If Ben Bernanke’s epitaph is going to be “We could raise interest in 11 minutes if we have to,” what will be written on his successor’s tombstone? How about “Blames World.” That is the headline up today on the Drudge Report. It links to a dispatch of the Agence France Press on Janet Yellen’s growing concerns over a worsening financial situation less than two months after she raised interest rates as a sign of confidence in the improving economy.

What an opportunity for Senator Ted Cruz, who has emerged as the Republican candidate on the cutting edge of the monetary issue. It is a chance to mark the predicament in which the Fed — and the rest of America — has landed in the Age of Fiat Money. One minute it raises interest rates, the next minute it starts waffling. The logic of its policy of a central bank headquarters that employs 300 economists eludes the public. And the chairman turns around and blames it on the rest of the world.

The story, pegged to Mrs. Yellen’s semi-annual testimony yesterday to the House Financial Services Committee, is best seen as underscoring the logic of the Congress asserting itself in respect of monetary policy. She told the committee that, as AFP summarized it, “the outlook for the U.S. economy had become more cloudy.” She was mum on interest rates, but AFP reported that analysts reckon “her concerns lowered the possibility of an increase in its next policy meeting in March.”

Blah. Blah. Blah. What Mr. Cruz can mark here is that the Congress is way ahead of Mrs. Yellen. He can underline the importance of the fact that the House has already passed and sent to the Senate the Fed Oversight Reform and Modernization Act, which would open up for inspection and oversight the Fed’s formation of monetary policy — and, importantly, its dealings overseas. Mrs. Yellen’s blaming the rest of the world for the Fed’s failings makes that legislation seem all the more farsighted.

This, in our opinion, needs to be explained in a major speech, and who better than Mr. Cruz to do it? He has already declared for reform, ideally with a dollar defined in terms of gold. His campaign of constitutional principles is made-to-order for this issue, and vice versa. But the monetary issue cannot be pressed with glancing references. What needs to be explained is that we’re coming up on half a century since the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system, the last monetary regime to tie the dollar to gold.

What good did the default do us? The unemployment rate has soared, the bankruptcy rate, too, and the inequality rate has been moving upward (after a long downward trend). The Senate is getting set to decide whether to back a far-reaching and ongoing audit of the Federal Reserve, to repeal Humphrey Hawkins, which gives the Fed authority to focus on the unemployment rate, and the establishment of a monetary commission to review the successes and failures of the Fed’s first century.

The New York Sun has no interest in letting the rest of the world off the hook. It has its own responsibilities for its own fate, and America’s fate will always be entwined with other lands. Someone needs to say, though, that the Fed is the author of its own failures. Someone needs to say what a sorry spectacle it is for Mrs. Yellen to make a move on interest rates in December and blame the rest of the world in February. Mr. Cruz is the man to mark this point.