(photo: Occupy Wall Street, 2011 by Paul Stein)
From Paul Krugman in The New York Times:
Ah: I see that there was a Twitter exchange among Brad DeLong, James Pethokoukis, and others over why Republicans don’t acknowledge that Ben Bernanke helped the economy, and claim credit. Pethokoukis — who presumably gets to talk to quite a few Republicans from his perch at AEI — offers a fairly amazing explanation:
Yep: that dastardly Bernanke was preventing us from having a financial crisis, curse him.
...
Basically, leading Republicans didn’t just expect a disaster, they wanted one — and they were furious at Bernanke for, as they saw it, heading off the crisis they hoped to see. It’s a pretty awesome position to take. But it makes a lot of sense when you consider where these people were coming from.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/...
"in need of Mellon-esque liquidation" - just wow. I didn't realize anyone still believed in that. From wikipedia:
Mellon became unpopular with the onset of the Great Depression. He advised President Herbert Hoover to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate... it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people,"...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
Reminds me of the infamous Romney 47% talk. We already suspected that GOP banksters choreographed the 2008 meltdown, but to have a Goposaur casually cop to it in a tweet is a bit unexpected.
Thanks, Ben Bernanke, for not playing along.
(h/t a tweet from @BruceBartlett)