Bernanke

Jeffrey Miron (a former Michigan faculty member) is both more of a libertarian and more of a macro-economist than I am but I share his views on this one: Bernanke should be retained.

If you are going to put the economics profession in charge of the central bank, which is one way of looking at the meaning of the Fed, then you should put someone in charge that has the confidence of that profession. My casual impression coincides with Jeff Miron's, which is that the macro folk support keeping Bernanke, largely for the reasons that he lists.

If we must have a truckload of pungent populist poop from inside the Beltway, let's keep it to words rather than actions. The central bank is not something to mess around with just to score a few cheap political points. Duh.