Ben Bernanke v Wall Street Journal

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been making waves since his retirement from the US Federal Reserve in 2013. While his easy monetary policy stance earned him the nickname “Helicopter Ben”, at $250,000 a speech Bernanke is bringing easy money to a whole new level. In the last month he has joined Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel LLC and California-based investment manager PIMCO as consigliere, sorry I mean “special adviser”.

Still, it is his public spat with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that is more entertaining, a tit-for-tat on the effectiveness of the Fed’s monetary policy. Responding to an initial editorial entitled “The Slow-Growth Fed” – which laid blame with the Fed for “sub-par economic growth” – Bernanke came back with a Blog post “WSJ Editorial Page Watch: The Slow-Growth Fed?”, where he defended his record, crediting the Fed’s policies for the drop in unemployment and taking aim at the WSJ and their own forecasting errors.

The WSJ has since come back with a damning piece entitled “Bernanke’s Rebuttal”, concluding:

“We can understand that Mr. Bernanke doesn’t like being tagged with any responsibility for poor economic results. He absolved himself for any mistakes before the financial crisis too. But sooner or later he and the Fed have to stop using the financial crisis as the all-purpose excuse for slow growth. Even President Obama has stopped blaming George W. Bush for everything. Maybe Mr. Bernanke should stop blaming everyone else too.”

We now await Ben’s response!