Lies my Fed Chairman told me

I've often wondered whether Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, believes his own hype, or if he is just so personally and professionally invested in perpetuating the story of the success of the greatest bailout ever compared to the most heinous of consequences that would have befallen us without it, that it doesn't matter.  

Either way, I cringed a little inside when he told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this morning, 

"The single most important lesson of this crisis is we have to end the 'too big to fail' problem."

This coming from the man who, sat at the helm of the Fed in the fall of 2008, and approved without any conditions or questions, as per the Fed charter that equally provides for rejecting:

- The acquisition of Bear, Stearns and Washington Mutual by JPM Chase - making a big bank, bigger

- The acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America - making a big bank, bigger

- The acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo - making a big bank, bigger

- The re-classification of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into bank holding companies - making the arena of big banks, riskier

Of course, no one on the commission asked probing questions about those brainiac decisions and how or why other alternatives weren't considered, particularly given the substantial government subsidies these institutions enjoyed on the way to becoming bigger and more Fed co-dependent. No one asked specifics of what the remaining subsidies to Wall Street still are. No one asked Bernanke what he meant when he implied that the new so-called financial reform bill would reduce the possibility of too-big-to-fail in the future,  given that the Fed totally ignored the fact that 3 of the institutions above subsequently surpassed or hit the already existing 10% concentration limits that had been designed to keep a lid on the notion of 'too-big' to begin with, and given the fact the the Fed either by itself, or in its position beside the Treasury Secretary on the new Financial Oversight Council, can override most future bailout decisions anyway.

Yet, we are supposed to believe that Bernanke is concerned about 'too big to fail? Really??