'Quiet Radical' Bernanke Reinvents Fed

Fed chief's term is up in 2010, and with Summers in play, another is no certainty

(NEWSER) - Economists give Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke a passing grade for his efforts to fight the nation’s financial crisis, but that doesn’t guarantee he’ll keep his job when his appointment expires in 2010, reports the Wall Street Journal. President-elect Barack Obama may have a Fed-chief-in-waiting in Lawrence Summers, the outspoken former Treasury secretary who will head his National Economic Council. More»

(NEWSER) - The Federal Reserve is ripe for some major changes everywhere but at the top, Steven Pearlstein writes for the Washington Post. It's finally clear that the job "involves a lot more than adjusting interest rates," and we've seen the drain that happened when we "left the previous chairman in the job so long that it created a cult of personality." To fix that, the possibility of reappointment should be removed for the Fed chairman—whose term should be extended to 6 years—to ensure independence from the White House and Wall Street. More»

Changes will be the most ambitious since the Great Depression

(NEWSER) - President Obama will unveil next week sweeping new changes to the nation’s governance of troubled financial institutions, the AP reports. Unlike Washington’s temporary ownership stake in automakers and major financial companies, the new regulatory protocol will be permanent and will present the most ambitious revision since the 1930s. Most likely to benefit from the changes will be the Federal Reserve. More»

Fed chief considering press briefings as part of push for more open central bank

(NEWSER) - Ben Bernanke is breaking from his predecessors at the Federal Reserve by giving the public a less obstructed view of the Fed's role in the big picture, the Wall Street Journal reports. Bernanke, thrust into the spotlight by the financial crisis, has ditched the man-behind-the-curtain mystique earlier chiefs reveled in to offer franker explanations of the Fed's moves. He's even considering holding regular press briefings as his European counterparts do; a speech yesterday was seen by some as a dry run. More»

Bigger deficits are worth the benefits, Fed chair tells Congress

(NEWSER) - Ben Bernanke supported the Obama administration’s economic policy before Congress today, the Wall Street Journal reports. The $787 billion stimulus bill should boost “demand and production” and soften job losses over the next 2 years, the Federal Reserve chief told the Senate Budget Committee. The expansion of government debt required by the stimulus is “unavoidable” Bernanke said, given the consequences of inaction. More»