Excuse Me WSJ: But the Fed Was Responsible for the Economic Crisis

June 16, 2010

In the world of Washingtonspeak, history gets rewritten right in front of your eyes. No doubt we will soon discover that the environmentalists were the ones drilling off the coast of Louisiana.

In the spirit of the historical rewrite, Michael Crittenden tells readers in the WSJ blog Real Time Economics that: “the Fed has been a top target for criticism and skepticism following the government’s response to the 2008 financial meltdown.”

Uh no, that’s not quite right. The Fed has been a top target of criticism because the people running the Fed, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which wrecked the economy. This was one of the most astounding acts of economic incompetence of the last century. The fact that the Fed’s response to the financial turmoil caused by the collapse of the bubble seems more focused on saving Wall Street than the economy has not helped its standing.

 

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