"The Fed is Lending to 'Foreigners' instead of Americans!"

All of the people praising Alan Grayson for his gotcha questioning of Ben Bernanke might want to reconsider. Some deserved Economics of Contempt:

Dear God, Alan Grayson is a Tool, Economics of Contempt:  I just saw this video, which shows Rep. Alan Grayson questioning Ben Bernanke during his Humphrey-Hawkins testimony, and was being promoted by Zero Hedge and others a couple days ago. It's embarrassing....for Grayson.

He asks Bernanke about the currency swap lines that the Fed established with other central banks during the financial crisis, which he clearly doesn't understand (although he obviously thinks he does). He harps on the fact that Bernanke doesn't know which foreign financial institutions "got the money." Of course Bernanke doesn't know that. The Fed entered into currency swaps with foreign central banks, like the ECB and the BoE. Who those central banks then lent the dollars to is irrelevant—the Fed doesn't bear the credit risk of loans made by other central banks. The Fed only bears the credit risk of the central banks it established swap lines with, which, obviously, is vanishingly small.

Grayson then focuses on the Fed's swap line with New Zealand's central bank, which is where the wheels really come off the wagon. He apparently thinks a swap is the same thing as a loan, and that the Fed extended $9bn of credit to New Zealanders, which he considers an outrage (the Fed is lending to "foreigners" instead of Americans!). Of course, he doesn't even get his facts right (which is what happens when you hire people with no experience on Capitol Hill as Senior Policy Advisors). The Fed's swap facility with New Zealand central bank is $15bn, not $9bn, and more importantly, NZ's central bank never even drew on its swap line, which has $0 outstanding (pdf):

Grayson arrogantly laughs when Bernanke denies that the expansion of the swap lines on September 18th caused the dollar to rise 20%, which is amusing because the swap lines relieved the extraordinarily high demand for dollars from foreign financial institutions.

The best part of the video is when Barney Frank (easily my favorite Congressman) cuts Grayson off, which draws another of his arrogant laughs. Maybe Grayson should go back to losing millions in Ponzi schemes.