Much of the mainstream press has played the rising opposition to Senate confirmation of Ben Bernanke as a case of misplaced populist rage. The fact that the opposition within the Senate began with that chamber's left (Bernie Sanders) and right (Jim Bunning) seems to confirm the premise that it's only the fringe that opposes his reappointment as Fed Chairman. The Boston Globe, for example, recently profiled Sanders and his case against Bernanke under the remarkable headline, “Sanders a Growing Force on the Far, Far Left.” (I've always thought of the far, far left as Chairman Mao and Che Guevara. Bernie is a European style social-democrat.)
In fact, when the Senate votes on Bernanke, Sanders will have a lot of company — and he should. Bernanke's high-profile speech to the American Economic Association in Atlanta, January 3, was his latest effort to redeem himself. But it provides ample evidence for why the Senate should deny him a second term.
Bernanke devoted most of a remarkable abstruse speech to a straw man. “Some observers have assigned monetary policy a central role in the crisis,” he said. “Specifically, they claim that excessively easy monetary policy by the Federal Reserve in the first half of the decade helped cause a bubble in house prices in the United States.”
There are such critics, but of course it wasn't cheap money that caused the bubble. It was easy money combined with the complete abdication of the Federal Reserve's role as a regulator that allowed Wall Street to go nuts, creating a financial house of cards. Low interest rates can be good for an economy. The post-World War II boom was built on low interest rates — combined with tight financial regulation so that the low cost of capital would enhance real economic growth and not foment risky speculation.
Bernanke's speech passed up the opportunity to confess any error or personal learning curve. He was appointed to the Fed by President Bush in October 2005, and elevated to chairman in February 2006. During the run-up to the collapse, the Fed possessed ample authority to deal with the abuses that caused the bubble in sub-prime loans. The Fed was specifically tasked with enforcing a 1994 law, the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act, which required all mortgage lenders to use sound underwriting standards, even if they were covered by no other federal regulation. No less than a fellow member of the Fed's Board of Governors, the late Ned Gramlich, an expert in mortgage finance, begged his colleagues to crack down on mortgage abuses, but first Greenspan and then Bernanke refused.
The abusive off-balance sheet maneuvers that led to the financial house of cards were done largely through the holding companies of the biggest Wall Street banks. These are the regulatory responsibility of the Fed — which, under Bernanke, displayed an appalling incuriosity and instead trusted the genius of markets and financial “innovation.” In his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on December 3, Bernanke went through the motions of contrition. “In the area where we had responsibility, the bank holding companies, we should have done more,” he said. “That is a mistake we won't make again.”
But in his Atlanta speech, the closest he came to accepting responsibility was a few lines such as:
Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates.
But he followed this with defensive assertions of the actions that the Fed did take in 2006 and 2007, which proved to be woefully inadequate. Bernanke also contended that the crisis “revealed not only weaknesses in regulators' oversight of financial institutions, but also, more fundamentally, important gaps in the architecture of financial regulation around the world.” But the fact is that the Fed and other regulatory institutions had plenty of power — they just refused to use it.
Bernanke reiterated his call to give the Fed even more power as a kind of super-regulator. But both the Fed's record and its structure as a partly industry-owned hybrid make the Federal Reserve the last agency that should be entrusted with new regulatory powers. Bernanke himself was repeatedly behind the curve in his bland reassurances during 2007 that nothing was seriously amiss with housing markets or the financial system.
So one reason to reject Bernanke for a second term is that he really hasn't learned much from his earlier mistakes. A second, even more compelling, reason is that he refuses to tell Congress who in the private sector has been subsidized by the Fed, subject to what ground rules. Bernanke hides behind the widely-shared premise that Congress should not “politicize” monetary policy.
But the Federal Reserve really has three distinct roles, of which monetary policy — whether to loosen or tighten money generally — is the most straightforward. Arguably, if Congress got into the act, the majority party could pressure the Fed to deliver cheap money to stimulate the economy prior to elections. But that's not what this argument is really about. The Fed's other two responsibilities are regulatory policy and emergency infusions of credit and capital during severe crises — a role sometimes known as “lender of last resort.” In these two areas of the public's business, Congress has every right to demand far greater transparency of the Fed than Bernanke has been willing to deliver.
As Senator Byron Dorgan put it January 7, shortly after announcing his decision to retire after this year:
For the first time in history they said to the big investment banks, you can come and get direct lending from the Federal Reserve Board. We're trying to find out from the Fed, who'd you give the money to, how much money did you give? My point is, what did you do with our money? And the Federal Reserve Board says “none of your business.” Well, I tell you what, it is our business, and I'm not going to let the Bernanke nomination to head the Fed for another term go through until he tells, what did he do with our money, the American people's money.
Six weeks ago, Bernie Sanders was agonizing over whether to try to kill Bernanke's confirmation. He resisted pressure from the White House, and finally announced on December 2 that he was putting a hold on Bernanke's confirmation. Since then, Sanders has been clear that his goal is not to slow down the nomination but to kill it, and six other senators have joined him, meaning that it will take 60 votes for Bernanke to be confirmed. Bernanke's nomination was reported out of the Senate Banking Committee with a majority of the Committee's Republicans opposed, and Chairman Chris Dodd supporting Bernanke personally but rejecting a larger regulatory role for the Fed.
With the disappointing job numbers for December just released, and the rising populist rage against the favoritism shown to Wall Street over Main Street, the opposition to Bernanke will only grow. And it would be a severe mistake to read this as senators needing a scapegoat or a sacrificial lamb. The Fed's policies are deplorable, Bernanke shows no sign of learning from his mistakes, and the Fed continues to hide behind its semi-secret status as not quite a public agency.
As recently as mid-December, when the House Oversight Subcommittee, chaired by Dennis Kucinich, was trying to figure out whether the Treasury was letting shaky banks exit the TARP program early so that they could resume paying exorbitant bonuses, Treasury Assistant Secretary Herb Allison hid behind the Federal Reserve (which is not obligated to explain itself to Congress.) Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reported this exchange:
Kucinich: “So it's the Federal Reserve that decides when to exit the TARP and the Federal Reserve does it at their choosing, or who chooses? How do we know who makes the choice whether to exit the TARP? How do we know if it's the banks that are deciding or the Federal Reserve? Do you know?”
Allison: “The regulators decide, Mr. Chairman, on when it's appropriate for a bank to repay the Treasury.”
Kucinich: “Is that a transparent process, Mr. Allison, or is that pretty much done over at the Fed without any report to you?”
Allison: “That's a matter for the regulator, that's –”
Kucinich: “Well, they're the regulator, but we're the shareholder. When do we find out? When do you find out? Do you find out when you read about it in the newspaper?”
Allison: “When the regulator informs us…
This claim is complete malarkey. Treasury, since the program began, has been the prime agency supervising the distribution of the TARP money. And the negotiations over when the banks are strong enough to quit the TARP program (and escape its limits on executive pay) have been with the Treasury. But the ease with which Treasury officials have hidden behind the non-transparent Federal Reserve is a prime example of why the Fed needs both a complete overhaul and new leadership.
In October 2008, when Republican Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's TARP legislation was railroaded through Congress, it was Republicans more than Democrats who nearly killed it, and the Democrats who saved it. Now, many Democrats are having second thoughts. In this climate, Republicans are playing the preposterous role of the more populist of the two parties. And, as the fight over a badly flawed health bill shows, Obama's policies are making their jobs easier.
With a majority of Republican senators apparently ready to vote against Bernanke, Democratic senators risk finding themselves on the wrong side of another populist backlash. If half of the Democrats decide to vote against him, his nomination could go down.
I have argued in this space, along with such good progressive friends as Peter Dreier, that Democratic legislators ought to hold their noses and vote for a badly flawed health bill. To kill the bill would hand a huge victory to the Republican right.
But the Bernanke re-nomination is another story. It is not a signature, make-or-break initiative of the administration. Bernanke's defeat would be a repudiation of President Obama's close alliance with Wall Street — but it would be extremely salutary for him and for us. It might even get the president's attention for the proposition that his presidency and America's economic future depend on an entirely different strategy of economic recovery. Bernanke is not just the symbol of everything that's wrong with Wall Street's dominance of economic policy, but the substance.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect, a senior Fellow at Demos, and author of the book, Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency.
Now Available: Printed Edition of The Real-Time Web Report
At the request of the librarian community and people that just like paper, we have made The Real-Time Web and its Future report available in print.
For those of you that prefer it digitally, you can still download it.
Don't forget about our Community Management Report. It too is coming in print soon, so watch out for it!
Web Trends
The Facebook Privacy Debate: What You Need to Know
Facebook changed the world by helping 350 million people publish their thoughts, feelings, comments, photos, videos and shared links much more easily than ever before. It's the King of social networking.
The network grew with a big promise of privacy at the center of what it offered: your information was by default visible only to people you approved as friends. In December that changed, in a fundamental way. We offer in this post a summary of the changes that were made and key highlights from the debate that's raging around the world about privacy, public information and Facebook.
2010 Trend: Sensors & Mobile Phones
Last week in our Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things series, we looked at barcode scanning and RFID in the next generation iPhone. We expect to see Apple and Android battling it out for both barcode and RFID supremacy this year.
Another key technology in the Internet of Things - where everyday objects are endowed with Internet connectivity - is sensors. In fact we've seen the most activity so far in the Internet of Things from sensor data. So in this post we explore how mobile phones and sensors are mixing; and what to expect in 2010.
UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame
A new website dedicated to making non-personal data held by the U.K. government available for software developers has launched with the help of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Data.gov.uk is being slammed with traffic but six months after the U.S. government opened its Data.gov site the U.K. site already has more than three times as much data than the U.S. site offers today.
At launch, Data.gov.uk has nearly 3,000 data sets available for developers to build mashups with. The U.S. site, Data.gov, has less than 1,000 data sets today.
Open Thread: There's No Such Thing As Free Content
So why do users keep expecting to consume it, reuse it, share it and store it without paying for it?
Someone, somewhere ends up putting out money for everything you do online, every piece of news you read, every Web app you use. It takes professionals and hardware across a gigantic industry to make these things work. In terms of overhead alone, content costs a lot. So why do some users always kick and scream at the first suggestion of paid content? Do you think content is worth paying for, and if so, what are you personally willing to pay?
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
ReadWriteStart
Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.
Startup Finance: Xero Powers Accounting in the Cloud
When New Zealand-based entrepreneur Rod Drury began researching his market he could hardly believe what he was seeing. As seen in Drury's comments last week on the state of the online finance ecosystem, only a handful of players like Saasu and MYOB were targeting small business clients. While Drury saw that a number of cloud-based personal finance companies like Mint were gaining traction with users, small businesses had been stuck with the same tired desktop accounting software they'd been using for the last ten years. Drury built Xero with the intent to help small businesses manage their accounts in the cloud.
Never Mind the Valley: Here's Austin
Settled in the 1830s along the banks of the Colorado River and named for the Father of Texas Stephen F. Austin, the city of Austin is known for its thriving music scene and as the home of the University of Texas (UT) Longhorns. But in the past few decades, the Texas capital has built up a reputation of a different sort.
With companies headquartered in Austin like Dell and Freescale Semiconductor, a spin-off of Motorola, the city has become a hotbed of information technology hardware and software. In the mid 1990s, Austin was put on the map by software companies like Motive, Vignette and Tivoli, the latter of which was quickly scooped up by IBM in 1996.
SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL
ReadWriteEnterprise
Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.
IBM's Project Vulcan: The Next Generation of Lotus Notes and a Rival To Google Wave
William Shatner opened the IBM Lotusphere event this week, after which IBM launched Project Vulcan. This is a geek dream come true: a full-on collaboration environment with an open API and a name right out of Star Trek fame.
Project Vulcan isn't set for developer release until the second half of this year, but its potential as an all-encompassing cloud-based collaboration service is causing many to compare it to Google Wave.
Web Products
Top Tools For Tracking Topics on the Web
Tracking topics on the Web can be a painful process, due to the amount of noise and difficulty of filtering it. So to help you out, we've selected and categorized the leading topic tracking tools. This is based on the discussion that arose from our earlier post about topic feeds, which are RSS feeds for keywords or phrases.
During the process of analyzing these topic tracking tools, we discovered - to our surprise - that not many of these services output results as RSS. Some of the leading apps in this field require users to visit their service. With that in mind, here is our full list and analysis.
The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now
In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.
Those of you who edited your privacy settings prior to December's change have nothing to worry about - that is, assuming you elected to keep your personalized settings when prompted by Facebook's “transition tool.” The tool, a dialog box explaining the changes, appeared at the top of Facebook homepages this past month with its own selection of recommended settings. Unfortunately, most Facebook users likely opted for the recommended settings without really understanding what they were agreeing to. If you did so, you may now be surprised to find that you inadvertently gave Facebook the right to publicize your private information including status updates, photos, and shared links.
Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.
Twitter's Growth Slows Dramatically
After news about the landing of US Airways 1549 in the Hudson first broke on Twitter in January 2009, the microblogging service quickly captured the imagination of a new group of potential users. Throughout the first months of 2009, Twitter grew at a rapid pace, peaking at a growth rate of 13% in March 2009.
Now, however, according to the latest data from HubSpot, Twitter's growth is slowing dramatically. In October 2009, Twitter's growth rate had fallen to 3.5%. On a positive note, though, the average active user on Twitter today is more engaged than six months ago.
Why France and Germany Got it Right: IE Must Go
It looks like Microsoft has moved to the “sticks and stones” method for handling public relations gaffes. As we reported earlier this week, France joined Germany in suggesting that its citizens switch from Internet Explorer to, well, anything else. Now, Microsoft's UK security chief, Cliff Evans, has responded by saying that switching to other browsers will only open you up to more security vulnerabilities than staying with Internet Explorer.
That's saying a lot for the browser implicated in the Great Google Caper of 2010; and we have multiple security experts who have said a lot on why it just isn't true.
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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