Following Bernanke Means Using Precedent of Unprecedented Policy

The success of the next Federal Reserve chairman, be it Janet Yellen, Lawrence Summers or someone else, will depend less on their grounding in monetary policy orthodoxy than on their readiness to reach beyond it.

That flexibility defines the leaders of the world’s principal central banks: the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. All three responded to economic shocks by casting off institutional dogma and broadening their missions.