Bernanke on the Hot Seat

I was disappointed to see the House grilling Fed chief Bernanke about the BofA/Merrill Lynch deal. BofA CEO Lewis is worried about his job, because the BofA/Merrill merger is looking worse than it did earlier. So, he's saying he agreed to it only under the threats from Bernanke and Treasury Sec. Paulson to remove him if he didn't go through with it.

First, it's not fair for Bernanke to face this grilling without Paulson, who is more likely to have been the villain, if there was one, than Bernanke.

Second, the deal probably did avoid more carnage on Wall Street, which was a serious threat at the time. At least a few Congressional questioners congratulated Bernanke for avoiding a bigger banking crisis.

What I found particularly odd was that Bernanke's accusers were mainly Republicans and his defenders Democrats, although Bernanke was named to the Fed by George Bush and took the actions in question under the Bush administration. The Republican congressmen are condemning a Republican administration. Granted, a lof of these congressmen did not favor the bailout and wanted America to go down in flames. They only relented when the stock market went down hundreds or thousands of points, and the man in the street became (rightly) alarmed that something terrible was going to happen if Congress didn't act. The Republicans are still mad at America for not conforming to their ideas of how the world should operate. Fortunately, more reasonable people, like Bernanke, prevailed. Congressmen Darrell Issa and Dan Burton, please stop living in the 17th century!