Clive Crook, Columnist

All Praise Ben Bernanke

Economists are mostly impressed with Bernanke's record, but conservative politicians and pundits certainly aren't. That's a problem, because to remain an effective central bank the Fed needs to guard its operational independence

January 31, 2014 at 9:07 PM UTC

By Clive Crook

Clive Crook is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering economics. Previously, he was deputy editor of the Economist and chief Washington commentator for the Financial Times.

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If Ben Bernanke had known what was coming when he was offered the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve in 2005, he might have turned the job down. Most sane men would, and Bernanke is as sane as they come. The U.S. was lucky he was there when having an outstanding Fed chairman mattered so much. This was his last week in charge: He's mostly being applauded, by economists at least, and he richly deserves it.

Bernanke is an academic authority on the Great Depression. This was enormously valuable, even though (as he emphasized in a recent speech on the Fed and the crash) financial markets have changed out of recognition since the 1930s. One timeless lesson of the earlier crisis is that when the Fed is faced with a financial emergency, it has to be bold: Dithering and half-measures can be fatal. Within the constraints he faced -- a point I'll come back to -- Bernanke applied that wisdom, and re-purposed it for modern conditions.