Ben Bernanke and the FED are drowning – and everyone knows it
When will the FED end?
This article according to the Wall Street Journal March 16, 2009
Bernanke defends recovery efforts in rare TV interview
UPDATE: Brian Blackstone | March 16, 2009
Article from: The Wall Street Journal
IN A rare direct message to the American people, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke appeared on CBS TV’s 60 Minutes and defended government actions being taken to shore up the banking system, saying that a recovery won’t happen until the financial system stabilises.
Strong recovery coming: Bernanke
And the self-professed “Main Street” guy, who once worked on construction and waited tables in a poncho, delivered a strong rebuke to some on Wall Street, saying “the era of this high living, this is over now.”
“I’d just like to say to the American people…that I have every confidence that this economy will recover, and recover in a strong and sustained way,” Mr. Bernanke said in the interview.
For its part, the Fed “is going to do everything possible to support this recovery,” Mr. Bernanke said, according to a transcript of the interview. However, “that recovery is not going to happen until the financial markets and the banks are stabilized.”
Sunday’s televised interview was the first by a Fed chairman in over two decades. 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley even joked that when he first proposed doing this interview one year ago, Mr. Bernanke’s representative laughed him off. “I wonder why are you doing this?” Mr. Pelley asked.
“It’s an extraordinary time,” Mr. Bernanke explained. “This is a chance for me, I think, to talk to America directly.”
It’s a progression in Mr. Bernanke’s higher public profile of late, as the recession and its effect on financial markets has intensified. In addition to numerous appearances before Congress, Mr. Bernanke spoke last month to the National Press Club and last Tuesday to the Council on Foreign Relations. Both events included lengthy question-and-answer sessions.
Sunday’s interview is notable because rather than focusing on journalists and opinion-makers, Mr. Bernanke is reaching an audience of many millions, one sure to be made larger by the fact that 60 Minutes was preceded by the NCAA college basketball tournament selection broadcast.
A repeated theme from Mr. Bernanke throughout these appearances has been that while the US should be able to emerge from recession later this year, it depends critically on the financial sector finding its footing.
He’s also made clear his frustration over being put in the position of having to bail out big institutions like American International Group. “I slammed the phone more than a few times on discussing AIG,” Mr. Bernanke told 60 Minutes. “I understand why the American people are angry. It’s absolutely unfair that taxpayer dollars are going to prop up a company that made these terrible bets.”
Asked by Mr. Pelley what his message is for bankers whose firms have had to take government bailout money, Mr. Bernanke replied that they should get back to making good loans with a “reasonable sense of humility based on, you know, what’s happened in the last 18 months.”
Mr. Bernanke admitted to sleeping on an office couch from time to time during the crisis. Many of the Fed’s policy actions – taken at varying times alone, with other U.S. regulators and even in conjunction with other central banks – have occurred on weekends, late at night and in the early hours before the opening bell of the U.S. stock market.
The Fed’s hands aren’t completely clean when it comes to the crisis, he conceded. “I don’t want to deny that we certainly could have done a better job, and others could have done a better job,” he said.
The 60 Minutes segment aired three days before the Fed announces its next decision on interest rates. Wall Street economists universally expect the Fed to hold official interest rates near zero, where they’ve been since December. With rates so low, the Fed has focused on credit programs financed by a massive expansion of its balance sheet to shore up the financial system.
Mr. Bernanke said that the Fed is “effectively” printing money rather than using taxpayer funds for these initiatives aimed at mortgage markets, commercial paper, asset-backed securities and other segments of the credit system.
“When the economy begins to recover, that will be the time that we need to unwind those programs, raise interest rates, reduce the money supply, and make sure that we have a recovery that does not involve inflation,” Mr. Bernanke said.
The U.S. appears to have averted an economic depression and there are some positive signs, or “green shoots,” in some markets where the Fed is active, Mr. Bernanke said. “And we’ve seen some improvement in…the banks, as well, certainly in some key cases,” he said.
Big banks are solvent, Mr. Bernanke said, and he repeated a pledge he’s made in the past that they won’t be allowed to fail.
One of the first signs of imminent economic recovery will be when a big bank successfully raises private capital, he said.
Mr. Bernanke warned, however, that fires raging in the markets are “still burning,” and households will feel economic pain for many months, especially when it comes to labor markets.
The unemployment rate will go higher from its current level of 8.1 per cent, he said, which is already a 25-year high. He didn’t say in the 60 Minutes interview whether he expected it to reach double digits. He did tell the Council on Foreign Relations last week that prospect was “certainly well within the realm of possibility,” though not the baseline scenario.
Some of the 60 Minutes piece took place in Dillon, South Carolina, where Mr. Bernanke grew up. Mr. Bernanke was there earlier this month to attend a highway interchange dedication in his honor.
Mr. Bernanke’s hometown – with an unemployment rate of 14 per cent – has in many ways come to symbolise the toll the housing crisis and economic recession is taking on communities.
A Wall Street Journal article last month detailed how Mr. Bernanke’s childhood home – which the Bernanke family sold over a decade ago – ended up being bought recently in a foreclosure sale.
And a junior high student from Dillon sat next to Michelle Obama during President Barack Obama’s first address to Congress, after the girl wrote a letter to lawmakers detailing the run-down condition of her school.
Dillon “has taken, you know, has taken a pretty big hit in the…economic downturn,” Mr. Bernanke said.
Mr. Bernanke, now 55 years old, eventually left Dillon as a young man bound for college at Harvard. Still, his parents had doubts, he recalled.
“My mother was definitely against it,” Mr. Bernanke said, remembering that she told him: “You don’t have the clothes.”
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