Stephen Roach: The case against Bernanke
by ilene - August 26th, 2009 10:38 am
Stephen Roach: The case against Bernanke
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
While most economists have come out in favor of Barack Obama’s decision to re-appoint Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Stephen Roach has penned an Op-Ed in today’s Financial Times which highlights the case against Bernanke. It is must reading.
Roach has three main points.
- Before the Lehman bankruptcy, Bernanke was an adherent of the Greenspan-professed doctrine to “clean up after bubbles.” This is what others have called “The Greenspan Put,” otherwise known as an asymmetric monetary policy response – what I would term “lax during the bubble, and loose after it.” Clearly, this doctrine was responsible for much of the carnage.
- Bernanke was also a proponent of the “Asian Savings Glut” theory which puts much of the blame for global imbalances at Asia’s doorstep and exonerates over-consumption by American citizens for a credit crisis which began in America. I have called this the Blame Asia meme. While there may be excess savings, it is disingenuous to blame Asia for problems created in the United States.
- Bernanke, like Greenspan, is an ultra-free market Libertarian who believes markets always are better informed than regulators. This takes libertarian views to an extreme which I have dubbed “Deregulation as Crony Capitalism.” I see a more nuanced belief in free markets as more appropriate.
But Roach goes on to opine that Obama, with his early decision to re-appoint Bernanke, is signalling he believes the credit crisis has ended, a calculation that Roach believes may be hasty.
Notwithstanding these mistakes, Mr Obama may be premature in giving Mr Bernanke credit for the great cure. No one knows for certain as to whether the Fed’s strategy will ultimately be successful. The worst of the US recession appears to have been arrested for now – a fairly typical, but temporary, outgrowth of the time-honored inventory cycle. But the sustainability of any post-bubble recovery is always dubious. Just ask Japan 20 years after the bursting of its bubbles.
While financial markets are giddy with hopes of economic revival – in part inspired by Mr Bernanke’s cheerleading at the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole gathering – there is still good reason to believe that the US recovery will be anaemic and fragile. US consumers are
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.