Who is Bernanke?

Ben Bernanke (Ben Shalom Bernanke,195365438+February 13-), an American economist, is currently the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Bernanke is most interested in two things: the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Boston Red Sox baseball team. At the same time, Bernanke's keen interest in the Great Depression made him concentrate on thinking and studying the causes of the Great Depression, and began to pay attention to the threat of deflation to the economy for a long time.

1983- 1985, once an associate professor of economics at Stanford university graduate school. During this period, he published a far-reaching paper, analyzing the root causes of the stagnation of American economic development in the 1930s. Instead of paying attention to the damage caused by the Federal Reserve's laissez-faire decline in the money supply, he turned his attention to the failure of the US financial system.

On August 5th, 2002, Dr. Ben Bernanke joined the Federal Reserve as a candidate member of the decision-making committee, and was elected as a full member of the Federal Reserve Committee on June 4th, 2003.

June 65438+February 65438+June 2009, Time magazine of the United States announced that Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, was elected as Time magazine's person of the year in 2009. Bernanke is considered to have handled the financial crisis properly and successfully avoided deflation.

In the winter of 2002, American economic circles began to worry about the danger of inflation. At this point, he hinted that the Fed may take unconventional measures, including printing more money to stop inflation.

At the beginning of 2005, the world financial market once again turned its attention to Bernanke's new economic theory "The world is suffering from excessive savings". In this theory, he pointed out that the current account deficit in the United States is not the result of Americans' wanton consumption, but the result of excessive thrift in other countries in the world. Bernanke's new theory has become the main focus of this year's economic debate. At the same time, Bernanke is also famous at the Federal Reserve for his firm stance in supporting the setting of inflation targets.

Economic viewpoint

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech in Atlanta on Thursday that the US housing market is improving, but its recovery still faces obstacles, and he is worried about these obstacles. And said that the Fed will continue to "do its best" to support the recovery of the US housing market.

Bernanke said that the Fed's recent policy actions are aimed at lowering long-term interest rates to reduce borrowing costs and promote spending. He said that policymakers hope to increase public confidence in the Fed's goals and increase their willingness to invest, recruit and spend.

He said that the Fed's policy kept the mortgage interest rate at a historically low level, which enabled more and more people to own houses, thus providing direct support to the housing market.

Policy proposition

Bernanke has a nickname "Ben for printing newspapers", which is based on his view that if necessary, liquidity can be increased by printing a lot of money. He advocates setting a clear inflation target, that is, keeping the inflation rate at a certain level for a certain period of time. He believes that this will not only guide the market's expectations of inflation, but also help the Fed to improve the credibility of its price stability target.

In 2002-2003, in order to solve the deflation problem in the United States, he strongly advocated cutting interest rates, which led to the reduction of the federal funds rate in the United States to1%(the lowest point in 45 years).

Regarding the twin deficits issue in the United States, Bernanke believes that one of the main reasons for the expansion of foreign debt in the United States is "substantial changes in the current accounts of developing countries and emerging market countries", which has turned these countries from borrowers in the international capital market into net lenders. Money from poor countries has led to the current account deficit in the United States.

Another theoretical contribution of Bernanke is that he advocates adding more economic indicators to the macroeconomic model to determine the orientation of monetary policy in order to achieve more effective economic stability.

On the morning of 201015, the chairman of the Federal Reserve said that since the inflation rate is still too low and the unemployment rate remains high, the Federal Reserve is prepared to take new actions to stimulate the weak economy.

Bernanke clearly pointed out that inflation running below the Fed's target is the primary reason for taking more measures to stimulate the economy.

Economic contribution

On June 65438+1October 10, 2008, Bernanke delivered his first speech on the theme of economy this year, implying that he would come up with the killer weapon to deal with the economic downturn: cutting interest rates and making US stocks rise across the board. A week later, Bernanke said that the US economic growth would slow down and the US stock market would fall accordingly. In the performance of the stock market, the American financial industry has also ushered in an unsettled year. In March 2008, the Federal Reserve led by Bernanke announced that it would inject $30 billion into Bear Stearns in exchange for JPMorgan Chase's acquisition of Bear Stearns.

On September 5, 2008, Lehman, with a history of 1.50 years, declared bankruptcy, which opened the prelude to the comprehensive financial crisis in the United States. Since then, the US government has launched a $700 billion rescue plan, and it is Bernanke and Paulson who are busy with this plan.

He said: "If the credit market fails to function normally, the number of unemployed people will increase, more homeowners will lose the right to redeem their mortgaged houses, and GDP growth will slow down. Even if any other measures are taken, the American economy will not recover in a normal and healthy way. Therefore, I believe that the implementation of this financial assistance plan is a prerequisite for the healthy development of the US economy. "

The financial crisis made Greenspan walk off the altar, but if it weren't for the financial crisis, Bernanke might continue Greenspan's "free supervision" policy, but it was the crisis that made Bernanke change his mind. He and Paulson used to believe in the free market view, but now they are beginning to believe that Wall Street is not working well, and only the government can make everything return to normal.

On April 29th, 20 1 1, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the US Federal Reserve, said that the US economy as a whole continued the momentum of moderate recovery, but there was still a big gap with the ideal recovery state, and the real estate market became an important factor dragging down the US economic recovery.

Speaking at a community economic seminar held in Virginia on the same day, Bernanke pointed out that economic activities in the United States continued to expand and the job market showed signs of improvement, but the unemployment rate remained high. Nearly half of the unemployed were long-term unemployed who had been unemployed for more than 27 weeks, and the number of foreclosed properties remained high, which had an impact on the development of community economy in the United States.

He pointed out that to solve the challenges facing the US economic recovery, we must first understand these challenges in depth. The Federal Reserve has strengthened its research in this field and encouraged community banks to provide entrepreneurial loans to individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises to support the revitalization of the community economy.