FT.com / US / Economy & Fed - Bernanke reappointed for second term.
Ben Bernanke was reappointed on Tuesday by President Barack Obama for a second four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Bernanke was meant to be the great expert on depressions.
He didn't call this one's coming.
He ha not delivered reform.
Why keep him? It's a missed opprtunity for reform.
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Hard for your readers to know whether this is an Utopian comment or a real world comment. If it is meant as real world comment, you should name the person who is 1)better suited to the job and 2)abel to have a successful confirmation hearing. Do not forget the second one.
It is utopian – in part
I am pointing out a failure in thinking – and that alternatives needed to have been explored
Maybe they were – and I note the Guardian today suggests there were alternatives (see its editorial which I’ve now seen)
The parcticalities were not my concern
I think this is quite a tough one. Paul Krugman – who has argued for a much bigger fiscal stimulus than the US has so far delivered – argued on his blog yesterday that Bernanke’s response to the crisis – once it broke – was reasonably radical within the confines of what the Fed can actually do (i.e. setting US interest rates). He was slow to see the crisis coming (as was almost everybody) but once it arrived, he was pretty aggressive in cutting rates – more so than the UK and certainly more so than the ECB (which seems to still be obsessed with the phantom inflation threat.)
There are severe systemic problems with the way the US financial sector operates to be sure, but Fed Chairman is not the most important cog in the wheel; a higher priority would be the replacement of Tim Geither as Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers as chief economic adviser, both of whom are too wedded to orthodoxy to countenance fundamental reforms. Actually, what Obama should have done is moved Summers to the Fed and given the Chief Economic Adviser job to someone like Krugman or James Galbraith. THEN things would have begun to get interesting.