by Smitty

It’s almost as if (a) people are gaining the impression that central banking is the all-time winner in the Faustian bargain sweepstakes, and (b) the word about the peasants gathering pitchforks and torches is reaching fairly high places.
The Wall Street Journal reports that quantitative easer-geezer Ben Bernanke

in April will start holding quarterly, televised news conferences, in the central bank’s latest effort to better explain its actions.

Despite the best efforts of apologist blogs, like fawner The Classic Liberal, the American people seem unshakable in their belief that the Federal Reserve is somehow negatively affecting the value of their currency. Hence the publicity press:

“The introduction of regular press briefings is intended to further enhance the clarity and timeliness of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy communication,” the Fed said.

Mr. Bernanke has held news conferences only twice before. Last month, he took questions from the media at the National Press Club in Washington, rejecting complaints from China and other emerging economies that the Fed’s policies were driving up food and energy prices around the world. Two years earlier, he took questions from the press to defend the government’s controversial bank rescues during the financial crisis.

A television interview Mr. Bernanke gave in 2009 was the first by a Fed chairman in more than two decades. He has participated in just one other, last December.

I, for one, feel bad that any posts I have put up in this blog may have contributed to the smoothness of Bernanke’s scalp, or the whiteness of his beard. It’s not a good thing to feel so passionate about the Constitution, separation of powers, and solvency of the country that you can’t get past the vast power wielded by this unelected, unaccountable, opaque Creature from Jekyll Island.
Instead, we should be thankful that one of our brilliant, urbane, philosopher overlords would condescend to explain to us low-brow rubes at the crayon level all of these mighty things occurring well over our heads.

The Blaze has your Beck Federal Reserve fix.

Oh, and also from The Classic Liberal, on the U.S. Code:

The next printing will come out in 2012, but the 2006 with annotations was 356 thousand-plus-page volumes that cover every aspect of life as we know it. The next one will add many new sections and probably more than 100,000 pages.

If Al Gore doesn’t silence himself and limit the Gore Effect, we’ll be burning that thing for warmth. RTWT. Weep.