Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, nominated to replace Allen Greenspan during the reign of Bush's Treasury chief, Hank Paulson, made historical precedent in a first ever broadcast interview on 60 Minutes Sunday night.
He hit his marks in his interview and did bring a calm reassuring message to the airwaves. I, for one though, am sceptical.
Perhaps his speechifying is nothing but a defensive move, a la Dick Cheney, someone definitely on the outs in D.C. and 'in' when it comes to media appearances.
To me the central point concerns accountability for bailing out certain firms - a point Bernanke did make - that folks should be held accountable, once the crisis is past.
We have yet to see that. Most tellingly Bernanke completely avoided the question of Hank Paulson and any mention of his firm Goldman Sachs, the Haliburton of the financial world.
Bernanke also restated the need to bail out firms that were 'too big to fail'. Quick action was needed, but breaking up mega firms is very often easy to do. Consider, for example, AIG. The arm that was involved in the sub-prime mortgage scams was completely different from the relatively healthy insurance operations - why not split those up?
It may well be the case that we are in for a short term recovery. I, for one, don't believe we've solved the problem, we've merely taking out yet another loan, this time on the US Treasury as opposed to our personal houses.
It all needs to be paid back, and the price of failure is still failure.
No one is above that law - the only question is how many innocent folks will pay in order to avoid the pain?
And, Mr. Bernanke, are you going to hold Hank Paulson accountable, or not?
