I caught a little of Bernanke’s speech to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday on the Faux News Channel. Among the more memorable remarks were his discussion of “two things” he learned about the Great Depression from his “academic career”: 1) The Fed can never inflate enough; and 2) There were people who believed the markets could adjust and handle the situation, but “I hope there’s no longer anyone out there who believes this.”
Most of the speech was a sales pitch for a new super central planning agency called the “Systemic Risk Authority.” He must have repeated that phrase a hundred times in order to get us used to it.
Another example of Bernanke’s mind-boggling ignorance (or deceit) was his statement that the Fed has always REACTED to economic crises, but has never had anything at all to do with CAUSING them.
