Bernie Sanders on Colbert: "Ben & Jerry Would Be Better Than Ben Bernanke"

Last night on The Colbert Report, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., joked that even "Ben & Jerry" would make a better Federal Reserve Board chairman than Ben Bernanke.

Sadly, he's got a point. Just about anybody, even a bunch of hippies making ice cream in Vermont, could serve the public better than Bernanke has.

Bernanke was asleep at the switch as Wall Street plundered the entire economy and failed to warn the public about an $8 trillion housing bubble. He was an advocate for a deregulation policy that led directly to the collapse of the American economy.

Finally, the Federal Reserve has put Americans on the hook for $12 trillion in public funds to prop up failing Wall Street banks. Yet the public has no means of reviewing where exactly all the money went. The Campaign for America's Future has launched a bipartisan campaign, including people such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Taxpayer Reform, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, John Tate of the Campaign for Liberty, and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research to make Bernanke open the books before he is confirmed for another term as Fed chairman.

Letting Wall Street run wild is what allowed Main Street to get trampled. The Senate must not approve Bernanke's re-appointment to the Fed without first looking at the books. Email your senators here to say "Before You Appoint Ben, Audit Ben."

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future