Ben Bernanke Quotes
The basic prescription for preventing deflation is therefore straightforward, at least in principle: Use monetary and fiscal policy as needed to support aggregate spending, in a manner as nearly consistent as possible with full utilization of economic resources and low and stable inflation. In other words, the best way to get out of trouble is not to get into it in the first place.
Bernanke, Ben S. "Deflation: Making Sure 'It' Doesn't Happen Here." National Economists Club, Washington, D.C., 21 Nov. 2002.
His argument was that the government role in the economy was to maintain full employment and to hold inflation in check. His argument was that if these to things should be done whatever the government did to maintain that was fine. Today, we argue about every aspect of the economy and many believe that full employment and inflation control are contradictory. He would have both and make the other things give. No government has ever yet tried his approach though he was very popular amongst libertarian and free market economists.
Many people think that as a New Deal Democrat, she did not consider inflation as a major problem. However, she did, and this is but one example.
March 4, 1933 was the date that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had assumed the Presidency from Herbert Hoover and used government to combat the Great Depression whereas Hoover would not take any of these steps as the conservative wing of his party and he regarded anything that government did was “creeping socialism”. Historically, it is useful to recall what steps Roosevelt took that were described as socialism. These include Social Security, Federal Deposit Insurance for bank accounts, aid to farmers, the Civilian Conservation Corps, Regulation of the stock market, regulation of banks and many other things that are key elements of modern capitalism which virtually every capitalistic nations has in one form or another. Long after Truman was out of office, the most conservative elements of the Republican Party have accused every Democratic President of “creeping socialism” when they were actually quite opposed to socialism. Even when their career before their presidency was full of criticisms of socialism and policies that are opposite, as in the case of President Obama, the President has been accused of being a socialist. However, it started with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S Truman.
Jefferson was of the opinion that a central bank was unconstitutional and that it was a great economic danger to the nation, a view also held later by President Andrew Jackson.
Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist at the Brookings Institution who served two terms as the 14th Chair of the Federal Reserve, from 2006 to 2014. During his tenure as chair, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the late-2000s financial crisis, for which he was named the 2009 Time Person of the Year. Before becoming Federal Reserve chair, Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the department of economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave.
