From the Desk of Keith Fitz-Gerald: December 20, 2009

Bernanke's Man of the Year Award Is Insulting Good morning. If there was ever any doubt that Bernanke is going to go down in history as more like Bob Uecker (baseball's loveable hack) than Hank Aaron (a true baseball legend), Time's Man of the Year Award should just about clinch it. Not only has Bernanke nearly single handedly overseen a fivefold increase in lending capacity and more than doubled the national debt to $2.2 trillion within the last two years, but together with his sidekick, Turbo Tim Geithner, he's obligated our unborn great, great, great grandchildren to payments they can't possibly make - ever. The only thing Bernanke has done during his tenure is guarantee that every American will see their economic future gobbled up by increasingly scarce economic resources and an increasingly unstable dollar whose long-term fundamentals have been destroyed. Period. The Fed is supposed to be independent of banks and politics as well as the markets. At the same time, based on nothing more than the memory of the Fed's Depression-era mistakes, Bernanke's engaged in the reckless pursuit of bailouts and financial "engineering" (and I'm trying to be polite here because he is the sitting Fed Chairman) that benefits the big boys - big business, big banks, big autos, big everything. Don't be fooled for a minute by the fact that Bank of America, Citi and even Wells Fargo are paying back their TARP funding. Yes it's good news and yes it makes for positive market conditions. But remember, it's business as usual for those guys. The only reason they're paying back their funding is because they don't want the bonus restrictions or further Fed meddling. Nothing's changed. In reality, big banks just played the biggest round of liar's poker in history. By going to Washington and pleading for their very survival, they created the perception that their future was essential to ours. And Bernanke bought it hook, line and sinker despite the fact that history is littered with failed financial institutions. What people fail to realize is that the big banks were making the ultimate bet that regulators, legislators and Fed would not have the guts or be intelligent enough to do the thorough house cleaning that the markets wanted to do. And, unbelievably, the big guys won. Meanwhile, average Americans continue to be treated like indigent morons by the very institutions whose collective rear ends we just bailed out of the hoosegow. Credit is tough to come by unless you're doing cash for clunkers, cash for big business or soon, cash for caulkers. Evidently, bailouts are great if you encourage spending by creating incentives that cause consumers to go further into debt! I find it more than a little ironic that Time named Bernanke Man of the Year for having saved the day when the Fed's failure to adequately supervise the nation's banking system was a significant causal factor in the meltdown. Did Time's editors somehow miss that or do they not understand the economic reality of $2.2 trillion in debt either? My guess is both. As my colleague Martin Hutchinson put it this week, "neither a one-shot wonder nor truly evil, [Bernanke] fits best into the category of losers, people whose achievements seem plausible at the time, but over the long term come to be recognized as spurious, causing more harm than good." Best regards, Keith Editor's Note: Fed Chairman Bernanke may have put the entire US economic system in a state of Fiscal Hangover - but your investments don't have to suffer. In fact, some people are getting very rich off the financial crisis. In Keith's just-published book, Fiscal Hangover: How to Profit from the New Global Economy, Keith shows you: The six prime countries where you should focus your search for value and growth (including one that no one ever talks about)... The specific market sectors and industries that are likely to lead the way in those countries - and the world as a whole... Five unstoppable trends you'll want to target with your global investment strategy... and much more... Think of Fiscal Hangover as your "graduate course" in the new global economy. Order it online (and save $10 in the process) by clicking here.

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