2000s Housing Bubble Denier Ben Bernanke Does Damage Control for Biden on Inflation Crisis

NewsBusters ^ | 6/14/2022 | Joseph Vazquez

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A former Federal Reserve chairman who dismissed concerns about the 2000s housing bubble attempted to squash fears of a 1970s-style inflation crisis under President Joe Biden.

Ben Bernanke penned a ludicrous op-ed for The New York Times headlined: “Inflation Isn’t Going to Bring Back the 1970s,” after news broke that inflation skyrocketed to a 40-year high of 8.6 percent year-over-year in May. His main argument had the audacity to varnish the so-called expertise of political leaders and the Fed. “[T]oday’s monetary policymakers understand that as we wait for supply constraints to ease, which they will eventually, the Fed can help reduce inflation by slowing growth in demand.” Bernanke tried to make it seem like Big Government learned its lesson from the terrible policies that caused the 1970s crisis: “In short, the lessons learned from America’s Great Inflation, by both the Fed and political leaders, make a repeat of that experience highly unlikely.”

In short, reading Bernanke’s column was like reading a White House press release.

But Bernanke appeared to contradict himself. He reportedly warned “that the nation is headed for a situation, much like the 1970s, where Americans were losing their jobs but still facing higher prices at the grocery store and at the pump.” Now, in his latest write-up, Bernanke did a 180-degree turn. “Are we in danger of repeating that [1970s] experience?” he wrote. “The short answer: almost certainly not.” Talk about an about-face.

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