Shelton: Chairman Bernanke’s Monetary Apologia

This past Sunday, at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in Atlanta, Ga., Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered up a lengthy, professorial defense of U.S. monetary policy over the last decade, focusing on its role in the financial crisis that has gripped the world economy.

It doesn’t quite rise to the level of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s claim after a barely foiled attempt to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day that “the system worked really smoothly.”  But Mr. Bernanke’s calm observation that “monetary policy from 2002 to 2006 appears to have been reasonably consistent with the Federal Reserve’s mandated goals of maximum sustainable employment and price stability” is nevertheless disturbing.

– Judy Shelton, “Chairman Bernanke’s Monetary Apologia”, The Wall Street Journal, January 9