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...rest reads like a horror story. Priklopil barely fed her during her captivity, taking pleasure in showing her a plate full of food and then only giving her a small amount. She was also banned from showing any emotion. "He forbade me from crying because he was worried the salt acid could damage his tiles," she says. "When I did cry, as I couldn't help it, he grabbed me on my neck, choked me and he pushed my head under the tap in a basin." Eventually, Kampusch says, Priklopil allowed her into the main part of the house...
...that Bernanke has gotten us past the crisis, inflation hawks and doves alike are trashing him for unbalancing the Fed's "dual mandate" to stabilize prices and maximize employment. The mostly right-leaning hawks rail about Helicopter Ben, Zimbabwe Ben and the Villain of the Year, whose cheap printed money is driving us to hyperinflation. It's true that Bernanke drove interest rates down to zero and tripled the Fed's balance sheet to avert a depression; he has also bought more than $1 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities to lower mortgage rates, boost housing prices and pull...
Read "Why Ben Bernanke Is Still Right for the Fed...
...rest of the answer is that Bernanke believes a Fed chairman needs to act like he's worried about inflation - and actually worry about inflation - even when he doesn't think it's around the corner. Inflation fears may not be justified by data today, but they can be self-fulfilling tomorrow, and the hawks who harbor them are quite influential on Wall Street. If markets and Chinese bondholders start to lose confidence in the value of the U.S. dollar, that could trigger another panic, regardless of the rationality of their fears. A little inflation might be a good thing...
...disagree. The fact that doves think he's obsessed with inflation and unconcerned with jobs while hawks think the opposite is not proof that he has found appropriate middle ground. And he shouldn't be confirmed just because markets are freaking out that he might not be. But Fed chairmen are supposed to be apolitical, analytical and data-driven; Bernanke is all those things, and he did, after all, save the world. If Republicans don't want to give Obama a victory, they should think of Bernanke as one of Bush's best appointees. And if Democrats want to distance...