We would never have been at risk for one had Hussein not made a series of bizarre comments between the election and his inaguration.
This economist thinks Bernanke may well have. Bernanke certainly followed the advice of Milton Friedman concerning what the FED should have been doing 1930-33.
Question: If you were advising the Federal Reserve, what would you say are the unsolved economic problems of the day?
Milton Friedman: The one unsolved economic problem of the day is how to get rid of the Federal Reserve. – January 1996 interview on NPR
That stupid ass Bernanke didn't prevent a thing. He merely postponed the inevitable by increasing the problem, and in so doing made the outcome much worse.
O please! He saved us from the staged crisis... Gee thanks. There is no way the september 07 bank run just happened. They created a crisis and call themselves savior... Sickening.
Hogwash! The $800 BILLION TARP money should have gone to banks which did not gamble with derivatives and operated prudently. Those banks would have kept the credit market operating without a hitch. Those greedy & gambling banks on Wall Street should have been allowed to fail and their business taken over by the good banks.
Yes, at the cost of destroying the US Dollar. The devalued dollar is with us forever, another Depression would have ended, perhaps by now. Perhaps their was no risk, and we destroyed the dollar for no reason, I am in that camp.
No. He prevented a deep recession, but in the process made a Great Depression inevitable...
He probably did, but without a control group it’s impossible to know.
The actions of the Fed before 2007 remind of of those of the second National Bank after the War of 1815. Its reckless policies led to the first great depression. After Nicholas Biddle took over, and improved its management, the country recovered. BUT bankers can harm as well as cure an economy. The more power a ban has, the more harm its can do, and the precariousness of the international situation shows what harm it can do. Only the “Euromess” has prevented the overthrow of the dollar as the international currency. The snowball analogy must be kept in mind: a snowball falling down hill will pick up mass and grow bigger and bigger as it moves downhill. But at some point, its mass reached a size that tears the snowball apart.
I don’t think so. I think it’s here right now, we have just papered over it. Soup lines replaced with debit cards.
The event that set off the current financial crisis; the first domino that fell, fell in August, 2007 as a result of the consequences of speculation and no doc loans unraveling. Defaults on no doc interest only adjustable rate mortgages that had been securitized and sold across the world as a solid, low risk investment began to default en masse in California. I remember it so well because I was sitting on a beach on Hatteras Island, and remember thinking that I'd better enjoy it, because it might just be the last vacation I'd get for a very long time.
Bernanke was chosen as Greenspan's successor precisely because he'd studied the Great Depression at such length, and had formulated numerous theories as to how to prevent or forestall another. That's how he earned his derogatory nickname, Helicopter Ben.
To make a long story short, this goes back a ways. I'm no fan of Bernanke and haven't been since he made comment about inequitable income distribution in the US, that told me all I needed to know about him. But, he did inherit this mess from Greenspan.
No, he probably hastened it.
The verdict is out, I believe that he just kicked the can down the road. Eventually all things must be paid for and when this bill is due it will make the last depression look like a cake walk.
Our Nation's only chance is to get government spending in balance with tax receipts, taxes no more than 18% GDP, start paying down the debit and link our currency to a real commodity. And I don't see anything close to this happening.