Ben Bernanke's silence speaks volumes

[CHIMO]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before the House budget committee on Wednesday largely repeated what he has been saying recently. It was interesting only for its likewise repeated silences which, as so often, spoke loudly. The biggest silence concerned taxing corporations and the rich in the US.

Many sentences were devoted to the burdens of the huge deficits being run by the US government, to the need to reduce those deficits. Otherwise, Bernanke warned, lenders might one day stop providing those immense flows into the US Treasury. But not one word about reducing the deficit by taxing large corporations and the rich.

On Tuesday, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer announced a modest tax increase on banks in the UK: a "fair contribution", he said, "to our recovery". No such idea, let alone any action, in the US.

Instead, we hear pronouncements like Bernanke's that seem to believe that cutting outlays in the only way to go. The debate then becomes about which outlays to cut. Bernanke makes clear his preferred cuts lie in healthcare. Note that the US already spends more than other developed nations for poorer healthcare outcomes as measured by national health statistics. Bernanke says nothing about lowering government outlays by reducing the profits of drugmakers and healthcare providers. Nor do the possible impacts of reduced healthcare upon the wellbeing and productivity of the US workforce merit any comment or concern from Bernanke.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/09/ben-bernanke-congress

[mike_c]

1. the invisible hand has produced a shadow government...

...and we are its RESOURCES, not its constituents.

[Taitertots]

2. The tax rate on banks is none of the Feds business

Your politicians are the people who should be talking about/doing things about the problems of tax inequality.