Laugh 'till you cry

OK, nobody comes out looking good here. You may have heard that U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat who has represented Ohio residents living in Toledo and other communities along Lake Erie since 1982, was very excited about her chance to grill Fed Chair Ben Bernanke about all the money he made as CEO of Goldman Sachs when Bernanke came to testify before the House Budget Committee Thursday.

Only problem there is that before he was named to the Fed's governing board in 2002 and sworn in as Fed Chairman in 2006, Bernanke was an economics professor at Princeton University and chairman of the school's economics department. Kaptur had Bernanke mixed up with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who was Goldman Sachs' chairman and CEO before tapped for his current job in the summer of 2006.

What I like about this clip is that Kaptur is also incorrectly identified as "Senator Kaptur." So let's count the ways this is hilarious, depending on your world view:

1. We have somebody who's been in Congress going on 26 years who appears not to understand that the Federal Reserve Chairman and the Secretary of the Treasury are different people.

2. We have a major news media outlet where nobody seems to be aware that Marcy Kaptur has been in Congress for going on 26 years -- AS A MEMBER OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

3. We have a guy who's been an academic most of his life in charge of U.S. monetary policy, and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs telling lenders they need to freeze the rates on all those crazy loans they made before he became Secretary of the Treasury.

And we wonder how we got into this mess? It's only funny for a second, though. As mortgage broker and syndicated columnist Lou Barnes observes today, "This week's political theater failed to reassure anybody." Barnes writes:

"Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke testified to the House on Thursday; stocks sank from the moment he began, after he left, and until the end of the day. He was true to form: bland, passive and void of insightful conclusion. He may know exactly what he is doing, and it may be correct, but he drains confidence from a room like an open window in an igloo."

All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.