Ben S. Bernanke is a noted American Economist with degrees in Economics from Harvard and MIT, past professorships at Stanford, NYU, MIT and Princeton, experience as a member of the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors, and experience as past Chairman of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors; furthermore, Bernanke is a "Depression Scholar" (Grunwald, 2009) whose "main academic focus was the central role of monetary policy and the Fed in creating the catastrophe" (Grunwald, 2009). Appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board on February 1, 2006 during the Bush Administration, Bernanke was reappointed to a second term during the Obama Administration by 70-30 Senate vote on January 28, 2010 (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2012). Bernanke's reappointment was reportedly "contentious" and he was reappointed by the smallest margin ever for Federal Chair confirmation (Binder, 2010). Given our slow economic recovery, questions have arisen about Bernanke's acts, omissions and possible lack of aggressiveness needed to stimulate economic recovery and lower unemployment rates.
Analysis
Ben Bernanke Does Not Pose a Threat to the U.S. Economy
Bernanke is good for the U.S. economy. First, he has the education, experience and special focus on the Depression to intimately understand...
Secondly, he takes bold moves when necessary and helped avert a full-blown Depression. When Time celebrated Bernanke as "the most powerful nerd on the planet" (Grunwald, 2009) and named him Person of the Year for 2009, it did so because Bernanke "didn't just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy" (Grunwald, 2009) and "His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression" (Grunwald, 2009). Finally, he also withstands criticism and apparently does not act for purely political or "popular" reasons. Bernanke has been severely criticized by Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times, Paul Krugman, for failing to act aggressively enough to stimulate the country's economic growth while lowering our unemployment figures. Acknowledging the limited options available to Bernanke, Krugman believes Bernanke should raise our inflation target rate from 2% (Gustin, 2012). Krugman points to Bernanke's own professorial suggestion that Japan use exactly the same tactic in 2000. However, Bernanke counters with the fact that we are not dealing with deflation (falling prices) as Japan was in 2000 (Gustin, 2012). In addition, Gustin astutely compares the…
The U.S. economy is currently downshifting. Real GDP appears to be growing nearly 2% annualized -- at most -- in the current quarter. This rate is down from 3% during the first half of 2010 (before impending downward revisions), and 4% during the second half of 2009. Weakening support from the monetary and fiscal stimulus, the fading inventory rotation in manufacturing, and the consequences from Europe's debt crisis are an
Despite the fact that it also required heroic efforts on the part of Congress and the President, Time even gives credit to Bernanke for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) (Grunwald 2009, p.4). Many, if not most of these decisions were profoundly unpopular and cost both the Obama and Bush Administration as well as Congress a great deal of political collateral. The relatively isolated Bernanke did not have
The economy began to contract still further immediately after the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Fears that Roosevelt would devalue the dollar or even abolish the Gold Standard caused both domestic and foreign investors to once again to "convert dollars to gold, putting pressure on both the banking system and the gold reserves of the Federal Reserve System. Bank failures and the Fed's defensive measures against the gold drain
" To that end, the Treasury Department would limit executive compensation for institutions receiving "exceptional assistance" (Geithner and Summers, 2009). Troubles continued in the financial sector -- both Citigroup and the Bank of America needed second rounds of capital infusions, and federal guarantees against losses totaling tens of billions more -- while Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned that more capital injections might be needed to further stabilize the
Business Economics Vincent There is a process by which there is both a decrease in the number of jobs that is increasing, and this is coupled with a global transfer of jobs to less developed countries. Both of these have an impact in the decrease in availability of jobs in the advanced countries. The latest news on this front is from the United States. On the 5th of the current month, there
Although the general standard is broadly acknowledged, there is a difference about the quality and extent of the teaching. It could be said that some support a decidedly unitary official while others support a feebly unitary official. The previous aggregation contends that Congress' energy to meddle with intra-official choice making is constrained and that the President can control approach making by all official offices inside the cutoff points set for