Change the Fed, Keep Bernanke

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»

Low-key chair deserves chance to stay on, clean up: Ignatius

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama has a huge decision coming up this summer: whether to reappoint Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Fed or turn to obvious challenger Lawrence Summers. If he’s smart, he’ll stick with the soft-spoken incumbent, writes David Ignatius of the Washington Post. “He has been a veritable tiger,” he writes. “The Bernanke Fed is so much more powerful than its predecessors that it’s almost a different institution.” 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»

(NEWSER) - Even as the financial crisis rages, Ben Bernanke says it’s time for broad regulatory reforms to stem future crises. Bernanke said today “too big to fail” institutions should be more tightly watched, perhaps by his Federal Reserve. He also admitted that the US hadn’t been prudent with the glut of capital that poured into the market in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

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»