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Inflation, Senator. And growth rates. And the current account deficit. And inflation. And maybe what's for lunch. When he took over the Fed from Alan Greenspan on Feb. 1, Bernanke became the man portrayed as having his hand on the controls of the U.S. economy. If prices rise rapidly or the economy slows, Bernanke gets blamed. If the economy continues to grow at a healthy clip, he's celebrated...
Theoretically, the Fed chairman isn't all-powerful; whether to raise or lower taxes, for example, isn't up to him. But partly because interest rates, which the Fed does control, fundamentally affect the way consumers and businesses spend money and partly because Greenspan solidified the standing of Fed chairman as a demigod, every thought that Bernanke utters is treated as Delphic. "The U.S. economy appears to be in a period of transition," he told Congress, with the robust growth of the past three years moderating, which in turn should help keep inflation in check. The stock market rallied, anticipating...
...economy isn't the only thing in transition. The Fed itself is feeling the Bernanke effect. You could take that opening scene of Bernanke carefully considering each Senator's words as a leading indicator that a shift is afoot on Constitution Avenue. Listening, mulling, debating, airing opinions of all stripesthese are hallmarks of Bernanke, honed during his years as an academic economist, first at Stanford, then at Princeton, and that style is spilling over into the way economists at the Fed communicate as they forge the nation's monetary policy. More brainstorming, apparently, means more clarity...
...sets of data a day, and often they are at odds with one another. While Greenspan had a penchant for obscure statistics, like the production of No. 5 trucks, Bernanke sticks closer to mainstream data. "I never knew what a No. 5 truck was," says Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman and a professor at Princeton. "Bernanke probably doesn't either." The minutes from the May meeting of the Fed committee that sets rates showed that opinions ranged from doing nothing to raising rates 0.5%. The Fed raised rates 0.25% for a then 16th straight time. "You're much...
You’ve Got Mail Wednesday, July 19, 2:31 a.m.: In response to a suspicious truck found outside Fogg Museum, an officer spoke with the driver of the Fed-Ex truck and determined that the individual arrived early for the delivery and all was in order...