• 555 days Will The ECB Continue To Hike Rates?
  • 556 days Forbes: Aramco Remains Largest Company In The Middle East
  • 557 days Caltech Scientists Succesfully Beam Back Solar Power From Space
  • 957 days Could Crypto Overtake Traditional Investment?
  • 962 days Americans Still Quitting Jobs At Record Pace
  • 964 days FinTech Startups Tapping VC Money for ‘Immigrant Banking’
  • 967 days Is The Dollar Too Strong?
  • 967 days Big Tech Disappoints Investors on Earnings Calls
  • 968 days Fear And Celebration On Twitter as Musk Takes The Reins
  • 970 days China Is Quietly Trying To Distance Itself From Russia
  • 970 days Tech and Internet Giants’ Earnings In Focus After Netflix’s Stinker
  • 974 days Crypto Investors Won Big In 2021
  • 974 days The ‘Metaverse’ Economy Could be Worth $13 Trillion By 2030
  • 975 days Food Prices Are Skyrocketing As Putin’s War Persists
  • 977 days Pentagon Resignations Illustrate Our ‘Commercial’ Defense Dilemma
  • 978 days US Banks Shrug off Nearly $15 Billion In Russian Write-Offs
  • 981 days Cannabis Stocks in Holding Pattern Despite Positive Momentum
  • 982 days Is Musk A Bastion Of Free Speech Or Will His Absolutist Stance Backfire?
  • 982 days Two ETFs That Could Hedge Against Extreme Market Volatility
  • 984 days Are NFTs About To Take Over Gaming?
Michael Pento

Michael Pento

Delta Global

With more than 16 years of industry experience, Michael Pento acts as chief economist for Delta Global Advisors and is a contributing writer for GreenFaucet.com.…

Contact Author

  1. Home
  2. Markets
  3. Other

The Buzz over Bernanke

Last week's buzz in Jackson Hole Wyoming and around Wall Street is whether or not Banana Ben Bernanke should be reappointed to the Fed Chair. CNBC also held a panel discussing this issue with Bob McTeer (former President of the Dallas Fed). The consensus was that it was ridiculous not to have Barack Obama indicate he would serve another term as soon as possible. The agreed upon reason being that no one could do a better job than he has done.

So please allow me to inject a little sanity into the discussion. While most people in our industry are quick to hoist Mr. Bernanke on a pedestal -- just as the former maestro Allan Greenspan was -- I think the entire institution should be canned.

First let me say that Gentle Ben, or any Fed Chairman for that matter, can only do a few things if his goal is to pull the economy out of a recession. He can print money, exchange Treasury holdings for a lesser quality asset, or lower bank reserve requirements. So, basically they can either dilute the value of our currency or decrease the quality of their asset holdings. That's it.

But when they do such things the result will be to cause the rate of inflation to accelerate. In the past few decades it seems the better the Chairman is at destroying the dollar, the more he is lauded. No Fed head in our history has increased the monetary base (the only part of money supply the central bank directly controls) more than Ben Bernanke. Therefore, he stands far above all his predecessors in his efforts to weaken the dollar in order to engender a recovery in markets and the economy.

However, the truth is that we don't need a central bank. The country functioned just fine prior to 1913. Can anyone really contend that the Fed has brought about stable prices and a strong dollar? Can anyone claim that having a central bank has saved us from the business cycle and has eliminated recessions and depressions? The fact is they caused them to occur. I know it's now considered heresy, but I believe interest rates should be a function of the supply of savings vs. the demand for borrowing, not by decree.

What we need is a money supply that grows and contracts with the change in the work force and productivity. If we just adhered to that simple formula there would never be any inflation and we would always have a stable currency. However, when a country is dominated by bankers and politicians the people always lose.

Inflation bails out those in debt like the government. So perhaps the White House will give Bernanke the Medal of Honor for making our scores of trillions in debt easier to pay off.

Also, having an elastic currency allows bankers to make more loans and hence more money. Giving financial institutions the knowledge that they have a quasi-governmental agency with an unlimited amount of money that can rescue them from their bad assets allows them to make loans with greater impunity.

But having said all that, I think maybe he should be reappointed anyway. After all, it is unrealistic to think we would ever shut down the Federal Reserve. And if he's replaced it will only be because Obama thinks he isn't destroying the dollar fast enough. Maybe Barack thinks Larry Summers will do a better job getting inflation going.

So forgive me if I opt out of his reappointment committee and count me out if you are looking for someone to sing the Fed's praises. But count me in as one of the few left who will still embrace markets.

Be sure to listen in on my Mid-Week Reality Check and to follow my blog Pentonomics
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/michaelpento

 

Back to homepage

Leave a comment

Leave a comment