"Economic growth is not an end in itself, but policy makers pursue it because richer countries are better able to provide health, jobs and a clean environment for their people," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Saturday in a commencement address to the graduating class at the University of South Carolina.
What Mr. Benanke left out was the modifier that those countries with strong socialist democracies, working in concert with nationally supported, taxed and regulated industries, such as Finland and Norway, far surpass other rich countries in providing for quality-of-life needs of their citizens. Of course, he was a Northern intellectual in South Carolina. He may have been afraid of being tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail.
My question is: Mr. Bernanke, when you were sitting by and watching your Wall Street friends ruining the American and world economies, did you caution them about the higher values and ethics of providing for the people with more regulation and higher taxes? Or were you hedging your own political bets?
