Chinese checkers?
They say that even a stopped watch is correct occasionally. President Obama decided to keep Ben Bernanke — a man who made great mistakes but shows every sign of having learned from them — in charge of the Fed. AP:
The announcement also came nearly concurrently with a piece of bad economic news. Obama interrupted his vacation to telegraph his decision just ahead of a White House report that gave more bleak assessments of the nation’s deficit picture.
Figures released by the White House budget office on Monday foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three quarters the size of the entire national economy…
In sticking with a Republican for the nation’s top banker, the Democratic president was aiming for stability at a time of continuing, though easing, crisis. The move was designed to reassure the U.S. financial sector as well as foreign central banks…
We can’t help but think that this sensible appointment, so at odds with many of the recent decisions by Obama, was actually forced on the administration by, among others, China. China, the land where students laugh at and openly mock the US Treasury Secretary, is by far the largest foreign holder of US sovereign debt. Given Obamacare, the pending prosecutions of those conducting successful CIA operations, and so many other gaffes by the administration, it is a bit hard to see how Obama made this sensible decision without adult supervision from outside his White House.
(He could have done worse, and indeed he has done so. Consider that the man he appointed to the Chairmanship of the most important Federal Reserve Bank has no experience whatsoever in the banking industry.)
August 26th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
There is no doubt he could’ve chosen worse. Even so, I am uncomfortable with this choice.