“The power to determine the quantity of money… is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power… Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes – excusable or not – can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic – this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.”
– Milton Friedman
– Ben Bernanke Just Told A Massive Lie About Milton Friedman (ZeroHedge, Oct 1, 2012):
Submitted by Mike Krieger of Libertyblitzkrieg
Ben Bernanke Just Told A Massive Lie About Milton Friedman And I Can Prove It
Ben Bernanke is so desperate to find support regarding his steal from the poor and give to the 0.01% policies he is now telling blatant lies about famous, dead economists that can’t refute what he says. In this case Milton Friedman. In his Q&A today, The Bernank claimed:
*BERNANKE: MILTON FRIEDMAN WOULD HAVE SUPPORTED WHAT FED DOING
Well I suppose it’s easy to make things up about people that can’t claim otherwise, but he made a big mistake this time. Why? Because Anna Schwartz, who co-wrote the famous work “A Monetary History of the United States” with Milton Friedman in 1963, actually came on the record on several occasions calling out The Bernank and saying there’s no way Friedman would agree. The sad part about this is it seems Bernanke waited until Schwartz died to really start spewing the lies. This guy is not only dangerous he is despicable and increasingly desperate…
Don’t take it from me though, back in October 2008 Anna Schwartz had this to say in the Wall Street Journal:
Ms. Schwartz thinks that our central bankers and our Treasury Department are getting it wrong again.
This is not due to a lack of money available to lend, Ms. Schwartz says, but to a lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay their debts. “The Fed,” she argues, “has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible.”
Rather, “firms that made wrong decisions should fail,” she says bluntly. “You shouldn’t rescue them. And once that’s established as a principle, I think the market recognizes that it makes sense. Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich.” The trouble is, “that’s not the way the world has been going in recent years.”
In 2002, Mr. Bernanke, then a Federal Reserve Board governor, said in a speech in honor of Mr. Friedman’s 90th birthday, “I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”
“This was [his] claim to be worthy of running the Fed,” she says. He was “familiar with history. He knew what had been done.” But perhaps this is actually Mr. Bernanke’s biggest problem. Today’s crisis isn’t a replay of the problem in the 1930s, but our central bankers have responded by using the tools they should have used then. They are fighting the last war. The result, she argues, has been failure. “I don’t see that they’ve achieved what they should have been trying to achieve. So my verdict on this present Fed leadership is that they have not really done their job.”
Full WSJ article here.
Not enough proof for you? Well in tribute to Anna Schwartz after she passed in June of this year, Forbes wrote:
Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, has followed the same path in confronting the current economic crisis, Schwartz charges. Instead of the steady course that the monetarists recommend, the Fed and the Treasury “try to break news on a daily basis and they look for immediate gratification,” she says. “Bernanke is looking for sensations, with new developments every day.”
Yet isn’t Bernanke a disciple of Friedman and Schwartz? He publicly refers to them as mentors, and, thanks to their scientific breakthrough, he has famously declared that “the Great Depression will not happen again.” Bernanke is right about the past, Schwartz says, “but he is fighting the wrong war today; the present crisis has nothing to do with a lack of liquidity.”
Full Forbes article here.
Ben Bernanke, I didn’t think it was possible, but you have hit a new low. History will not be kind to you.