faulty intelligence is the fig leaf of evil
Over at Crooks and Liars, Susie Madrak writes that Ben Bernanke “squeaked through” his re-nomination in the Senate. The vote was 70 to 30. In almost any other context, that would be seen as an overwhelming majority. So what’s the difference? My sense is that this reading of the vote – reading, that is, a supermajority+ as if it were closely contested – is an expression of the degree to which the two-party system is generally aligned with the dominant financial powers represented by the Fed. Bernanke “squeaked through” only relative to the unbroken history of bi-partisan support for the Fed. That this vote was still well beyond a supermajority (60-40), even in light of the Fed’s catastrophic ‘failure’ (all predictable malefic consequences of institutional corruption are referred to, at worst, as ‘failure’) to restrict the development of Casino Capitalism, is a ringing testament to how uncritical this bi-partisan support is. Or put in another way: it is a testament to how intimately the two-party system serves the interests of the dominant financial class.
