Bernanke does Jackson Hole, Obama renominates as fed chief.

President Barack Obama renominated Ben Bernanke on August 25 to serve a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, saying Bernanke "approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with. calm and wisdom; with bold action and outside-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic freefall."

Bernanke, who has been under fire from both Democrats and Republicans for failing to see gathering economic storm clouds in 2007, as well as for his policies of massive spending and debt expansion over the past year, is now being boosted as economic savior in a massive media campaign. Several days before his reappointment, Bernanke was the star performer at the annual meeting of the world's central bankers and select economists and financial moguls in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

In his speech to this year's high-powered confab, Bernanke attempted to paper over the fact that he and his fellow "optimists" had been either clueless or intentionally misleading with regard to the impending financial calamity. "What we could not fully appreciate when we last gathered here was that the economic and policy environment was about to become vastly more difficult," he said. "In the weeks that followed, several systemically critical financial institutions would either fail or come close to failure, activity in some key financial markets would virtually cease, and the global economy would enter a deep recession."

"We know now that the National Bureau of Economic Research has determined December 2007 as the beginning of the recession," the Fed chief said, failing to acknowledge that many economists and financial analysts had accurately identified the recession's onset, while he remained stubbornly blind to it. Bernanke heaped much praise upon the Fed and his fellow bankers for their "strong and unprecedented international policy response" over the past year, which, he claimed, "averted the imminent collapse of the global financial system."

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"Bernanke masterminded what is now seen as a successful strategy to lift the economy out of recession," reported Associated Press on August 25. In a similar puff piece on August 19, the New York Times offered this amazing comment, apparently intended as a compliment: "But economists say Mr. Bernanke's most important accomplishment was to create staggering amounts of money out of thin air. All told, the Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet to $1.9 trillion today, from about $900 billion a year ago."