The burden of making the tough decisions needed to make our country’s economy sound again falls on the sole body responsible for taxing and spending our money: Congress. For too long, Congress, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, has chosen the easy path of kicking the fiscal can down the road. Our elected representatives must now find the resolve to set aside partisan bickering and get us out of this frightful financial predicament.
The impulse to use Mr. Bernanke as a political punching bag raises the specter that, instead of doing the right thing, Congress may seek to pressure the Fed to print its way out of this crisis. We know from history that when fiscal authorities attempt to monetize their debts, the result is inevitably inflation.
Even before the Massachusetts election, there were several bipartisan proposals before Congress that recommended putting the Federal Reserve under congressional authority. These acts sound agreeable at first blush, but, as Winston Churchill once said, “In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound.”
Source: WSJ
