As the banking regulator and monetary authority, the Fed was particularly culpable and responsible for the housing asset bubble, the collapse of which is shown in the last chart.
Their 'job' is to take away the punch bowl when the party starts getting out of hand. Instead, first Greenspan and then Bernanke fed and at times even promoted through the stifling of dissent the malinvestment and large scale banking fraud that almost brought the global economy to the brink, and the coming derivatives crisis which almost certainly will if something radical is not done about it.
They have done worse with their handling of the TBTF banks, but the impact of that remains largely in the future. And they operated under a cloak of secrecy and sometimes deception, greatly influencing economic thought through their growing bureaucracy.
The shame is that the craven Congress gave them even more power in the aftermath.
