Is anti-Fed feeling going mainstream?

We've told you about the war on the Federal Reserve launched lately by conservatives. And now comes evidence that it could be gaining some traction in the court of public opinion.

Fifty-five percent of Americans say the central bank should either be reined in or abolished entirely, according to a new Bloomberg poll. Thirty-seven percent say it should be left as is.

Since the Fed last month announced plans to buy $600 billion in Treasury bonds in an effort to jolt the slumbering economy, small-government conservatives have gone ballistic. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has said the move could weaken the dollar, and Sarah Palin -- not usually cited as an authority on monetary policy -- has warned that the move will lead to rising prices, going so far as to invoke the hyper-inflation of 1920s Germany.

The attacks have been so intense that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has launched a counter-offensive, going on "60 Minutes" to defend the asset purchases as a source of much-needed economic stimulus.

Conservatives appear to oppose on principle the idea of the Fed intervening in the economy to bring down unemployment. But that's part of its mandate, as laid out by Congress. That's why two Republicans -- Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana -- want to change that mandate, so that the Fed focuses only on controlling inflation, and no longer on fighting joblessness. They've said they'll introduce a bill to do that next year.

At the heart of the conservative response is the charge that the central bank, traditionally independent, is meddling in politics. "Getting the Fed back to its original mission on price stability is precisely how we get politics out of monetary policy," Pence told an audience at a recent policy forum.

It's not only conservatives who have turned against the Fed of late. The central bank angered many on both sides of the political divide by helping to prop up the major Wall Street banks as part of the government's effort to avoid a collapse of the financial sector. Last week, we learned that the Fed lent an eye-popping $9 trillion to banking behemoths including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. The information was released because Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist, successfully pushed a bill to audit the Fed.

(Photo of Bernanke: AP/Dennis Cook)