While the United states Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are stationed at 737 bases, in 130 nations around the world, defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” Benjamin S. “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (a Federal agency) that oversees the privately owned Federal Reserve System of (central) Banks, in an interview on the Columbia Broadcasting System television news-magazine 60 Minutes, defends his efforts to inflate the nation out of the Great Recession:

       If you have a neighbor who smokes in bed, and he’s a risk to everybody, and suppose he sets fire to his house.  You might say to yourself, “I am not going to call the fire department.  Let his house burn down.  It’s fine with me.”  But then of course what if your house is made of wood, and its right next door this house?  What if the whole town is made of wood?  Well I think that we would all agree that the right thing to do is put out that fire first.  And then say, “What punishment is appropriate? how can we change the fire code?  What needs to be done to make sure this does not happen in the future? how can we fireproof our houses?”  That is where we are now: We have a fire going on.

       NOTES:

• Bernanke’s analogy is wrong on so many counts.  Of course you would want to put out the fire in your neighbor’s house.  But you would use water, not more fire.  The Great Recession has occurred because of debt-based currency (Federal Reserve Notes) and counterproductive Federal regulations.  And Bernanke has been pumping out trillions more debt-based, legal tender FRNs — “fighting fire with fire.”  Bernanke showed his true colors at the end of his false metaphor when he hints that more regulation is also the answer.  Is it possible that the reason why the irresponsible neighbor was smoking inside his house was because the city code makes it illegal to smoke outside?
• While this interview was aired, the American International Group, the insurance company that received 182,000,000,000 “dollars,” from five separate bailouts, announced the winners in the Wall Street casino that it lost to:
  • 1,500,000,000 “dollars” for Wachovia commercial bank, which was bought by Wells Fargo commercial bank;
  • 5,000,000,000 “dollars” for commercial Bank of America;
  • 7,000,000,000 “dollars” for Merrill Lynch investment bank, which was bought by commercial Bank of America;
  • 13,000,000,000 “dollars” for Goldman Sachs (investment turned commercial bank) that of which Henry M. Paulson, Jr., was the Chairman of, before he became secretary of the treasury; and
  • 23,000,000,000 “dollars” for Citigroup commercial bank.

       [added 10/11/2021] Thanks to Jim Lorenz and Freedom’s Phoenix for this entry.