The Grilling of the Fed Chair

James Hamilton, a renowned economist and econometrician, recently defended Chairman Bernanke from the angry, condescending attacks waged against Bernanke by several Congressmen. Being a close follower of Hamilton's blog, which can be found at www.econbrowser.com, I paid close attention the responses made by other Hamilton followers. I was immediately struck by the number of responses that were created. An average Hamilton post recieves 10 replies. This post had hundreds of replies!! I closely examined as many of them as I could and found that the vast majority were Bernanke-haters!!!
One can draw many important conclusions from comparing the amount of anti-Bernanke replies to the average amount of regular post replies. First, it shows us that people in general recieve more satisfaction from unfairly criticizing things they don't understand than they do from contemplating difficult economic theories and replying with a well-thought out response. I believe this is called Monday morning quarterbacking in the sports world. It also gives us good insight to those who are criticizing Bernanke, and might even suggest that their ethos is lacking. I say this because if you can't even come up with an intelligent response to issues that have been clearly presented and explained, why would you think that you could come up with a plan to battle the worst economic downturn in 70 years?
This leads me to the main point of this blog: Bernanke was the man with a plan. Others (inlcuding Congressman) were not. These other people became insecure and did what the average person does- belittles those with a plan to make themselves feel bigger. The repliers and Congressmen have this in common. They have no idea what they are doing, they subconciously realize this and therefore compensate for their shortcomings by tearing others down to their level.