Baltimore — I admit that I probably spend more time discussing the realm of politics than I should in a contrarian investing newsletter. But in my defense, politics play a larger role in our personal wealth now than they ever have before.

But while I so stubbornly poke holes in the political machine in Washington, I must avoid being hypocritical. If I shame our legislators for disregarding the democratic keystone principals of checks and balances, I must be careful to avoid the same pitfalls.

Ben Bernanke is a dubious choice to be named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine. While Time’s Managing Editor Richard Stengel credits him with recognizing early and reacting appropriately to the ongoing financial crisis, in reality, he was wrong time and again with both his predictions and his remedies. Just remember these gems…

I confess… I got it wrong with gold.

 Goldman Sachs Would Have Collapsed If Not For Henry Paulson.

How many times have you heard, “the economy won’t turn around until banks start lending?” It’s so damn obvious…

Time magazine has again demonstrated its irrelevance in the Internet age with a fatuous feature called “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis.”

One of the follies of the Bush administration was the notion that the class of money-shufflers who got us into the credit crunch could somehow be trusted to get us out of it.  Which is what makes the Obama administration such a breath of fresh — oh, wait, never mind.

If you were in charge of risk management at a company that imploded due to over-leveraging, you might expect a tough time finding a new job. Not Michael Alix though. The former chief risk officer at Bear Stearns has just been hired by the Fed to advise on bank regulation. No joke.

More from Andrew Snyder at Today’s Financial News:

In one of the latest what-were-you-thinking moves, the Federal Reserve just announced it has hired Michael Alix as a bank regulation advisor.

Who the heck is Michael Alix, you ask? He is the former chief risk officer at Bear Stearns, a company that thought risk-management was an oxymoron. Essentially, he is the guy that allowed Bear Stearns to get so over-leveraged, it collapsed under…

More than one-seventh of all the silver bullion ‘thought to exist’ in the whole world was suddenly bought up in less than a year, and yet the price of silver has been pounded down to less than 10 bucks an ounce? No wonder I am so bullish on silver!

Ben Stein is such a juicy target to beat up when he’s wrong.  Which is frequently.  I’m shocked I’ve done it only once before.  Beating him up is like beating up Kudlow, Cavuto, — heck, all of the Team Bush apologists who wouldn’t recognize genuine free-market capitalism if it bit them in the ass — all at once.