This week, senior officials at the Federal Reserve cited the need for further cash infusions into the weaker financial institutions, even as one of the original TARP recipients, Citigroup announced the sale of a controlling stake in its retail brokerage unit, Smith Barney, to Morgan Stanley to bolster its capital position. Citi has already gotten $45 billion in cash and a government guarantee for up to $300 billion in losses on its balance sheet. So the bank’s need for more cash doesn’t inspire much confidence that the TARP funds have been well spent.

Same plan, different day.

Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve, has “warned” Congress that “fiscal stimulus packages,” meaning social spending and tax policies to increase purchasing power, will not be a long-term solution to the “credit crisis.” Rather, he has suggested that more extensive bank bailouts may be necessary.

Bernanke wasn’t opposing the present bailout with his remarks, but it is or should be obvious that he is still thinking in terms of reviving the financial system that he inherited from Alan Greenspan. Notably, Bernanke failed to talk about serious new regulation of the financial services industry or any serious connection between finance capital “bailouts” and the job and income security except “old time trickle down religion” which was good enough for Coolidge and Hoover, Reagan, Clinton, and the two Bush presidents.

Congress should write a new national banking act that makes the chair of the Federal Reserve directly accountable to Congress and the President and gives the President with the consent of Congress the right to remove Federal Reserve chairs. It is also time to have the Federal Reserve work in concert with the Treasury and the federal government as a whole as part of a national economic program.

Return to the drawing board and start over…remember it is time to change…then start with the Fed.