Retire Bernanke and replace with Volcker.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

No brainer if Volcker will take it. He was prescient about all that has occurred. I'd feel a lot more confident, if that matters. I bet the rest of the world would too.

[andym]

1. Volcker is older and wiser nt.

[rwheeler31]

2. no

Replace him with Waren.

[valerief]

10. Yeah! Warren!!!! nt

[vaberella]

14. When will you people understand...Warren is not an economist.

She's a lawyer. A lawyer. Does that make any sense giving a lawyer an economists job. That's as assinine a suggestion as putting an Equastrian manager the head of FEMA. It makes no bloody sense.

[rollingrock]

15. Warren may be a lawyer, but she has shown

that she understands economics a whole hell of a lot better than either Bernanke OR Geithner.

[vaberella]

16. Actually she's shown that she knows which side to side with.

However if you give a chart on derivatives she'd probably not do well. Don't sit there and assume because you don't like the way....or let me be more clear---you don't like the man's associations which automatically make him the bad guy, that he doesn't know his shit.


There are many people on this board who know the law and can quote the law text---however they're knowledge may be limited and like that twit Orly Taitz would be laughed out of he courtroom and she apparently has a degree.


Don't try to think that Warren would even take the job. You are supporting ineffectual people because of your emotions. While I have to say and it would seem the GDP and market would have to say that Geightner did pretty well considering job loss fell from 700,000 to 11,000 and we're a and going below 10% unemployment. That's pretty good. You may not like the bank bailouts and no one bloody did. However that was put in place by various people before Obama. Let's be serious when we elect people to positions, not because it makes us feel good.

[Democrats_win]

3. You mean 21%-interest-rate-Volcker? No thanks!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker

snip:
The federal funds rate, which had averaged 11.2% in 1979, was raised by Volcker (as head of the FED) to a peak of 20% in June 1981. The prime rate rose to 21.5% in '81 as well.

These changes in policy contributed to the significant recession the U.S. economy experienced in the early 1980s, which included the highest unemployment levels since the Great Depression.
---

During Volcker's term, a farmer actually drove his tractor into a bank. It was really bad. I consider Volcker just as bad as Bernanke. Both are traitors to the American people.

[Zynx]

5. Volcker did what was necessary. Inflation was absolutely out of control.

The late 1970s, early 1980s inflation was no friend to the average worker. Inflation was ruining the country at those rates. He broke inflation for the next 25 years.

By the way, if you've seen what Volcker has proposed for regulation and supervision of the financial sector, you would find he is better than just about everyone else on that subject.

[doc03]

8. He broke inflation by raising interest rates and causing

the worst recession since 1929. Another part you forget is he was one of the original Ronald Reagan supply siders and they started our race to the bottom by BREAKING UNIONS, OUTSOURCEING AND MOVING JOBS OVERSEAS.

[Zynx]

12. No. Volcker was by no means a supply-sider.

Volcker leans distinctly left of center on economic policy.

Also, of course he killed inflation via a recession. That's inevitably how all hyperinflation spirals end. Find me a period of double digit inflation in an advanced industrialized country that ended happily. Keynesian analysis dictated hammering aggregate demand to reduce the price level. He did that. It was not pleasant, but there was no alternative. I've never heard a plausible alternative. If you have one, then you are apparently the most brilliant mind in monetary economics in the last 100 years.

[Ikonoklast]

24. Paul Volcker, who stated "Americans need to earn less money."

And by that, he meant 'working Americans', you know, the 'little people' he never has to see or deal with on a daily basis.

Fuck Paul Volcker.

[HamdenRice]

19. Yes, Volker had to save Wall St's investments by creating the worst post war recession

probably worse than the one we are going through now. Jeez, this place is now fully ruled by bizarre urban legends.

Volker was a monster. At least this recession was caused by greed, stupidity and risk taking in the private sector. Volker created that one on purpose to save the value of bonds.

Now on DU Volker is some kind of fucking hero. The average IQ of this place is now around mental institution territory.

[Zynx]

20. If you think that 12.5% inflation was a friend of the working man, I have a bridge to sell you.

Sure it made their debts decline in real value, but it also cut into real wages. http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/Wages+and+Benefits:+Real+Wages+(1964-2004)

Look at that. Over 10% declines in real wages in that period. Throughout the entirety of the 1970s it was even worse. Granted they didn't pick up much afterwards, but that had more to do with Reagan's labor policies than Volcker's monetary policies. The recession was necessary. Very few economists dispute that.

Another thing, if you think that private investment being totally killed off due to the fact that investors can't earn real return is a good thing, you have some serious problems. No economists, right or left, thinks that is beneficial.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

23. I think you are half right

Runaway inflation is broadly destructive and not a friend of the working man, but it is even more unfriendly to idle capital.

But modest but lively Inflation seems to generally correlate with real wage increases.

The most profitable environment for financial services is very low inflation.

When Volker broke the back of inflation it ushered in an era of depressed wages and the runaway growth of the financial services sector.

I don't think that was Volker's intention, but my sense is that the worker never made it back to the 1960s environment while runaway financial sector drove us to an ever-expanding series of asset bubbles.

[Odin2005]

27. the inflation would have worked itself out eventually.

It just gave the corporatists an excuse to depress employment in the name "inflation reduction".

[GodlessBiker]

4. Retire Bernanke and replace with Paul Krugman.

[Zynx]

6. There's no guarantee that Krugman really knows what he's doing on monetary policy.

It's a lot easier being an academic than a policymaker.

[GodlessBiker]

7. There's no guarantee that anyone knows what they are doing on monetary policy.

[SpartanDem]

9. The same Paul Volcker who opposed saving GM and Chrysler?

No brainer my ass

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

11. Bernanke will go down in history as the single person who most helped us avoid

a depression.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/08/AR2009040804401.html?sid=ST2009040804649

[HamdenRice]

18. You are posting facts. You have to get with the program and post urban legends about Bernanke

at this point.

[Historic NY]

13. They are all Greenspan clones... and he admits he made errors

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html

[HamdenRice]

17. What a horrible insane idea -- but then again DU has Ron Paul fans

Volker was one of the worst and most callous right wing Fed chairmen in history and Bernanke has been one of the best new New Dealers ever.

Of course, Bernanke's perfidity is now an irrefutable urban legend, but in the real world, your idea is borderline psychotic.

[Zynx]

21. Calling Volcker right wing is very questionable.

That actually needs to be supported by some evidence. You are making a claim in the affirmative so it is your burden to justify it. Nearly all readily apparent evidence disputes that.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

22. If people would like the REAL story of Paul Volcker and not your twisted

opinion they could read just some of the following:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/v/paul_a_volcker/index.html?inline=nyt-per

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21volcker.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1260115207-IzfzygpyrdO3q29ex4i4HQ

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/20/volcker-banks-regulations-intelligent-investing_volcker.html

[Odin2005]

26. +1

I can't believe people praise Volker.

[Odin2005]

25. Volker was the corporatists' wet dream.

He trashed the ideal of full employment in the name of "inflation reduction". The hyperinflation of the time was caused by the 70's oil crisis and from LBJ trying to have both guns and butter, overheating the economy. The hyperinflation would have worked itself out without Volker's manufactured recession.

The corporatists use fear of hyperinflation to keep interests rates high, preventing full employment and thus depressing wages.

Bernanke is doing the exact opposite, keeping interest rates low to promote employment, even if it might cause some inflation.

I support Fed Chairman Bernanke.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

28. Here is what Paul Krugman has to say about Volcker

in a an open letter to President Obama published in Rolling Stone.You'll forgive me I hope, if I give more credence to his opinion than yours?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/25456948/what_obama_must_do
What Obama Must Do
A Letter to the New President
PAUL KRUGMANPosted Jan 14, 2009 12:17 PM

skip
Remember the economic boom of 1984, which let Ronald Reagan run on the slogan "It's morning again in America"? Well, Reagan had absolutely nothing to do with that boom. It was, instead, the work of Paul Volcker, whom Jimmy Carter appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1979 (and who's now the head of your economic advisory panel). First Volcker broke the back of inflation, at the cost of a recession that probably doomed Carter's re-election chances in 1980. Then Volcker engineered an economic bounce-back. In effect, Reagan dressed up in a flight suit and pretended to be a hotshot economic pilot, but Volcker was the guy who actually flew the plane and landed it safely.