Foreign Policy Magazine Names Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama As 2009’s “Greatest Thinkers”
And both get the nod (Bernanke is in the top slot, Obama is second) because of their efforts to fix America’s economy.
Which is more than a little unbelievable. I mean, to put the matter much more simply than it should be, the economy isn’t fixed. Unemployment continues to climb. Economic growth metrics continue to stagnate.
And their fixes? Obama and his administration have approached economic policy with a “throw money at it” approach that has run up unprecedented amounts of national debt. Obama’s huge sums of government spending has created some economic static, to be sure, but what happens when the bill for all that spending comes due? Where is the money going to come from to pay it all off?
Out of the economy, of course, the crippling weight of which will ensure less growth, less prosperity and more misery going forward. The Obama administration itself estimated that over the next decade the interest payments on our national debt (just what we pay to maintain the principle on that debt) would go from $220 billion this year to over $700 billion in 10 years. That means the US taxpayer would be footing the bill for the equivalent cost of the entire “stimulus” spending bill every single year. And get nothing for it.
And for running up this huge amount of debt, Obama gets named one of the year’s best thinkers?
As for Bernanke, he has continued the “free money” policies at the Federal Reserve that got us into this economic down turn in the first place and he is now setting himself up as the chief defender of the Federal Reserve against critics who point out, rightfully, that the central bank is one of the chief causes of America’s economic woes.
Bernanke is a “thinker” alright. One of the self-righteous “planners” who think the best way to run an economy is through some central committee of elites who know better than the rest of us.
The truth is that the Federal Reserve has no more business controlling our monetary policy than the government has dictating the prices of bread and milk.
Bernanke and Obama don’t deserve applause and praise. They deserve to be castigated as fools and charlatans.
