President Obama was incredibly stupid to renominate Bernanke to be in charge of the Federal Reserve Board. Senate Democrats were even dumber when they didn't block the nomination.

Bernanke certainly didn't deserve to keep his job. His negligence and his lobbying against reregulation of financial markets were major factors in causing the financial crisis. His misuse of the bailouts to exclusively help the banksters instead of bailing out the people is one of the reasons why the economy is so execrable.

Yet, those are not the only reasons why Darth Bernanke should not have gotten the job. He is a partisan, Republican hack. Check out this from the 11/3/10 New York Times:

The Federal Reserve, getting ahead of the battles that will dominate national politics over the next two years, moved Wednesday to jolt the economy into recovery with a bold but risky plan to pump $600 billion into the banking system.

A day earlier, Republicans swept to a majority in the House on an antideficit platform, virtually guaranteeing that they would clash with the Obama administration over the best way to nurture a fragile recovery.

The plan wasn't particularly "risky," but that's the typical rightist bias of the Times. What is so interesting is that Bernanke deliberately timed the stimulus to be the day after the election, so it wouldn't have the slightest chance of helping the Democrats. Middle class and poor Americans were used as cannon fodder in Bernanke's battles for the GOP.

It is also useful to note that the Times censored the role of partisan politics in Bernanke's decision to delay this stimulus.

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