Statist Propaganda: 60 Minutes Interviews Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qudrk2U30GA
This interview demonstrated everything that is wrong with the American media. A free society cannot exist for long without the media critically examining the actions of Government and their sponsored agencies. Prior to beginning the interview, the interviewer, Scott Pelley, informs us that Ben Bernanke, to counter the the Economic downturn has: "invoked emergency powers and with unprecedented aggressiveness has thrown a trillion dollars and is prepared to double that...". Given the gravity of the situation, you'd think, Scott Pelley, would ask, in the cross-examining style of Mike Wallace, the hard hitting questions, right? Not even close! Scott Pelley was a pure propagandist. He would have made even the Politburo blush. Before I get to why I think Pelley's interview was propaganda, I want to explain what the Federal Reserve (the Fed) is, its role in the boom-bust business cycle and consequences in U.S. economic history.
The Fed is the U.S. Central Bank. Pelley gets it (sort of) right when he says that the Fed "controls the economy by setting interest rates". By artificially manipulating ( lowering) interests rates the Fed distorts market signals between producers and consumers.The pure (if left alone from Central Bank meddling) interest rate is determined by the supply of savings. The interest rate results from the willingness of a consumer to forgo present consumption for future consumption. High saving rates lower interest rates. Lower saving rates raise interest rates. By lowering the interest rates below the market determined level (inflation), producers are lead into intensive capital projects (e.g. real estate, manufacturing plants, etc) that won't pay off because they falsely assume greater savings then actually exist. The result: unemployment and economic meltdown. Inflation is the monetary tool used by the Central Bank to transfer wealth to some groups without the immediate tax increases, The State, would need to raise in order to pay these groups. So, instead, it stealthily robs the whole population of the purchasing power of their currency over time ( inflation is the natural tendency of all Central Banks, including the Bank of Canada).
The Feds effect on the purchasing power of the US dollar has been devastating. Here's a little compare and contrast. A 1913 U.S. dollar is now worth approximately 5 cents. To put this in perspective, between 1780 and 1913, a U.S. dollar was essentially worth the same. During this timeline, U.S. dollars actually gained in purchasing power each year because of gains in productivity. Now that the U.S. (and the world) has gone off the Gold Standard (a time when Banks could only lend what their Gold reserves permitted) there's nothing preventing the boundless creation of money (not wealth). Today, with central banks in control of the monetary system, the cost of one dollar, one billion dollars , or a trillion, is the same. While mild recessions did occur under a gold standard, they were over within a year or so - and without a corresponding debasement of the currency.
An Austrian School analysis enabled Economist F.A. Hayek to predict the crash in 1929 . And Economist Peter Schiff was also able to predict the bursting of the Real Estate Bubble and the subsequent, economic collapse .Even if you disagreed with this interpretation of the historical economic data, this is an interpretation of economic history that even former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, held in the 1960s (that Alan Greenspan has now contradicted his own rational analysis is a shameful, but inevitable, result of being the Fed Chairman of a system that he once saw as fundamentally flawed) when he wrote about the cause of the great depression. The article was written in 1966 and was titled "Gold and Economic Freedom", it was published in, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand.
Alan Greenspan wrote: "When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction...the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. The Fed succeeded;....but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economies spilled over into the stock market - triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, the Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in breaking the boom. But it was too late:...the speculative imbalance had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralising of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed." Greenspan goes on to say: "In the absence of the gold standard, there's no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation". And if that wasn't clear enough, the former Fed Chairman said: "Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth."
If the One Trillion amount in stimulus is not enough for, Pelley, to question the wisdom of the Fed, then at least Greenspan's comments - which he should be aware of - ought to have made him question Bernanke and the Fed's ability to deal with the economic crisis. But, no. Pelley, after explaining that Bernanke is, "maybe the most important Fed chairman in history", he then asks:" The question that everyone wants me to ask is: when does this end?" Only a dolt, would ask, Bernanke, the person who represents the very institution that helped create this mess in the first place, such a question. One wonders if Pelley thinks, foxes guard hen-houses. Pelley, throughout the interview had blind faith in Bernanke's authority as Fed chairman to solve this economic crisis. The most egregious thing about this interview is that here we have the current Federal Reserve Chairman (see at 2:14 in the video linked below) directly contradicting the thoughts of the former Federal Reserve Chairman on the cause of the Great Depression and the necessity of deficit spending . So, either Pelley is incompetent, or he's deliberately evading his role as a journalist in order to be a sycophantic propagandist for State control of the monetary system. Bernanke's "solution" to bringing back a recovery is analogous to considering the grim-reaper a life saver.
Pelley is a irresponsible journalist. As is typical for 60 minutes on other issues, he could have interviewed critics of the Federal Reserve, such as Ron Paul, or Peter Schiff, but didn't. With this kind of journalism, is it any wonder why America is descending into Statism?
"There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage…Democracy provides swarms of such men." H.L. MENCKEN, A Mencken Chrestomathy
"The liberals of the eighteenth century were filled with a boundless optimism. Mankind is rational, which permits the right opinion to emerge in the end. Light will replace darkness… Democracy with its freedom of thought, speech and press assures the success of the right doctrine. Let the masses decide; they will choose wisely…Nobody would now accept such optimism." LUDWIG VON MISES, Notes and Recollections 
"If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it’s done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong)—how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered." AYN RAND, The Ayn Rand Column
