I think the White House has been brilliant just this once. The nonsense about Larry Summers being the leading candidate to replace Ben Bernanke as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is an elaborate ploy designed to do one thing: avoid real questions about the Fed.

Think of it. Summer is the perfect sacrificial lamb: no one really likes him. Throw his name out there and let the predictable feeding frenzy start, focusing on his disdain for women, his awful tenure as president of Harvard, not to mention that infamous memo about shipping toxic waste to the Third World.

So, let all that rip through the chattering classes — and, then, nominate someone else, probably Janet Yellin, the current Fed Vice Chair. And, after all, that you get a U.S. Senate that will mostly be silent on the questions about the Fed. Besides that rabid dog Rand Paul, who would, then, confront a nominee who is a woman viewed as qualified? The Republican Party? Mitch McConnell who faces a potentially tough general election running against a young woman? Democrats, who don’t want to make life tougher than it already is for the president?

But, wait, there are serious questions to be asked. I can think of two.

First, why the hell did the Fed, while Yellin was Vice Chair, agree to loan $16 trillion to American and foreign banks, as Bernie Sanders discovered:

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

Those were loans to anyone who showed up — low interest loans to banks around the world even if those banks were not in trouble. You’d have to be a fool not to line up for that money.

Second, when will the Fed start fulfilling its role — set forth in its charter — to create full employment? No one ever mentions that anymore. It seems so quaint.

But, none of those questions will be seriously dealt with. Because of the Summers head fake.