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(snip) Sen. Lindsey Graham believes his fellow South Carolina Republican's verdict is too harsh. He plans to vote to confirm Bernanke, who just turned 56. “I remember what it was like in September 2008 when the stock market went down a thousand points, and we had one failure after another of major financial institutions,” Graham told McClatchy. “Bernanke and some others came up with a game plan to save us from another Great Depression,” Graham said. “I think he's been a pretty steady hand at the tiller.” DeMint also blasts Bernanke on the $700 billion financial bailout bill pushed by...

The Treasury announced Thursday it was removing the caps that limited the amount of available capital to the companies to $200 billion each.

Pity Ben Bernanke. The guy was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year and the reaction rivaled fish sticks in the enthusiasm category. Old Ben might well be the guy of 2009, but few know who he is or understand what he does. Being chairman of the Federal Reserve may have advantages, but public visibility is not among them. Here’s all you need to know: After being honored by Time, Oprah did not call Ben. When you think about people of the year, the list is short. Perhaps, Lady Gaga, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ... maybe the late U.S. Sen....

Go ahead folks - tell me how we can simply ignore this. How we can pretend that the outstanding debt does not have to come back down to reasonable levels. That these levels are "reasonable" - and that these rates of growth are "reasonable." This is the "magic of compounding" writ large - and in a fashion that is going to inflict severe pain on our population - and the longer we wait to deal with it, the worse it will be. Bernanke, who was at The Fed during Greenspan's time there, should have used his "education" - his claimed...

Bernake: If declines in the dollar and increases in commodity prices were creating upward pressures on consumer prices and causing expectations of future inflation to rise, those developments would be taken extremely seriously by the Committee and would have to be balanced against the high rate of unemployment that you posit in your hypothetical. Luskin: This is no hypothetical -- it's happening right now. We have a 10% unemployment rate, the dollar is falling, gold is a week or two off all-time highs, and oil prices have more than doubled this year. So why is the Fed running the easiest...

Helicopter Ben Bernanke passed his reconfirmation vote in the Senate Banking Committee this week. But he passed by 16 to 7. Most of the Republicans voted against Bernanke, as did one Democrat, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The reconfirmation now goes to the floor of the Senate, where it’s going to be held up for a while. (Sen. Jim DeMint and others are insisting that a vote on the Government Accounting Office’s audit of the Fed occur first.) But when the final vote happens, I think Bernanke could be in trouble. Mirroring the Banking Committee vote, most of the 40...

Six Republicans and one Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee voted Thursday against Ben Bernanke’s nomination to a second four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve — signaling to some Fed watchers that President Barack Obama’s pick could be in more trouble than previously thought. “It’s not the foregone conclusion it was a couple of weeks ago,” said Brian Gardner, a bank analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke wins the Time Magazine "Person of the Year" for 2009? You've got to be kidding me! Who is the runner-up, Bernie Madoff? Ben Bernanke's being named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" has got to be right up their with President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and Al Gore's Oscar award for his phony global warming charade. Bernanke joins other "laudable luminaries", such as Joseph Stalin (twice, in 1939 & 1942), and Adolf Hitler in 1938. Time must use the liberal grading method to determine their winners

Vote passes 16 to 7. Jeff Merkley breaks ranks with the Majority and deserves the praise of those 79% who believe Bernanke should be fired. We will shortly analyze why Senator Corker's real estate interests may have been quite a conflict of interest in his vote. The following from a staffer: "Bunning and Vitter claimed that the Fed sent AIG-related documents to Fed-friendly staffers on the committee, and those staffers wouldn’t share them with all Senators on the committee. They requested a delay until all Senators could see them. Dodd agreed that these documents should be shared, but wouldn’t delay...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made runner-up as Time Magazine's person of the year, losing out to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. In a glowing profile, Time says Pelosi has "consolidated more power than any other Speaker in modern history." In an interview with reporters in the Capitol today, Pelosi outlined what is in fact an astonishingly long list of accomplishments this year, from a hair-raising bank rescue to the largest fiscal stimulus in U.S. history, to a climate change bill to health care legislation and millions of acres of wilderness, food safety, labor legislation and other major bills that have gotten...

One of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's biggest critics said that he deserves Time magazine's "Person of the Year" award bestowed to him on Wednesday. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), one of Bernanke's greatest critic, said that the award is fitting because Bernanke is the "most powerful man in the world." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said that Paul had admitted off camera that Bernanke deserved the award because of his economic power. Paul replied "He is. He is the most powerful man in the world. I believe a case can be made for that... He controls the supply of money, which is...

No sooner did Jeff Merkley announce his opposition to Bernanke ahead of tomorrow's reconfirmation farce/hearing, than key Republican Senator John McCain said that he was leaning against voting for the the Chairman. McCain said he would favor either former Fed Chief (and apparently only sane economist in the Administration) Paul Volcker, or ex-Treasury official, and creator of negative implied interest rates, John Taylor. Some more from Dow Jones: McCain joins at least two other Republicans who plan to oppose Bernanke's renomination. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) has also said he opposes Bernanke's renomination.Despite this, Bernanke is widely expected to be...

The National Inflation Association today named Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke 'Villain of the Year 2009'. Although the mainstream media is widely praising Bernanke for preventing the next Great Depression, all Bernanke has done is create unprecedented amounts of inflation in unprecedented ways. When it costs $20 for a gallon of milk in a few years, Americans will have nobody to thank more than Bernanke. While Bernanke believes the artificial excesses of the past decade to be normality, NIA believes normality would be going through a much needed recession in order to correct the imbalances that Bernanke made worse in...

Dear Chairman, Congratulations on Time's Top Tick of your career. With a 79% disapproval rating, you are now one of the lest deserving Men of the Year.

Speaker Pelosi named finalist for Time magazine 'Person of the Year' By Jordan Fabian - 12/14/09 05:21 PM ET House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is among the seven finalists chosen for Time magazine's annual "Person of the Year," according to media reports on Monday. Other finalists in the realm of politics include last year's winner President Barack Obama, Afghanistan commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. "Look, she's the first woman Speaker of the House. She's the strongest Speaker of the House in decades," Time managing editor Richard Stengel said of Pelosi on NBC's "Today" show. "She...

Beginning Monday, the "Today" will begin three days of "Person of the Year" coverage with Time magazine's announcement set for Wednesday's show. Time managing editor Richard Stengel will discuss this year's top candidates and the selection process. On Wednesday, Stengel will reveal the 2009 Person of the Year.

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A bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office, talking about the economy. He doesn't have a commanding presence. He isn't a mesmerizing speaker. He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices. His arguments aren't partisan or ideological; they're methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesn't know something, he doesn't bluster or bluff. He's professorial, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as a professor. He is not, in other words, a typical Beltway...

How Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke are destroying the dollar — and perhaps ushering in the amero First under the Bush Administration and even more so under President Obama, the federal government has been seizing power and spending money as it hasn’t done since World War II. But as bold as the Executive Branch has been during this financial crisis, the innovations of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke have been literally unprecedented. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that before Obama leaves office, Americans will be using a new currency. Bush and Obama have engaged in record peacetime deficit spending; so too...

Stagflation, the worst of both worlds (anemic economic growth and high inflation) brings back less than fond memories of the 1970's, along with the misery index, which is calculated adding the inflation rate to the unemployment rate. Until the 1960's, Keynesian economists had thought that those two economic events couldn't happen at the same time.

Ben Bernanke is widely expected to win Senate approval for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman, but opponents are hoping to use the debate on his nomination to curtail his autonomy at the central bank. The Senate Banking Committee is poised to clear Mr. Bernanke's nomination on Thursday, sending it to the full Senate for a vote. Several lawmakers plan to use the proceedings to gain momentum for a bill that aims to subject the Fed's monetary-policy making to congressional audits. The measure, crafted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), mirrors one written by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas)...

Bunning Q&A summary: more Mutual Assured Destruction, more of the same Racketeering that we have all grown to love and respect from the Federal Reserve, more obfuscations, more Colonel Jessup bullshit (aka "You can't handle the truth"). With Bernanke's reconfirmation vote coming on Thursday, all Senators should read the latest garbled and encrypted pamphlet from the Fed as to why nobody in America is smart or relevant enough to have an understanding of the key items that determine US monetary policy (except for Goldman Sachs and its alumni, of course). Also, we are happy to announce that the questions proposed...

Leaders are considering a hike of roughly $300 billion to the nation's $12.1 trillion deficit, though the final figure has not been nailed down, congressional aides said on condition of anonymity. Democratic leaders had previously hoped to raise the limit by at least $1.8 trillion, enough to take care of the government's debt needs through the November 2010 congressional elections. What was your first hint the former $1.8 trillion increase attempt was a bad idea? Perhaps this? Or was it China buying a literal zero of Treasury debt in October? Or was it the TIC report this morning (which I'm...

Last week Meredith Whitney declared that the government is out of bullets, and now Alan Greenspan is saying the same thing about his old place of employment, The Fed. Reuters: The U.S. Federal Reserve has done all it can do to reduce unemployment and needs to worry more about the risk of inflation from the stimulus it poured into the economy, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Sunday. "I think the Fed has done an extraordinary job and it's done a huge amount (to bolster employment). There's just so much monetary policy and the central bank can do. And...

It's bad business for Obama's party to reward him for rewarding Wall Street shills ___ Washington's favorite term these days is "moral hazard." Though this buzzphrase may seem like a complex and even intimidating idea, most of us, whether consciously or not, understand the principle because it's basic common sense. But financial moral hazard is only half the story. The other half is political moral hazard -- the mother of all other moral hazards. Consider, for instance, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. He's the top regulator who not only sowed financial moral hazard with the Fed's post-meltdown bailouts but openly...

... I don’t think many people grasp just how much job creation we need to climb out of the hole we’re in. You can’t just look at the eight million jobs that America has lost since the recession began, because the nation needs to keep adding jobs — more than 100,000 a month — to keep up with a growing population. And that means that we need really big job gains, month after month, if we want to see America return to anything that feels like full employment. How big? My back of the envelope calculation says that we need...

Interest rate guru and uber inflation hawk Jim Grant lays out a message in the Wall Street Journal to Ben Bernanke that's more chilling than anything Jim Bunning or Ron Paul have ever said to the Fed chief: Ben S. Bernanke doesn't know how lucky he is. Tongue-lashings from Bernie Sanders, the populist senator from Vermont, are one thing. The hangman's noose is another. Section 19 of this country's founding monetary legislation, the Coinage Act of 1792, prescribed the death penalty for any official who fraudulently debased the people's money. Was the massive printing of dollar bills to lift Wall...

All it took was for Chairman Ben to open his mouth. The rest is "lift every offer" history. And in other troubling news for the Chairman, Senator Jeff Markley (D-OR), who is on the Senate Banking Committee, joins those on the fence regarding Bernanke's renomination: "I am still wrestling with that appointment." Judging by his muted endorsement of Ben, we assume the senator is not long gold just yet. VIDEO AT SITE

On Saturday, joined by hundreds of friends, family and colleagues on a snowy December day in Yonkers, NY, we celebrated the life of Mark Pittman. Readers of The IRA who wish to express their thanks to Mark and show support for his family may make contributions to the Pittman Children’s College Fund, c/o Dr. William Karesh, 30B Pondview Road, Rye, NY 10580. Bob Ivry from Bloomberg News gave a remembrance of Mark, including reading the letter that his daughter Maggie Pittman posted on zerohedge to dispel rumors that her dad might have been murdered. Some members of the zerohedge family...

I hadn't given much hope that any Senator would have the intestinal fortitude to ask Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke any tough questions during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Banking Committee. Bernanke, who succeeded Alan Greenspan, was originally appointed by George W. Bush, and was recently reappointed to a second term by President Barack Obama. I'm happy to see that Senator Jim DeMint courageously carved Bernanke up while still being a perfect Southern gentleman (see video below from hearings).

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday voiced his opposition to legislation calling for regular audits of the Fed’s monetary policies, but 79% of Americans think auditing the Fed is a good idea. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just seven percent (7%) of adults oppose auditing the Federal Reserve and making those results available to the public. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure. The new findings mark a four-point increase in support for auditing the Fed from July. The audit - to be conducted by the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative agency - was first...

On the occasion of Ben Bernanke's bid to keep his job, Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute rips into the Fed governor, arguing that he's only getting to keep his job because he's one of the good boys on the inside. Video at site

Senator pledges to hold nomination until the Senate votes on the Fed Audit WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, announced this morning that he will oppose the nomination of Ben Bernanke to serve a second term as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Senator DeMint made the announcement after Bernanke's confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, and pledged to object to floor consideration of the nomination until the Senate votes on S. 604, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009. "Ben Bernanke is an intelligent and well-intended public...

Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke, who appears at a confirmation hearing Thursday for a second term, is a renowned expert on the Great Depression of the 1930s and is driven to avoid a repeat of such devastation.

Video interview of Gerald Celente about why Bernanke should not be reconfirmed.

COLUMBIA. – South Carolina junior Senator Jim DeMint announced Thursday he will oppose the nomination of Ben Bernanke to serve a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. DeMint said he would also block consideration of the nomination on the Senate floor until lawmakers vote on their version of a House bill introduced by Texas Congressman Ron Paul that would require an audit of the Federal Reserve. The House bill has more than 300 co-sponsors. The Senate version of the legislation sponsored by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has more than 30 co-sponsors and would allow the Government Accountability Office...

Regulation: When Fed chief Ben Bernanke sat before the Senate on Thursday, he was blamed for everything but the Afghan War. Truth is, Bernanke may have kept the U.S. from falling into a Depression. We're not Bernanke groupies or anything. He's made some mistakes. But the fact is, he is the best person for the job today, and much better than anyone President Obama might come up with. Bernanke is already preparing what he calls an "exit strategy" for the withdrawal of the extraordinary stimulus the central bank has provided the economy since the fiscal crisis began in mid-2008 —...

Republican Senator Jim DeMint, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said on Thursday he would oppose Ben Bernanke's nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve Chairman. "Americans want a new Fed chairman who is willing to provide transparency into the Fed's actions, who is willing to accept responsibility for the Fed's mistakes, and who is willing to support true monetary reform that guarantees the soundness of our money," DeMint said in a statement.

“We must take care that the Federal Reserve remains effective and independent,” Amid tough but generally respectful questioning, most senators appeared ready to support Mr Bernanke’s renomination, but many voiced deep concerns about the Fed as an institution and challenged the chairman’s views as to the roles it should play in the future.

With a whole lot of posturing in the Senate today, long-winded monologues, and propaganda, there was little actual coherent Q&A with the Chairman. Which is why the segment below with Senator DeMint (courtesy of Austrian Filter), is quite valuable, as the South Carolina Republican asks so many of the right questions which his colleagues seem to believe they know the answer to (hint: you don't). Bernanke's responses, of course, leave much to be desired, but at least he is on the record with his arrogant evasiveness. Video at site

U.S. Senator Jim Bunning delivers his statement at the Senate Banking Committee explaining why he will oppose the nomination of Ben Bernanke to serve a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Ben S. Bernanke used a hearing for his reconfirmation as Federal Reserve chairman on Thursday to express concern about legislation that would put the Fed on a tighter leash and let Congress “second-guess” its decisions. Mr. Bernanke’s chief concern was a proposal by Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, to “audit the Fed.” The amendment to the House of Representative’s bill overhauling financial regulation would submit the Fed to audits of its decisions concerning monetary policy. “To be very, very clear, I in no way object to — in fact I welcome — transparency about the Fed’s activities and the...

If you think Ben Bernanke's confirmation hearing went smoothly today, think again. Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) lays into Bernanke with furor over the subprime crisis. Click to watch

Watch it live without newly Comcastic interruption here: http://banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.LiveStream

You want to do something about jobs? Well, considering a different Fed Chairman might be a good place to start. Nothing would more clearly display the inability of our leaders to deal with the disastrous state of our economy than easily reconfirming Ben Bernanke for another round at the Fed on the same day that they hold a "job summit" in a harebrained attempt to try to figure out how to create jobs in this country. So far in his tenure, Chairman Bernanke has already told us that housing prices won't go down, the subprime market will be "contained", unemployment...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (November 29th Washington Post) does not want us to know any of the details of the Fed's secret operations. This position is not surprising and has been typical of all central bank chairmen. Bernanke's stated goal in his editorial is "To design a system of financial oversight..." that will "provide a robust framework for preventing future crises." During its 96 years of existence, the Federal Reserve has played havoc with our economy and brought great suffering to millions through unemployment and price escalation. In addition, it has achieved what only a central bank can: a...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who will appear for his Senate confirmation tomorrow, after being appointed to serve a second term by President Obama, should be asked some tough questions regarding his track record of wrong economic assessments, actions, and predictions. You'll see Ben Bernanke in the video below, in his own words, being wrong time after time in the years leading up to the housing bubble bursting, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, unemployment and the overall state of the economy...

I have written two Tickers in recent days in which I put forward what I believe is a clear and convincing, if lengthy, case that Bernanke simply can't be justified for re-confirmation - So Bernanke, You Want To Be Reconfirmed? and The Black Hats Strike Back. But today, on the eve of Bernanke's reconfirmation hearing in the Senate Banking Committee, I want to focus on one and only one thing - The Fed's basic mandate: The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit...

Monetary Policy and Structural Reform of the Japanese Economy --Speech given by Eiko Shinotsuka, Member of the Policy Board of the Bank of Japan, at the Meeting on Economic and Financial Matters in Nagano on February 4, 2000 April 25, 2000 Bank of Japan [Contents] I. Introduction II. The Zero Interest Rate Policy A. What Is a Zero Interest Rate Policy? B. What Does the Phrase "Until Deflationary Concern Has Been Dispelled" Mean? C. Personal View on the Zero Interest Rate Policy III. Structural Reform of the Japanese Economy A. Information Technology Revolution B. Employment Problems I. Introduction1 It is...

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's warning that further regulation would "impair" the economy is a "hoax," according to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Responding to Bernanke's op-ed in The Washington Post this past weekend, in which the Federal Reserve chairman said that Paul's bill to audit the Fed would harm the U.S. economy, the Texas congressman accused Bernanke of dodging responsibility for his role in causing the recession. "He claims that they're rescuing, and making things better. But he takes no responsibility for causing all the problems," Paul said during an appearance on the Fox Business Network. "So I think it's a...