News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher.
With 250 House members signing on to Rep. Ron Paul’s bill calling for greater congressional oversight of the Federal Reserve, its usually reclusive chairman, Ben Bernanke, has taken to the airwaves to “re-brand” the central bank with appearances on 60 Minutes, PBS and elsewhere in the past week.
“Just because we meet in private to manipulate interest rates and the money supply, and to decide which corporations will get taxpayer bailout dollars, doesn’t mean the Fed is some kind of covert agency, unaccountable to the public, that controls the global economy like a marionette,” said Bernanke, addressing a townhall-style meeting in Kansas City, Missouri.
“The folks at your Federal Reserve are your neighbors, going to the grocery store, taking the kids to little league, teaching Sunday School, and occasionally stepping behind the crimson veil to bet $4.3 trillion of your money on a single spin of the alabaster wheel,” he said.
The Fed chief added that, “most of the secrecy rap against The Fed is just a perception issue.”
To allay suspicion, he said, future meetings to set interest rates will be “as open and transparent as the rules of the ancient order allow. For example, when a new interest rate is fixed, the public will know it in virtual real-time, as white smoke emerges from the chimney of the conclave chamber.”
Critics have complained that pronouncements from The Fed are often written in a manner than leaves too much room for interpretation, so Bernanke said each member of Congress would receive “his own junior version of the cryptogram decoding matrix — a genuine replica of the gold and crystal one used by Fed board members.”
While the records of how much money the Fed has distributed, and to which corporations, will likely remain secret, Bernanke said, “Americans trust The Fed to do the right thing for them even when no one is watching except the all-seeing eye atop the pyramid. Frankly, the mystique just adds to the allure that keeps the curious coming back for more.”
Examiner columnist Scott Ott is editor in chief of ScrappleFace.com, the family-friendly news satire site.
