Free Republic

Despite the Federal Reserve’s announcement last month of a new round of quantitative easing to help unemployment, the national unemployment rate increased to 9.8 percent in November. Indiana’s Rep. Mike Pence, in light of the Fed’s announcement, is promoting a different solution: simplify the Fed’s job so that it doesn’t have to worry about employment. Pence was among the first to express concerns about the Fed’s employment mandate when news broke last month that the federal government would participate in a U.S. Treasury security-buy, known as quantitative easing.

Ben Bernanke is emerging as a high-profile scapegoat as critics ridicule his new "quantitative easing" policy. Charlie Gasparino on why mocking the non-partisan Fed chair is bad for America. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Here's how you know Ben Bernanke, the mild-mannered chairman of the Federal Reserve, a scholar of the Great Depression once considered a sage for saving the banking system during the 2008 bank meltdown, has suddenly found himself a target of ridicule lumped in with the financial morons and evildoers like Dick Fuld, Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the fat cats of Wall Street. Go to YouTube.com, and one of...

There's something about quantitative easing that bothers just about everyone - including, believe it or not, Fed chief Ben Bernanke. But in contrast to his many critics, Bernanke's problem lies not with the policy itself, in which the Federal Reserve has pledged to buy $600 billion worth of Treasury bonds over eight months in its latest bid to bring down interest rates and stimulate the economy. What's in a name? No, Bernanke's beef is that what the Fed is doing isn't properly called quantitative easing, as he reminded everyone in his speech Friday. Incidentally, in my view, the use of...