Bernanke's Silent Power Grab

Ben Bernanke seems so harmless. With his dull, professorial demeanor, I suspect most people view him, insofar as they have any opinion about him whatsoever, as kind of a math-professor-in-chief. The Congress are too stupid to handle any serious financial issues, so we leave those kinds of problems to the math-professor-in-chief. He's nice and apolitical by nature. He doesn't want power. He just wants to do math.

But today there emerged reports that the math-professor-in-chief might be getting a little uppity. He allegedly threatened to go all pulp fiction on one of the world's biggest banking CEOs if he didn't play ball and buy Merrill Lynch without disclosing to his shareholders the risks and the government guarantees. That's a likely violation of securities law, at the behest of the Federal Reserve chairman. Will it even make the evening news? Has Susan Boyle put out an album yet?

After 9/11, George Bush & co. began to implement new policies that didn't resonate too well with civil liberties fans, but he justified them because, "we're at war." This was true, but unfortunately, a war with terror is a war we will likely fight for the rest of my lifetime, and I'd prefer to maintain some civil liberties during my life. Since the fall of 2007, Bernanke has enacted a series of extreme measures, blown up the Fed's balance sheet, and usurped more control for himself than any previous fed chairman had ever before. Some of these measures have been warranted. Had the fed not arrested the flow of money out of money market funds last September, we could have had Armageddon. I applaud him for his calm under those conditions. But this economic war could last a long time, too, and we have to always think about the balance for "emergency action" and personal freedom. Bernanke's actions with BofA, if true, certainly cross that line.

Power goes to people's heads, and Ben Bernanke, for all this avuncular calm, is no different. He is a zealot, no different from Ghandi, Hitler, Stalin, or Caesar. Where he fits on the scale of moral propriety is for others to decide. But we should all be aware that his influence is growing, and he is willing, and increasingly more able, to do "whatever it takes" to accomplish his goals.