Bernanke brought to us by Rupe

So today Chairman Ben Bernanke chooses to address the USian public via a piece under his name in the Wall Street Journal, entitled The Fed's Exit Strategy.

The article addresses matters of money supply and public policy:

My colleagues and I believe that accommodative policies will likely be warranted for an extended period. At some point, however, as economic recovery takes hold, we will need to tighten monetary policy to prevent the emergence of an inflation problem down the road. The Federal Open Market Committee, which is responsible for setting U.S. monetary policy, has devoted considerable time to issues relating to an exit strategy. We are confident we have the necessary tools to withdraw policy accommodation, when that becomes appropriate, in a smooth and timely manner.

These are issues so basic to the economy in which we all swim or sink that the placement of the article raises at least two questions.

1. Why does one of the most highly placed officials of the US choose to write for a private, subscription-based publication, instead of making his views known through some more public channel? His piece could have run in various Government - as in Open Government - websites, blogs, the Fed's own site. It could have, indeed, run on all of them. As well as in the WSJ, and the NYT, and WaPO, etc.

Why does Bernanke - here playing the role of example, not whipping boy - not think of his role and place in USian life as warranting the widest possible public distribution of his thinking? Why not share via multiple networked distribution, rather than lend visibility solely to Rupert Murdoch's private enterprise?

In brief, why is the nation's top banking official failing to understand that his official words, like his official deeds, should be shared with all?

2. A slightly different aspect of this regards the Murdochian worldview. The WSJ sells its articles, and in most instances offers a couple of paragraphs - you want more, you pay. But in this instance (and in others), the entire piece is available to anyone.

Why? Could it be because the Journal acknowledges that public communications about matters of public interest deserve, warrant, or require public access?

If we assume something along those lines, then the question of the propriety of newspapers charging for news - which tends to involve "matters of public interest" - rears its uncapitalist head. Because if all information and communications relating to public interest are commodified products owned by private info-factories, why should there be any exceptions? Why should Mr. Obama's words, or Mr. Bernanke's not simply be carried by the highest bidding private publisher?

Or, if there must be exceptions, where is the line between essential, necessary public communications that must be shared with all, and inessential, government and public communications that need not be so distributed? Barack Obama yes, Hillary Clinton no? Barack yes, Michelle no? Bernanke yes, Paulson no?

Who decides where matters of national concern leave off and those merely of private interest begin?

Private Ben

Does the WSJ grok the difference between investing and wagering?

Among the measures announced Friday, the Treasury temporarily extended insurance, similar to that on bank deposits, to money-market mutual funds and the Federal Reserve said it would buy commercial paper from the funds. The Securities and Exchange Commission, meanwhile, banned short-selling of 799 financial stocks -- a financial bet that they will fall in price -- for at least 10 days. And the Treasury said it -- along with mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently taken over by the government -- would step up their purchases of mortgage-backed securities to help keep the housing market afloat.

The most ambitious part of the government plan is to create a new entity to purchase impaired assets from financial firms.

The Murdockal WSJ immediately loses track of the analysis, scratching its head over how it would work.

People like Ellen Brown are asking questions we are not hearing from the corporate media:

Treasury bills are the I.O.U.s of the federal government. We the taxpayers are on the hook for the Fed’s “enhanced liquidity facilities,” . . .. What’s going on here? Why not let the free market work? Bankruptcy courts know how to sort out assets and reorganize companies so they can operate again. Why the extraordinary measures for Fannie, Freddie and AIG?

The answer may have less to do with saving the insurance business, the housing market, or the Chinese investors clamoring for a bailout than with the greatest Ponzi scheme in history...

How's that, Ellen?

...the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, one that is holding up the entire private global banking system. What had to be saved at all costs was not housing or the dollar but the financial derivatives industry; and the precipice from which it had to be saved was an “event of default” that could have collapsed a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble, a collapse that could take the entire global banking system down with it.

...snip...

“The point everyone misses,” wrote economist Robert Chapman a decade ago, “is that buying derivatives is not investing. It is gambling, insurance and high stakes bookmaking. Derivatives create nothing.” link

Add: Phil Gramm: uno, dos.

Blind man's roulette

"We've re-established 'moral hazard,'"

A person involved in the Lehman talks this weekend offered that breathtaking analysis to the (Murdockal) Wall St. Journal, which repeated it soberly -- a tidbit in its massive coverage of Wall Street in Crisis.

This bloodletting is the cure. The crisis began back in 2000, when Bush/Cheney got elected. Soon after, the regulatory framework - what was left of it -- took a barrelful of buckshot in the face, and people without homes, money, or jobs were buying property and discovering the joys of home equity.

An isolating, maverick, insensate war does not go together with lower taxes and tsunamic mortgage fraud (or, "overtrust" as suggested by someone on the WSJ's "Deal Journal"). The people who re-sent in the clowns in 2004 still do not see this. When Bush & co. bribed middle-class favor by tacitly giving USians freedumb to do anything, say anything, promise anything to one another in the business arena so long as the admin had a blank check to keep shooting people in the Middle East, we as a polity forfeited any claim to "moral hazard."

Should this sort of vision lead not to a dethronement of Bush, but to a sort of sublimation of his lunacy into President Palin, the USian game of "fool me a million times - fool me more fool me more fool me" will have risen to its greatest challenge.

Glimmer.

suck cess?

Update: The New York Times offers a consummately useless analysis. Is anyone there still capable of journalism?

Let us prey

The Wall Street Journal is well edited -- one rarely finds an error. But today, on the front page no less, a glaring, sorrowful exemplum of apostrophe abuse:



Easier to spot here:



As the Apostrophe Protection Society will maintain until the last vocable is uttered by the last humanoid, "Let's" = let us.

Could eagle-eyed Journal editors be distracted by the impending predation of Mr. Murdock?

"under Murdock..."

Come sit in daddy's lap, little media corporation...

NEW YORK, May 1, 2007 -- Dow Jones & Company today confirmed that its Board of Directors has received an unsolicited proposal from News Corporation...WSJ #

It's a $5 billion unsolicited bid for Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The $60-a-share offer is roughly 67% above Dow Jones's recent market value.

The thought is it will trigger someone to buy it. Just last night in Tampa, the FCC heard why media consolidation "could be" a bad thing. Dumb headline and less dumb story here. Better story here, by the same person, oddly.

Long in the toilet, NY Times shares are up sharply at this hour - biggest move in years. Investors think RuMurd's dumb enough to buy it too?

See also this. And fairness and balance require we link the view from ClearChannel, which smells like ass no matter how clear.