Cowards in action....

Continuing the previous blog on Bernanke:

Today the second-guessers are running wild. Why didn't the Fed stop bailed-out companies from handing out lucrative dividends and bonuses? Why pay off AIG's creditors in full? Why save Bear Stearns but not Lehman Brothers? "It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent," Bernanke says. "We say we didn't have the authority, and it's Oh, you're the Fed. You could've come up with something.' "

Amazingly, the one reform that has attracted bipartisan support on Capitol Hill has been a crusade to rein in the Fed. The House passed a measure allowing congressional audits of monetary policy, which Bernanke believes would shatter the Fed's independence and immerse its rate-setting in politics. He's also fighting proposals to identify Fed borrowers, pointing out that during the Depression, borrowers turned down Reconstruction Finance Corporation dollars to avoid the stigma of disclosure. There is broad support for stripping the Fed of its consumer-protection functions, and the leading Senate bill would eliminate its regulatory functions as well. At his recent confirmation hearing, Bernanke endured hours of nitpicking and abuse. "Obviously, I haven't succeeded in defusing the political concerns about the Fed," Bernanke says with a wan smile.

He's earned the benefit of the doubt. It's now up to our dysfunctional political system to let him do his job — and to fix the financial system so that he never has to save the world again.