Ben Bernanke

Ten years after the financial crisis, Robert F. Bruner surveys the best books on what went wrong and what still should be fixed.

The New Normal. Slow growth. Persistently low inflation threatening to morph into Japanese-style deflation. Stagnant wages. Rising inequality. The American Dream converted to a nightmare. All the result of the metastasizing of the regulatory and entitlement states, say the Republicans. No, it’s the…

Recent reports suggest that the contest for the next chair of the Federal Reserve is down to Jay Powell, a current member of the Federal Reserve board, and Kevin Warsh, a member of the board from 2006 to 2011. And the rumor mill suggests that it is Warsh—a former Wall Street denizen whose…

In The Courage to Act, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke reveals, a little unexpectedly, that he can tell a taut tale well, and in a manner accessible to someone who wouldn’t know a CDO from an Alt-A mortgage. After a likable autobiographical beginning, the book is centered on the Fed's…

The old saying about how banks only loan money to people who don’t need it seems to be coming around again. This after the disaster that followed a policy of lending money, and lots of it, to people who really needed it but weren’t likely to pay it back. 

Our economy is increasingly policy-driven, at least in the near- and medium-terms. What Congress and the president do or don’t do, what incoming Federal Reserve Board chairman Janet Yellen does or doesn’t do, will be important determinants of our growth, inflation, and job creation rates. So here…

Spare a bit of sympathy for the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy gurus. They have said they will begin to “taper” their purchases of bonds and mortgages when the unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent. So July’s dip from 7.5 to 7.4 percent, the lowest rate since December 2008, should edge…

Data-driven, legacy-driven. Keep those two descriptives in mind and you will know a good deal about the prospects for a dialing back of asset purchases—“tapering”—by Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke. After some confusing, market-roiling signals in the past two weeks, Bernanke has made it…

Until recently it has been fashionable to denigrate the U.S. economic recovery: “America is the best house in a bad neighborhood,” sniffed many analysts. No longer. America is now a very good house in a terrible neighborhood.

The bad news is that there is good news. At least, that’s how many skittish investors in shares and bonds see the increasingly cheery view of the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy gurus who concluded last week that downside risk to the economy has diminished since the Fall, and guessed that…

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke hints that he might—perhaps, maybe—be thinking about possibly slowing the Fed’s purchases of bonds and mortgages. That leads bondholders to start selling, driving up interest rates, and causing tremors on stock markets. Not only here in the U.S.: the…

The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the first quarter, well ahead of the paltry 0.4 percent in the final quarter of 2012. Consumer spending led the way, increasing at a rate of 3.2 percent. But leave the champagne on ice for now. Consumer outlays were boosted by involuntary…

In a press conference today, the Federal Reserve announced it will keep interest rates low and leave QE3 unchanged, continuing to buy $85 billion a month in bonds to prop up the economy.

This is a good time to see where we have come during the year now coming to a close. Some things haven’t changed very much, or so it might seem. When the year began, households reported that 142 million Americans held jobs; right now, 143 million are in work. The labor force participation rate—the…

The fiscal cliff is a diversion, designed by politicians to conceal their inability to come to grips with the fact that they continue to spend too much, and refuse to reform a tax structure that reduces the competitiveness of American companies in world markets. No matter what deal is cut, whether…

About the only talking point Joe Biden didn’t repeat in his debate with Paul Ryan was the one lionizing President Obama for having saved the country from another Great Depression. Biden used it in his speech at the Democratic convention, as did others, and it remains a hardy perennial of Obama…

When Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke rushed to the aid of President Obama with an act of raw partisanship called QE3, the media ignored the political implications of this latest plan to print massive amounts of new money to boost the stock market.

Last week, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced the central bank would begin another round of quantitative easing, the term of art for the Fed's policy of purchasing securities in an attempt to stimulate the economy. With his plan to buy $40 billion in securities per month, Bernanke has…

The party conventions are over, the signs and funny hats are overflowing trashcans in Tampa and Charlotte, and reality returns to center stage in the form of Friday’s jobs report. It’s rare that a single data report matters much. After all, we can’t project a trend from a single data point. The…

Here is an easy way for any non-economist to tell whether an economy is in dire straits: If investors are looking to their central bankers to get them out of the mess created by over-borrowing, ineffective regulation, and political paralysis. Markets unwilling to lend money at reasonable rates? No…

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke now has two reasons to disappoint those who are hoping he will use his speech next week at the conclave of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to launch the good ship QE3. The first is that the economy continues to move ahead, albeit at a slower…

Slow, slower, and maybe even stop—that’s a quick summary of how Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke sees the U.S. economy. The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent last year, 1.9 percent in the first quarter of this year, “and available indicators point to a still-smaller gain in…

Robert Shrum is hoping for an assist from Ben Bernanke. Perhaps, Shrum writes, the chairman will have the courage to pull a John Roberts, launch QE3, and keep a staggering economy sufficiently upright that "Obama may actually be able to run on a decidedly more upbeat path through the fall."

Ross Douthat: "What Mitt Lost While He Won"

Three Republican presidential candidates​—​Herman Cain, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich​—​have at least hinted about the desirability of a return to the gold standard. The four top Republican congressional leaders recently called on the Federal Reserve to curb its interventions in the U.S. economy. In…

“Don’t just do something, stand there,” President Ronald Reagan once advised his staff. Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke has decided that remains pretty good advice: In his Friday speech to the world’s central bankers assembled in Jackson Hole, he said that he will not use “the range of…

A businessman and investor for whose judgment I have the highest regard sends this email about yesterday’s Fed announcement:

Jennifer Rubin: "For Obama, it’s all about getting out of Afghanistan"

"Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are 'running out of money'"

In a hearing, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke if he believes that one of the keys to short-term economic growth is a long-term plan to put America's fiscal policy in order. Bernanke replied, "Correct."

If Barack Obama were looking for a further boost in his popularity from the new jobs data, he'd be disappointed. Yes, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.4 percent in December to 9.0 percent last month, in part due to a decline in the labor force participation rate to the lowest level since March…

“Don’t worry, be happy,” songwriter Bobby McFerrin instructed. But that was in 1988, at the close of Ronald Reagan’s successful presidency. The unemployment rate, at 7.2 percent and rising when Reagan was sworn in, had fallen to 5.3 percent. The economy, which had been shrinking under Jimmy Carter,…

It didn't take long for the Federal Reserve to come under fire for its resumption of asset purchases, aka "QE2", announced at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on November 3. The decision had the unusual side effect of uniting Sarah Palin and World Bank president Robert Zoellick, the former…

This is a tale of two printing presses.

The Federal Reserve’s decision last week to initiate another round of quantitative easing has had its defenders and its critics. The Economist says that the Fed’s purchase of $600 billion worth of Treasury bonds is working to loosen up investment markets, while a Wall Street Journal editorial…

It’s the policies, stupid. That should be the guiding light for everyone trying to figure out the course of the U.S. economy for the rest of the year. As things now stand, in the absence of any dramatic policy shift, the economy should continue on its present path—slow growth, a bit of job creation…