Now I’m forced to post on this topic, if only to end the silly squabbling over whose post on the issue is better (lookee here). So let’s settle this right now.
1) Bernanke appears to be a shape-shifter. He’s fundamentally Keynesian, but will reveal from time to time a tendency to call upon Monetarist templates if they suit his ongoing need to defend what is, isn’t, or is going/not going to happen in the economy. 2) scare tactics (mostly the analytical equivalent of economic global warming/climate change) have been used repeatedly to wrest power and decision-making rights from individual consumers, entrepreneurs, and productive people in general, to the detriment of all of us who use money to carry out our daily dealings (that is, all of us), and 3) Bernanke has played both villain and hero, a well-known role for monetary authorities in Austrian monetary cycle theory, and deserves no special credit [sic] for his role as supposed economic or monetary savior.
He has saved the world but he helped cause the crisis in the first place, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
Telegraph ? By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Published: 25 Aug 2009
“Ben Bernanke has proved himself a heroic fire-fighter, saving world from a calamitous spiral into debt deflation by showering markets with liquidity.
A good thing too. He helped cause the raging fire of 2007-2009 in the first place. As a Princeton professor and then a junior Federal Reserve governor, Mr Bernanke was the intellectual architect of his predecessor Alan Greenspan?s policies that so distorted global finance and pushed debt to historic extremes.
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“Economists call this critique ?intertemporal misallocation?. It is a favourite of the Austrian School. It plays almost no role in the ?New Keynesian? thinking of Bernanke.”
