Business Insider has made a list of ‘The
13 People Who Are Destroying The Global Economy’. I agree with
most of the list, but not the reasons. The most notable example of
this is Business Insider’s fourth choice, Ben Bernanke.

I am not going to disagree with the lovely people at BI that
Bernanke is up there with Obama and Draghi as one of the most
dangerous people influencing the world economy, but the
justification is misplaced:

Bernanke has also received criticism from
economists like Paul Krugman for not engaging in enough
monetary easing to boost the economy further. Krugman wrote
recently in New York Times Magazine, “The Fed is supposed to pump
up the economy when it’s running too cold, with unemployment high
and inflation low. That’s where we are right now, in the Fed’s own
estimation. Yet the most recent minutes, from March, show Fed
officials unwilling to take any further action to boost the
economy.

Of course. Bernanke is doing too little, not too much. It is the
Federal Reserve’s lack of action that seems to earn him number four
of BI’s list that includes a seemingly contradictory group of
people including Grover Norquist, Ron Paul, Hollande, Merkel, and
Eric Cantor.

BI’s main contention with Ron Paul seems to be his opposition to
the Fed which has somehow hampered its monetary activism:

His continued insistence on slashing Government spending
has informed
the Tea Party movement, and any Republican member of Congress
that strays too far from their orthodoxy is likely to be
challenged in a primary. His rhetoric on returning to the gold
standard has politicized the
Federal Reserve, helping to constrain Ben Bernanke’s actions.
He is retiring from Congress in January, but he will continue to
use his strong grassroots network to push for smaller
government. 

BI also put David Cameron on the list, repeating the tiring myth
of his supposed ‘austerity program’.

The Federal Reserve has done a huge amount of harm, and Bernanke
deserves to be on any list of ‘The 13 People Who Are Destroying the
Global Economy’. He deserves to be on such a list for doing too
much, not too little.

Peter Schiff explained Bernanke’s dangerous role in our current
discontents to Reason back in April: