are going to be way worse than the previous events. The established systems of globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threats of force from apes with atomic bombs, are the ways that civilization operates its ENFORCED FRAUDS at the present time. That is operated by people who become socially successful within systems that require them to be the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, as Benanke was when he was Fed Chairman, and appears to still be.
The human species has become its own worst enemy, due to the history of successful warfare being based on backing up deceits with destruction morphing to become successful finance being based on governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks. However, within the established systems of POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS there are no realistic resolutions which are politically possible to really implement.
Natural selection pressures drove human artificial selection systems to become based on deceits and frauds. The entire structure of social pyramid systems is based on being able to back up lies with violence. That has become electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. HOWEVER, none of that ever stops those lies and frauds from still not being true, but rather, those continue to actually be false.
Civilization based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks is a civilization which is based upon deliberately ignoring the principle of the conservation of energy, as well as deliberately misunderstanding the concept of entropy in the most absurdly backward ways. The ways that the financial systems are based upon triumphant organized crime, driving bigger and BIGGER cycles of crises, due the inherently psychotic nature of that kind of social successfulness, is WAY WORSE than the overwhelming vast majority of people appreciate, since they still tend to only be looking at their degree of personal benefits, being derived from living inside of systems which are built on the basis of being able to strip-mine the natural resources of a fresh planet, through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, that enable the privatization of the personal profits, which then feedback through the funding of the political processes, while the socialization of the losses have little influence upon anything.
The overall trajectory is quite tragic. Human beings are high-grading themselves to hell. The political economy is based upon being able to back up lies with violence, in ways which will become more and MOAR PSYCHOTIC. However, it continues to be practically impossible to do anything to change that, because, in each short to medium term increment, being able to continue to back up lies with violence enables the political economy based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS to become more and MOAR CRIMINALLY INSANE.
In my opinion, people like Bernanke have perfected their abilities to remain willfully blind and deliberately ignorant, to the point of criminal negligence, at the least, while possibly there is runaway criminal insanity behind that. The MAD Money As Debt systems operate in ways which demand that those are based upon deliberately ignoring and misunderstanding the laws of nature as much as possible, while simultaneously doing so also with respect to the actual relationships between human laws and natural laws.
The more progress there is in physical science, the more psychotic our political economy actually becomes. The basic problems that civilization have are all due to the short-term successfulness of being able to back up lies with violence driving longer term consequences which get crazier and crazier, in proportion to how successfully was each short to medium term increment of ENFORCING FRAUDS.
Bernanke was merely another cog in that machine. He was another obvious example of a professional liar and immaculate hypocrite, who was selected for the job of Fed Chairman because that was what he was. Therefore, of course, one is not surprised to learn about his comments after he stopped being the Fed Chairman continuing to demonstrate that he is still a professional hypocrite ...
Holy shit!