Mr. Bernanke’s plan is “a bargain with the devil", says Fed's Hoenig — Bernanke Lies on TV — Ron Paul to lead the Fed panel

I've posted already about the momentum that is building against the Fed, and Thomas Hoenig has been playing a big role it it. Unfortunately, the only voice of sanity coming out the Fed is soon to lose his vote and to retire the following year...

(NYT as published on Yahoo Finance) [...] Mr. Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, has been a persistent skeptic of just about everything the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, has done to try to stimulate the flagging recovery.

Mr. Hoenig’s latest, loudest objections , aimed at the Fed’s risky $600 billion infusion into the markets to reinvigorate the economy, have made him a champion of the Fed’s critics in Congress, on Wall Street and among business leaders, who, like Mr. Hoenig, fear that the central bank is risking runaway inflation, asset bubbles and a weakened dollar.
[...]
To him, Mr. Bernanke’s plan is “a dangerous gamble” and “a bargain with the devil,” strong words that have rankled some officials of the Fed, where dissent is tolerated but not celebrated.
[...]
He has called for breaking up giant Wall Street banks and severely restricting their trading activities, a stance that has endeared him to some liberals. He is commonly characterized as an inflation hawk, a label Mr. Hoenig rejects as overly simplistic. If he is hawkish on anything, he says, it’s financial stability.

“I don’t like having unemployment at 9.8 percent,” he added. “It’s just unacceptable.” He concedes, however, there is not much the Fed can do about it.
[...]
But most Fed officials say they believe that Mr. Hoenig’s worries are exaggerated. In a televised interview this month, Mr. Bernanke said he was “100 percent” confident of the Fed’s ability to tighten monetary policy and raise interest rates when the time came, and called fears of inflation “way overstated.”
[...]
Tuesday’s Fed vote will be Mr. Hoenig’s last, because the presidents of the Fed’s regional banks, other than New York, share votes under a rotation system. Mr. Hoenig does not have a vote next year, and he must retire after he turns 65 in September.

As for his future, Mr. Hoenig is certain that he will not follow other Fed veterans who have gone to work on Wall Street. “I can tell you one thing,” he said. “I’ll never work for a too-big-to-fail bank.”

Here's the 60 minute self promoting interview mentioned in the NYT report.

The journalist again is just talking about deflation and the economy without understanding at all what he's saying. Worse, he's just allowing Bernanke to self promote his opinion without giving the opportunity for his opponents to develop their ideas.

This interview is amazing, because Bernanke is caught with a blatant lie, and also because he's showing a 100% certainty on his ability to control the economy. How overconfident and arrogant he is, in his ability to play god with the economy.
Bernanke: We're not printing money.
[...]
Pelley: You have what degree of confidence in your ability to control this?
Bernanke: One hundred percent.

To quote Mish:

Bernanke is a man with 100% confidence who did not see the housing bubble, who did not see a recession, whose worst case scenario for unemployment was 8.5% when it was already over 8%.

Bernanke is a dangerous man and must be taken down. Thankfully, Ron Paul will Lead the Fed Panel and hopefully reign in this madman and end the Fed.

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Representative Ron Paul [...] will take control of the House subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve.

House Financial Services chairman-elect Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican, selected Paul, 75, to lead the panel’s domestic monetary policy subcommittee when their party takes the House majority next month, the committee chairman said today.
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Paul, in an interview last week, said he plans a slate of hearings on U.S. monetary policy and will restart his push for a full audit of the Fed’s functions.
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Paul, who has introduced legislation to abolish the Fed, became nationally known during his 2008 presidential campaign. His campaign to audit the Fed picked up steam as the central bank deployed trillions of dollars in emergency loans in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Paul’s bill gained the support of 320 of 435 members of the House and a portion of the measure ended up in the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul enacted this year.
[...]
Paul’s assignment comes as the Republican Party has stepped up attacks on Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and the central bank in the wake of the Nov. 3 announcement that it would buy bonds in an attempt to bring down unemployment and prevent inflation.

“Congress must act to rein in Chairman Bernanke and the Fed before they destroy our currency and permanently damage our economy and financial system,” Senator Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, said in his farewell speech on the Senate floor today. “Public awareness of what the Fed is doing is increasing while public opinion of the Fed is falling.”

Bunning’s views are reflected throughout the country, according to a Bloomberg National Poll that reveals deep skepticism about the Fed.

Americans across the political spectrum say the central bank shouldn’t retain its current structure of independence, according to the poll. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Thirty-seven percent favor the status quo.