Brad DeLong on Friday’s dismal jobs report:
Twenty years from now, young whippersnapper economic historians will come to interview me.
They will ask: “Why don’t you think Ben Bernanke was the worst Fed Chair since the Great Depression–worse even than the hapless G. William Miller–because of his failure to understand even one of (a) the implications of the pre-2008 growth of leverage, derivatives, and shadow banking; that his job in the summer and fall of 2008 was not to curb moral hazard but to prevent depression; (c) the goals of his dual mandate; the structure of the economy he was managing; and (e) how to mark his beliefs to market when the economy did not evolve as he had predicted?”
What answer am I going to be able to give?
What was Barack Obama thinking? What was Tim Geithner thinking? What was Ben Bernanke thinking?
What is Barack Obama thinking? What is Jack Lew thinking? What is Ben Bernanke thinking?
What, indeed?
