Bernanke says policymakers prevented 'cataclysm' worse than Great Depression
By Neil Irwin
WashPost
Friday, April 9, 2010
The world's economic policymakers successfully learned the lessons of the Great Depression, helping to avert a horrendous economic outcome from the 2008 financial crisis, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Thursday.
In a speech that drew on his academic specialty -- the economic history of the 1930s -- Bernanke sought to give some historical perspective to efforts by the Fed and other policymakers to combat the 21st century economic downturn.
During the 1930s, policymakers' responses to the financial collapse "ran the gamut from passivity to timidity," standing by as banks failed by the hundreds. "They were insufficiently willing to challenge the orthodoxies of their day," Bernanke said in an address after receiving an award from the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.
His historical argument was mounted as a defense of the forceful -- and frequently controversial -- actions that the Fed took under his leadership to combat the crisis. Bernanke said that had he and other economic policymakers not moved so aggressively, the downturn could have been even worse than the Depression, when unemployment was 25 percent.
(More here.)
WashPost
Friday, April 9, 2010
The world's economic policymakers successfully learned the lessons of the Great Depression, helping to avert a horrendous economic outcome from the 2008 financial crisis, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Thursday.
In a speech that drew on his academic specialty -- the economic history of the 1930s -- Bernanke sought to give some historical perspective to efforts by the Fed and other policymakers to combat the 21st century economic downturn.
During the 1930s, policymakers' responses to the financial collapse "ran the gamut from passivity to timidity," standing by as banks failed by the hundreds. "They were insufficiently willing to challenge the orthodoxies of their day," Bernanke said in an address after receiving an award from the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.
His historical argument was mounted as a defense of the forceful -- and frequently controversial -- actions that the Fed took under his leadership to combat the crisis. Bernanke said that had he and other economic policymakers not moved so aggressively, the downturn could have been even worse than the Depression, when unemployment was 25 percent.
(More here.)
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