The 19th-Century Bernanke: Featured on Mises.org

My article The 19th-Century Bernanke (originally posted here) is featured today on the Ludwig von Mises Institute web site.  Here are the links for...

• the article
• comments
• MP3 audio file (read by Floy Lilley)

I hope you will enjoy reading or listening to it.

Here's an excerpt

Like Ben Bernanke today, Nicholas Biddle cultivated the veneer of a benign civil servant calculating serenely far above the political fray. In reality he, like Bernanke, was up to his neck in the backroom game of power.

When Biddle's bureaucratic cradle was rocked, he quickly morphed into a Machiavellian monster. Keep that in mind as Ben Bernanke gets progressively cornered by Ron Paul and the bourgeoning anti-Fed movement.

When you hear about the Federal Reserve Transparency Act getting stalled in committee, think of Daniel Webster, bought and paid for with central bank money. When you read Fed apologia in the New York Times, The Economist, and the Wall Street Journal denouncing the "reckless populism" of the Act, think of the newspaper editors in Biddle's pocket.