Tune In For The Big Finale

Counterfeiter-in-Chief Ben Bernanke testified to the Senate on Thursday.

The job of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, as it has evolved in the 94 years since the Fed's creation, is to create the money and credit to enable the shameless and criminal borrowing and spending of the federal government.

He did his job so well in his first year that bank credit grew by $809 billion in 2006, or 10.8 percent. M2, a measure of money supply, ballooned by 9 percent annualized in the last 20 weeks. M3, a broader measure of money so gluttonously swollen the Fed no longer publishes the number, grew by more than 11 percent, according to private economists.

This is new money created by the banks under the Fed's direction to benefit the government and themselves. If you or I did it, federal prosecutors would call it counterfeiting.

It is no less criminal when bankers and politicians do it. They get away with it because they make the law and control the courts and guns to enforce it, and the citizenry is enthralled in the newest season of "American Idol," in which fat and/or talentless people are ridiculed and humiliated.

At least, that's the part I enjoy. About 37 million others dug it, too.

Fewer tuned in to Bernanke's testimony, which is just as well. Much of the population is on drugs now. If everybody watched the head banker talking with politicians, 100 percent of the population would take up crack.

Bernanke wore his studied brow and warned senators of the dire consequences facing federal finances if they did not address the runaway expense of Social Security and Medicare. This is like warning a drunk he might hit a tree.

But senators took it seriously, pronounced to the press that they sure hoped the American people took it seriously, then reported to the Senate floor to pass six bills seriously raising government spending.

Bernanke returned to the fetid bowels of the Fed to counterfeit the money to pay for it.

After all, the banker and senators agreed inflation is under control.

The official government fantasy number for the consumer price index (CPI) is 2.5 percent for 2006. Neither the banker nor senators addressed the yawning gap between double-digit money growth and alleged single-digit price inflation.

On the contrary, they discussed how the CPI might be overstated, and it really should be perhaps 1 percent lower. This would imply that prices went up only 1.5 percent.

These people are on the public payroll. We get to pay their full-salary pensions and medical care till the day they die.

Happily, they are concerned about our old age, too.

Bernanke told senators the unified budget deficit fell from $319 billion in 2005 to $248 billion in 2006. The "unified" budget includes Social Security tax collections, which currently exceed payouts to recipients.

Excluding Social Security taxes, the budget deficit was $434 billion. In other words, Congress blew the $186 billion Social Security surplus. They spent it. They stashed nothing away for our retirement. Not a single zinc cent. They put it all on the public credit card.

This news should have lit a citizen uprising, the sacking of Washington and the burning of the Capitol to the ground.

What will happen?

Dramatically higher taxes. Draconian cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Raging inflation. Take your pick.

The federal government, which now consumes 20 percent of the production of the country, will need to consume more than half, at which time a minority must work to support a fat and/or talentless majority.

Tune in this episode within a decade. Somebody will be ridiculed, humiliated and horribly disappointed.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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