Some good points certainly. The unlucky/stupid sentence in the last paragraph is great.

When you ask, "How's it been workin' out fer ya so far?" I would say better than if we didn't have a central bank. There has not been a depression in this country in nearly 70 years. Before that, they happened roughly every 20 years. In this sense, I'm more of a monetarist than a Keynesian. I don't trust a government to do this at all.

However, an independent central bank -- with the power to save failing banks -- seems to be the best solution we have going right now. The 'bailout' has different actors with, supposedly, a similar goal to Fed action. It is a US Treasury (i.e. government) led effort to restore confidence by providing good cash for rotten assets to many banks all at one time. Given the motivation of the actors, the bi-partisan nature and the current credit market collapse, I'm in favor of it right now. (Here, I might understand the Keynesian comment). Without a bailout, the risks of a global economic collapse are very high.

(I didn't mean to imply all lending had stopped, but that lending via commercial paper and inter-bank lending had effectively stopped. As of yesterday, it doesn't seem to have resumed. Many companies with good balance sheets are scrambling.)