(Fortune Magazine) -- "These are vulgar, obscene people who, in many cases, I really do believe, have serious emotional problems. In this country we have people who have drug problems, people who have alcohol problems."

Just who are the addicts that Bernie Sanders, his white hair mussed, is getting all worked up about on this frigid Washington afternoon? "Compulsive moneymakers," he says. And Sanders, Vermont's independent junior senator and a onetime college radical who still pockets an authentic 1920 EUGENE DEBS FOR PRESIDENT key chain, is just getting started.

He saves his most biting criticism for a man who stands accused of embracing, coddling, and enabling Wall Street's rampant greed: Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. "There's no doubt that Bernanke is Wall Street's guy," the senator says icily. Sanders wants to block a second Bernanke term, insisting the Fed chief has presided over a financial system that "has not been as unsafe, unsound, and unstable since the Great Depression."

On the other side of the Capitol, Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas obstetrician-turned-gold-bug, peddles his own blistering critique of Bernanke and the Fed. For three decades the libertarian Republican and former presidential candidate has blamed Federal Reserve monetary policy for creating destructive business cycles.

He has likened the relationship between the central bank and Wall Street to the slogan in George Orwell's Animal Farm. ("Everybody is equal, but remember some people are more equal than others. Now, Goldman Sachs happens to be more equal than anybody else.") Greed isn't Paul's big worry -- unlike Sanders, he's an enthusiastic capitalist.

But he tells me he's certain the Fed is engaged in "shenanigans" to underwrite the risks that those well-paid capitalists on Wall Street choose to take. And so he is promoting legislation to open the agency's operations to a congressional audit.

Less than 24 months ago mainstream Americans (and many members of Congress) rolled their eyes at such saber rattling. Indeed, the political-media establishment ignored Paul when he jawboned Fed policies during the 2008 Republican primary. But then came the 2008 financial crash, the world turned, and the nation's central bank lost its aura of invincibility.

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