The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : The Economics of Fear

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The TARP special inspector has concluded that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made numerous misleading or false statements to legislators in order to ram through the original TARP.

Meanwhile, John Taylor notes that the financial panic began not after the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Bros., as is commonly thought, but after the unruly rollout of the TARP.

So it seems entirely possible that Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, during September and October of 2008, lied about financial conditions to the public and bent the rule of law in dealing with the banks, and that these abrupt measures threw the financial world into a panic. And yet Bernanke is the guy that President Obama wants running the Fed for another term?

(h/t Tim Carney's twitter)

View all comments (5) | Leave a comment

Dan| 10.5.09 @ 12:24PM

And that begs the question, did they do that because they erroneously read the situation, or did they do it deliberately so as to help the political chances of the Democrat standard bearer, Barrack Hussein Obama.

I for one don't believe they acted in good faith; I'm convinced they were in cahoots with the Democrats.

Faffnir| 10.5.09 @ 12:35PM

Who was it that said "Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."? They are statists who will do anything to increase the power and reach of the State. That such measures inevitably fail bothers them not. They are the elite and know ever so much more than anyone else. They must be seen to "DO SOMETHING!" Or as Mel Brooks put it in "Blazing Saddles": "We gotta protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen!"