Bernanke the Beard Keeping it Real Clear on "60 Minutes"

In a smart move, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke takes to "60 Minutes" on CBS and explains the reasoning and rationale for much of the government action.

The big news of the day is centered around A.I.G. and the contractually required yet obscene payments being made by that company to certain employees. Everyone is appropriately outraged and expecting the government to do something rather Soviet, like break the contracts.

Of course when you do things like that, you ended up with situations like that taking place in Russia, where a Siberian court is stripping a Norwegian firm of its stake in a Russian joint venture. This is making investors in Russia rightfully jittery. Paints a rather interesting contrast with China. China, the communist nation, is by and large pushing for regulation and responsible economic policy and clarity, while the ostensibly free Russia practices a rather murky version of capitalism that ends with all funds flowing to central authorities.

Already jittery investors were alarmed on Thursday when a Norwegian cellphone company announced that a Siberian court had seized its multibillion-dollar investment in a Russian joint venture and would turn it over to a company thought to be allied with a Russian oligarch.

The decision signaled an escalation in a long-running dispute between the Norwegian company, Telenor, and the Alfa Group, an alliance of Russian businessmen that was also at the center of a separate fight with the British oil giant BP last summer. That dispute also shook faith in the Russian market. 

Russia’s stock market fell on the news of the asset seizure.

(N.Y. Times)

Clearly the Obama Administration is also attempting to make the workings of the Fed less opaque to the casual observer, and that's a good move. We get some nice background on Bernanke and his working his way through Harvard. If a guy with a 1590 on his SAT's can't solve our problems, the various politicians and pontificators certainly won't.

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Also, nice interview with Alice Waters on "60 Minutes".  She is indeed a bit of a utopian but the ideas are worthy. It's people with vision, and who are a bit extreme, who serve to institute necessary changes in society. Improving how and what Americans eat, and establishing a connection to the bounty of the land is truly important, even if the actual application will be in scaled down form.