Just catching up, but I absolutely love these two posts, Rich!
[quote=Rich Toscano][quote=ltsdd]Wouldn’t buy the books.
Bernanke doesn’t get enough credit for preventing a more serious economic meltdown.
Greenspan doesn’t get enough blame for the mess he “dumped” on Bernanke.
…as for Yellen, I am not exactly sure what she’s been doing.[/quote]
Bernanke gets plenty of credit for preventing a meltdown… that’s practically all I ever hear about him.
I don’t agree that he just passively had a mess “dumped” on him. He was with the Fed for a long time and was a major proponent of easy-money policy in the early 2000s. After he took over as Chairman (which was shortly before the bubble peaked), he repeatedly denied that there was a housing bubble, saying that home prices simply reflected positive economic fundamentals.
Thus, he was complicit in the last bubble. Then he went on to play a major role in stoking the next round of the bubble-and-bust, or at least “really overpriced assets-then-bust,” cycle. I’ll admit that the second statement is my opinion and the outcome remains to be seen. However, I think the state of asset valuations in the US is strongly supportive of it.
We’ll see, I guess. In the meantime, I find all the Bernanke hero-worship — which completely ignores the seemingly obvious role of the Fed in helping create these huge booms and busts — to be quite grating.[/quote]
[quote=Rich Toscano]AND ANOTHER THING. (While I am apparently ranting). I am mystified as to why left-leaning/progressive folks seem to be the loudest of Bernanke’s cheerleaders.
All things equal, high asset prices enrich the “haves” and do nothing to benefit the “have nots,” thus widening the wealth gap.
Bernanke’s policies appeared to have a minimal impact on real economic growth (once the liquidity crisis was past), but they resulted in an EPIC boom in US financial asset valuations. Thus, almost definitively, it seems to me, widening the gap between the haves and have nots. (And, on a relative purchasing power basis, benefiting the rich at the expense of the poor).
Yet the people who are most concerned with the plight of the have-nots seem to generally LOVE Bernanke. I just don’t get it.[/quote]
As everyone pretty much knows, I’m a “lefty,” and I concur 100% with this second post. Bernanke impoverished those on fixed incomes — savers, pensioners, workers, etc. Senior citizens have been destroyed by the Fed’s policies over the past 10-15 years. I’ve often wondered why there hasn’t been a huge uproar about this. Where is the AARP? Where are the unions? They should be up in arms, marching down the streets with pitchforks and torches.
