This discussion, from last night's PBS Newshour, is well worth reading. In the views of Mark Shields, David Brooks, and yours truly, the anger at Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is almost totally misguided. And don't even get me started on the brain-dead, pandering proposals for "auditing" the Federal Reserve, hamstringing it, neutering it, compromising its independence, etc. As Mark Shields says, this is "not one of Congress' finest hours."
JIM LEHRER: David, you mentioned the Fed.P.S. Last night, Jim Lehrer announced some major changes - all for the better, as far as I can tell - in the NewsHour. Lehrer also listed his MacNeil/Lehrer journalism guidelines. Can you imagine if all blogs and news outlets followed these guidelines? Wow.
This is called a segue...
JIM LEHRER: ... to Ben Bernanke, the -- the Fed chairman. And the -- the hearings today, they really got -- they got rough with him. That is an un -- that doesn't happen very often to a Fed chairman.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. And that is just terrible.
I mean, the things they got rough with him for, he thought the banking system was more stable -- this was years ago -- more stable than it turned out to be. Fine. So did everybody else. He made mistakes.
Nonetheless, if you look at the history of the last two years, and if you looked at the books that are already being written about it, what do you see? You see Ben Bernanke leading the rebound, getting there early. being extremely aggressive, unprecedentedly aggressive with the Fed, trying to get this economy restarted, and then, with Geithner and with Paulson, really having this open conversation. What are we going to do? What are we going to do?
And they reacted very flexibly and I think very heroically. And I would say, if you -- if you interview people around this city about who is trying to understand what is going on, who has the most developed views, there is nobody in Washington who has as well-developed views as Ben Bernanke. And there's nobody over the past two years who has reacted in as successful a way as Ben Bernanke.
And, so, the piling on, I think, is just outrageous.
JIM LEHRER: Outrageous?
MARK SHIELDS: I think I agree with David for the most part.
JIM LEHRER: You think you agree?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I'm not ready to canonize him. I'm not ready to put him on Mount Rushmore yet.
JIM LEHRER: OK.
MARK SHIELDS: But, I mean, he was concise and he was contrite.
His -- his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, was sort of the Delphic oracle. He would come up there and speak in this sort of -- broken syntax, and it would be, oh, you are so wonderful.
And he's paying -- Ben Bernanke is paying, retroactively, for Alan Greenspan's sins. And so the Congress that -- that actually were supplicant before Alan Greenspan when he was chairman, and totally deferential, now are sort of earning their bones by getting tough with him. I think it is indefensible.
I would like to see the Congress have oversight on where the Congress went wrong. I mean, I haven't had a hearing yet...
JIM LEHRER: Good luck on that.
MARK SHIELDS: Yes. I mean, no, but on the whole banking.
And I think -- I think he's been very candid and very forthcoming. And, you know, I expect him to be -- I expect him to be reconfirmed. He was nominated by a Republican president, nominated again by a Democratic president. So -- but it's not one of Congress' finest hours.
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