If anyone
needed proof that Generation Y will be better at running the government than
whoever is in office now, look no further than the students in the lectures Ben
Bernanke gave at George Washington University.
The students,
members of a GWU school of business class, asked questions that were entirely
more relevant and intelligent than members of Congress.
Using such
difficult words as “contagion,” “hedging” and “liquidity,“ Bernanke answered
questions on everything from international cooperation in reining in
multinational corporations to why off-balance sheet vehicles allowed banks to
keep so much information off their books. He also tackled where the Fed “draws
the line” between bailing out a bank and allowing it to fail, and what systemic
problems existed to allow credit ratings agencies to inflate their ratings.
Compare these
questions to those asked by the House Financial Services Committee. Committee
questions sounded like warring children on the playground, and the answers
Bernanke gave to the students — who obviously understood everything he was
saying quite well — made his responses to Congress sound like a first-grade
teacher explaining the function of a plus sign.
Perhaps it is
because the students actually have a passable understanding of business
economics, but these students actually listened to Bernanke’s lecture, asked
questions that were not self-serving and — surprise — stayed until the end.
By comparison,
members of the House committee frequently ask questions that are completely
unrelated to the testimony at hand to score political points with their
constituents (who, let’s be honest, are certainly not watching anyway), or ask
redundant or pointless questions to wage proxy wars via snarky commentary
morphed into the form of query.
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