Was Ben Bernanke lying then, or is he lying now?
Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chief, drew headlines this weekend with his impassioned defense of the Fed's Nov. 3 decision to buy $600 billion of Treasury securities over eight months in its second go at so-called quantitative easing. The mild-mannered Bernanke evidently was so exasperated by criticism of the Fed's plans that he resorted to a mild profanity.
"There's a sense out there that, quote, quantitative easing, or asset purchases, is some completely foreign, new, strange kind of thing, we have no idea what the hell is going to happen, and it's an unanticipated and unpredictable policy," Bernanke said at an Atlanta Fed conference in Jekyll Island, Ga. "Quite the contrary: this is just monetary policy. Monetary policy involves the swapping of assets — essentially, the acquisition of Treasuries and swapping those for other kinds of assets."
This criticism of Bernanke and his reaction is very interesting. I think that even though his actions do seem a little bit unconventional, they do seem to fall under the umbrella of monetary policy. Furthermore, if we can't trust our Fed Chairman then that might explain one of the reasons we have economic downturn.
ReplyDelete