Wed 24 Mar 2010
I found the following from Zero Hedge to be very insightful and wanted to share…
After Paul rips Bernanke’s face off with the Chairman’s constant excuse that regulation is the answer to everything, arguing instead that artificially low rates merely send constantly flawed price signals, Bernanke retorts “Well you need some system to set the money supply. I guess you are a gold standard supporter.” At this point Paul gives the most priceless response ever: “I am for the constitution.“
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[Brad Sherman asks] “Bureaucracies hate bad headlines, they’ll often do desperate things behind the scenes to avoid that big headline from breaking. Prudential regulators are going to get bad headlines if a big institution fails, particularly under some circumstances, and if they can prevent that failure, if they can just put it off for six months, their reputations and careers can be saved. Monetary policy, just cutting the interest rate by quarter point can save a troubled institution. So how can we be sure that monetary policy is not influenced by the natural human desire of bank supervisors, to save one or two institutions, for at least long enough for them to move over to another department. How do we make sure that monetary policy does not meet the career needs of bank supervisors?“
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And why does the Fed believe it has any credibility as an uber-regulator when it constantly fails a less than uber-one?
Read the whole piece for more, and they also have embedded YouTube videos of the exchanges.