Tweet
The Wall Street Journal now counts 51 votes in favor of Ben Bernanke’s confirmation for another term as the Chair of the Federal Reserve. If the new regime of just Ben Bernanke requiring 50 votes to pass the Senate holds, then he’s pretty much assured of confirmation. This would explain why a date has been set for the vote.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday moved to clear the way to confirm Ben Bernanke to a second term as Federal Reserve chairman, setting a procedural vote for Thursday in a sign that the needed votes were now secured.
President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats scrambled to drum up backing for Bernanke after a Republican won a stunning upset in a Massachusetts Senate race last week, largely because of voter anger about the economy.
Considering the intellectual caliber of the people voting on the nomination – like genius Tom Coburn, who doesn’t know that the Federal Reserve has a mandate to maximize employment, I can’t say I’m surprised.
About the only thing that can trip Bernanke up at this point is if something damaging comes out at the AIG hearing coming up in just a few minutes. Today Bernanke delivered a letter to the House Oversight Committee explaining the Fed’s role in the AIG bailout. He says that he was not directly involved in negotiating with the counter-parties (which we knew) and supported the final plan to create Maiden Lane III to pay off the counter-parties at par. He also begged off having any knowledge of the NY Federal Reserve Bank trying to withhold disclosure of the counter-party payment information. You can read the letter, it’s all “I was not involved, I was not involved.” If information that contradicts this comes to light today, maybe that gets back to the issue of confirming Bernanke. But I’d find that possibility unlikely.
UPDATE: Chuck Grassley will vote no on Bernanke, citing concerns about inflation, bizarrely enough. This seems like too little, too late.
12 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
CNBC and CSPAN3 are showing the Geithner AIG hearing
O/T
Please sign the petition to amend the constitution concerning corporate personhood . I believe this petition does not go far enough but it is a good start to the process .
http://site.pfaw.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=14741&em_id=12301.0
Getting rid of Helicopter ben would have been great for Obama and the Dem’s poll numbers. WallStreet’s confidence no but they were the morons who thought they could make money on Derivatives.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/21899
Obama is going to have to do something about this soon.
But wait, all I’ve heard form months now is that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything!
Obama is intent upon retaining all of the worst aspects of the Cheney-Bush years and embracing them as his own. Once again I have to ask (because I really can’t figure it out myself): is Obama really clueless, or deliberately malicious?
Anyone who votes to end debate on this deserves no support. We know the Rethugs will come up with enough votes to get this through cloture so make them do it. Let the Blue Dogs and the Rethugs get this guy through if they want him. If you want progressive support vote no on cloture.
Jane has a fresh cross-post already in progress: Victory: Mike Stark Gives 36,000 Signatures of Thanks to Rep. Raul Grijalva
And if Bernanke doesn’t get confirmed, what happens? Another version of Ben Bernanke gets the job. This administration is not going to put anyone of a different mindset in that position.
You are probably right. But so what? If an example is made of Bernanker, then there is slightly less incentive for the next guy to behave outrageously.
It may not be much, but accountability is important. I don’t buy the “looking forward to the future, not back to the past” argument we are always getting. Punishing past transgressions to the extent that you can shapes the future for the better, if only slightly.
Oh rats.
Obama has ALWAYS been like this and it’s a good part of the reason for his success. Why ever would he think it won’t work now? The problem, I think, is exposure: until Obama got to the presidency, he worked under the cover of obscurity. Nobody knew much about the details because nobody cared much about the details. Do you follow the details of state office holders? How they vote on which bills? How much actual input they have on bills, which ones they actually originated, which they co-sponsored, politicked for, etc? State legislators can pose almost any way they want and IMO it’s unlikely they’ll attract any contradicting scrutiny because fact checking the working backgrounds of state legislators is extremely labor intensive. Who bothers?
There are reporters who have covered state politics for years and know the beat. But how much ink do they get and who really follows their writings? Everything about Obama was available to read during the campaign, it was all out there………if you looked. People loved what they heard.
Everybody might as well accept that what we elected is a died in the wool DLC/Republican. As well as the sad fact that what now passes for the Democratic Party would not so long ago have been referred to as Moderate Republicans (without the fiscal conservatism). Nothing is going to stop Rahm/Geithner/Summers and crew continuing their corporate largess or changing the direction of this Administration. Bernanke, Gates, etc., and the vast majority of the Bush Administration people who remain in place will continue to run a Bush Lite Administration and White House. The phony populist rhetoric on tap for tonight is just that. Couple the silly proposals which will be made tonight(which ALL basically only relate to individuals who are working) with the budget freeze and what you have is an application of the instructions in Mein Kampf. Tell big enough lies, like “change you can believe in”, or the middle class is under attack, give a rousing speech, then do nothing and hope that you’ve fooled most if not all the people.