For the Same Reason You Don't Piss Off Your Waiter

Because he will piss in your soup.

Congressional repugs have dissed and dismissed Ben Bernanke nonstop for two years. Ignored and humiliated him. Let him waste his breath begging congressional repugs to behave like sentient lawmakers, and done exactly the opposite of what he recommended.

Now they might just have pushed him too far.

Steve Benen:

... the Fed chair has spent the last several months pleading with GOP lawmakers not to cut spending in ways that that would hurt economic growth (Republicans have ignored his advice, just as they ignored him on the debt-ceiling fiasco). This morning, he repeated that plea and went slightly further, not only denouncing job-killing spending cuts, but recommending additional government intervention to prevent a downturn. “We need to make sure that the recovery continues and doesn’t drop back,” he told the Joint Economic Committee.

Bernanke didn’t explicitly endorse additional stimulus, but he didn’t leave many doubts either, pressing lawmakers for federal spending policies that “support growth.”

Congressional Republicans, for whatever reason, don’t seem to care, haven’t even considered any jobs bills this year, and have already vowed to kill a credible and bipartisan White House plan. Perhaps it’s because improving the economy isn’t in their “interests”?

I don't think Ben Bernanke actually gives a flying fuck about anyone who's not rich. He does, however, care deeply about his reputation as fed chair - a reputation that congressional repugs are shredding. They're making him look like a helpless, impotent bureaucrat. I'd say he's on the verge of proving to them that when it comes to manipulating the economy for political ends, he is far more powerful than they are.

I think Bernanke is about one insult away from flipping the switch on the printing presses and dropping a trillion or so bucks from helicopters onto the heads of poor and working-class Americans, who will spend every dime of it immediately on consumer goods, thus goosing the economy, creating millions of jobs and eliminating the deficit just in time for the 2012 election. I'm thinking 400 electoral votes for Obama, 350 dems in the House and 65 in the Senate.

And repugs will have no one to blame but themselves.