Hello! As Euro totters on edge of extinction and global market crisis deepens, Volgaleaks website releases secret US memo casting doubt on mental fitness of one of key players in world economy.
Top Secret
From: Head of FBI
For: POTUS, Chief of Staff. Not for Treasury Secretary
Subject: Full and final Bernanke Report
As you are aware, Bureau Operative TK421 was passing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s office on 19th August 2011. He heard a commotion and entered. A partially clothed and screaming Mr Bernanke was being restrained by aides from exiting the room via the fire escape. TK421 sedated Mr Bernanke and removed him from the building, disguised as a filing cabinet. He then interrogated the aides.
Mr Bernanke was preparing for his 26 August keynote speech. Aides said he was agitated. The debt ceiling plan had upset the markets. Investors thought the spending reductions were too big (given slow US growth), too small (given massive Federal deficit), and too incredible (given Congress). The US Credit Rating was downgraded. Reflation was impossible even if Congress wanted it. The markets would say it was too small, with growth so slow. And they would say it was too big, worsening the deficit.
Then there was Europe. He couldn’t do their job for them. “Anyway what is their job?” he asked. “Bailing Greece and the rest out? Band aid. Rewarding failure. Storing up trouble. Greece is badly run. Is it? As badly run as Lehmans? AIG? RBS? No, let the Euro go to hell. Then what? More banks failing. But there’d be just one reserve currency. The dollar! But what could America do with a rising dollar? Give it to China?
“And what can I do? More QE? Markets’ll say I panicked. The banks. I’ve tried, I tell you. Friedman on the Depression. In reverse. Zero interests rates. Free money. My idea! But no one lends, they keep it, clean themselves up, wipe their ass, pay bonuses. But if I lean on them, regulate, they’ll kill me.
“We won. Remember! We won. So the market can win. Heads they win. Tails they win. You lose. Smart. But no. Not now. No! And the winner is, ladies and gentlemen: Beijing!” He got up and started throwing books off his shelves, Freidman and Keynes, Galbraith, his own works on the Crash. “Useless!” he screamed. “So what do I say? What do I do? Nothing? Another do nothing Central Banker watching the world go to shit, like that beady-eyed, inflation-obsessed, arrogant-with-so-little-to-show-for-it, self-congratulatory, Bank-of-England fuck King? No. Must do something. What? Wait. Maybe…” He seemed to have an idea and stood up. “Must go out,” he announced. Where, his aides asked.
“I’m going to find it.” Find what? “Find it. Find it. It. IT! THE REAL ECONOMY! Must be there. A cobbler in Southern Spain, someone running a taverna on Naxos, a carpenter in the Italian hills, making puppets, no, no, not that one, he lies! oh, I don’t know, do we make things any more, things that aren’t so much crap? Got to find out. Find it! I have ta’en too little care of this. Off, off, you lendings, come unbuckle here.” Mr Bernanke removed his jacket and tie. When aides saw he had no intention of stopping there, they reasoned with him, suggesting it would look odd – and might adversely affect the markets – for the Fed Chairman to run naked through Washington. So Mr Bernanke decided to disguise himself, saying he’d sneak up on the markets and make them come and find the real economy too. He then attempted to staple a black handkerchief to his bald head. At this point his aides rushed him. TK421 entered the room shortly thereafter.
We kept Mr Bernanke in isolation for a few days. Measures were taken to restore his morale. We played him DVDs of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and recordings of Mr Fukuyama’s The End of History.
Mr Bernanke as you know recovered sufficiently to achieve the waking catatonia needed to give the steady state speech he made on 26th August. Which the markets hated. At time of writing, the Eurozone crisis is intensifying and the US economy remains stalled. Secretary Geithner continues to be publicly, though impotently, activist on the former question. However, we are confident Mr Bernanke's rediscovered passivity and sense of priorities will serve to neutralise him on this matter, or at least redirect him away from any concern with the welfare of nations and their political projects.
To that end, Mr Bernanke will continue to receive the programme of therapies prescribed. We have co-opted Mr Bernanke’s predecessor Mr Greenspan onto the programme. He has promised to remind Mr Bernanke that "a Central Banker’s role is not to save the world. It is certainly not to manage the markets, or to try to be right about them. It is to be their High Priest, giving them an offering from time to time, a toy, and observing that if they play with it capriciously, this merely proves their invincibility".
And of course to throw limitless amounts of dollars at banks whenever they want them.
ENDS
Note: TK421’s presence in no way corroborates the widely held Washington view that the Bureau keeps senior people under surveillance. TK421 says he and other operatives regularly use the Federal Reserve as a john en route to the Bureau’s Washington office.