Word: explaining
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has had to explain himself on Capitol Hill a lot more often than that. As Bernanke waited to give his semiannual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on the morning of July 21, Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus thanked him for his "willingness to make yourself available on countless numbers of occasions." Since February, the Fed chairman has been called to testify about Bank of America's takeover of Merrill Lynch, the government's bailout of AIG, the federal budget deficit, the Fed's various new lending programs and the economic outlook...
Ever since 1978, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act (a.k.a. the Humphrey-Hawkins Act) into law, Federal Reserve chairmen have had to troop before Congress twice a year to explain themselves...
...this willingness to explain policies and chat with Congress about them hasn't endeared Bernanke and the Fed to all its members. Far from it. After thanking Bernanke in his opening remarks, Bachus - the ranking Republican on the committee - went on to complain that the Fed had taken on too much authority and should restrict itself in the future to setting monetary policy. Texas Republican Ron Paul, whose calls to abolish the Fed have gotten more attention lately than they used to, claimed that "the Federal Reserve, in collaboration with giant banks, has created the greatest financial crisis ever seen...
...even ordered a study--I was its director--of how the U.S. got involved in Vietnam, to try to explain what had happened. It came to be called the Pentagon Papers. And to show just how puzzling McNamara was, it's not clear that he ever read them. He lived long enough to see how terribly wrong he had been about the war and how much turmoil and tragedy it brought to Vietnam and the U.S. Now his life and his shadow torment us still, as our leaders contemplate modern versions of Vietnam in Afghanistan and elsewhere...
...have yet to be acted upon by the banking committees in the House and Senate, and White House officials do not expect concrete legislative action until late this year at the earliest. That means that both the White House and Congress can expect many more months of needing to explain why it is O.K. for Wall Street to be thriving while the rest of the country, and much of the world, is suffering. As Gibbs explained on July 15, when asked about the big Wall Street paydays, "It is something that continues to be a great concern...