How about the "crusade" about how the Federal Reserve operates, which is most often in favor of Big Banks (because they're Too Big and Too Systemically Important to Fail), and the connection between Wall Street and Main Street (when it comes to housing and monetizing debt)?

8) Do not confuse absence of volatility with absence of risks. Recall how conventional metrics of using volatility as an indicator of stability has fooled Bernanke—as well as the banking system.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed...1?pagenumber=1

Several Fed officials have stressed in recent days that they would favor more quantitative easing, or QE3.
On Thursday night, Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo, who has left monetary policy to other officials as he focused on regulation of financial markets, gave an impassioned speech advocating more mortgage-backed securities purchases.
“I believe we should move back up toward the top of the list of [easing] options the large-scale purchase of additional mortgage-backed securities,” Tarullo said in a speech at Columbia University.
Tarullo portrayed the labor market in grim terms.


Ressler noted that there would be deep opposition on the Fed to more quantitative easing.
Michelle Girard, senior economist at RBS Securities, said she doubted that any more purchases of mortgage-backed securities would cure the economy’s ills.
The Fed purchased $1.25 trillion of asset-backed securities from 2009 until March 2010.
“I don’t think buying mortgages is going to bring down the interest rate on a mortgage and even if it did, I don’t think it would have much impact on the housing sector,” Girard said.
The Fed risks looking powerless, she added.
“The more they do and the more things don’t improve, I think raises the risk that policy-makers appear impotent,” Girard said.


What would buying MORE MBSs accomplish, besides letting investment banks (or proprietary trading desks) use more fuzzy accounting to appear solvent, or get crap off their books? Why should the Fed hold these toxic crappy "securitized investment vehicles"? Is that even consistent with their congressional mandate?