Bernanke knows that both parties are interested in or at least resigned to passing an austerity budget that will hit in the second half of the year, creating that self-defeating “sharp fiscal consolidation” in the near term. About the best he could do with a cover story is to blame slow growth in the first half of the year on the Japanese earthquake.

Arguments supporting design of the Fed mirror arguments in favor of dictatorship.

A higher inflation target would, according to the experts, mean more jobs and a stronger recovery. I think people would live with higher oil prices if it meant they had a job. But Bernanke won’t do that.

One reporter finally raised the issue. “What can do you to increase the pace of job creation, and why aren’t you doing it,” was essentially the meat of the question.

And Bernanke answered that, while he has been engaged in extraordinary efforts to aid the economy, he had to be concerned about inflation as well. So basically, the Fed is failing at one of their mandates (maximizing employment) because they’re worried about their other mandate (price stability)… which they are ALSO FAILING AT!

The press conference from a public official that actually matters today is not happening in the White House or on a tarmack in New Hampshire. Right now, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke is taking questions from reporters. It’s the first time in history that a Fed Chair is holding a press conference, but it comes at a difficult time in the history of the Fed.

Tomorrow, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will give an unprecedented press conference after the Federal Open Market Committee releases a statement from their April meeting. Whether Bernanke is trying this to increase transparency or reassure investors with his command of the issues or build public trust in the institution, or whether he’s just making a bad decision, this represents the never-before-seen opportunity for the media to actually question Bernanke about his views on the economy, monetary policy, inflation and jobs. This comes at a time when the Fed is failing to reach both inflation or employment targets for three years running, so Bernanke has a lot to answer for.

Andy Kroll and Nick Baumann have some ideas about what Bernanke should be asked, and I thought I’d comment as well.

Not only is Republican Paul Ryan’s Medicare privatization plan using basically the same general premium-supported exchange design that Obama’s health care revision does for the uninsured under 65, but both Ryan’s budget and “Obamacare” are nearly totally reliant on almost the same pathetic accounting trick of using poorly indexed caps on federal health care spending in the distant future to produce the bulk of their supposed deficit reductions.

The GDP release for the first quarter of the year, which ends on Thursday, will come out in a matter of weeks. And the same analysts who upgraded on the tax cut deal are now downgrading on this news. And that’s before the likely government shutdown on April 8, which will affect the second quarter.

One of the first stories to replace the killings in Tucson and the national response as the lead story in the New York Times has been upheaval in Tunisia, a country I suspect most Americans could find only with assistance from Google Maps. But there’s a painful connection to the common topic of how societies struggle to bring change against what they consider unjust, repressive regimes.

The current right-wing movement against the Fed plays against a backdrop of fake class resentment and goldbuggery. There are significant and proper reasons to criticize the Fed – for one, easing doesn’t seem to be working – but the inflation argument is seriously off the mark, and the broader push to eliminate the Fed’s maximum employment mandate is just a recipe for favoring the rich at all times, at all costs.