Does Obama Regret Reappointing Ben Bernanke?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

John Cassidy thinks President Obama was wrong to reappoint Ben Bernanke as Fed chair in 2009. I thought so too, so obviously I agree. Matt Yglesias agrees too, but he doubts that Obama himself has had second thoughts:

An interesting further nuance is provided by [Cassidy’s] very last line, which says “I’d bet that right about now the president is wishing he’d made a different choice.”

What’s interesting is that my read of the situation is that Obama doesn’t wish this, even though he ought to. The key evidence is that Bernanke is hardly the only member of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee who Obama has appointed, and none of his appointees are calling for monetary expansion. Instead the strongest voices at the Fed for expansionary policy are regional bank presidents—Charles Evans of Chicago has been the champion, followed by Eric Rosengren of Boston and John Williams of San Francisco.

….This is a Fed full of Obama appointees pursuing a disastrous policy trajectory that’s creating all kinds of problems for Obama. But I’ve never read any reporting indicating that the Obama economic team is upset about monetary policy….

OK, hold on right there. On the subject of Bernanke in particular, I don’t know what he thinks in his heart of hearts. Would he support a more expansionary monetary policy if he had enough backing on the Fed board? Would he have more backing if Obama had appointed better colleagues? Could better colleagues have won Senate confirmation? There’s reason to doubt it.

We don’t know much about this because the inner workings of the Fed have always been pretty opaque. But here’s what perplexes me: Why am I perplexed about what Obama thinks of this? The inner workings of the West Wing are the exact opposite of opaque. As with most administrations, there’s been an absolute mountain of reporting on the inner workings of the Obama White House. And yet, I’ve barely read a word about what Team Obama really thinks of the Fed. Why is this? I, for one, would sure like to know.

UPDATE: Jonathan Bernstein thinks Obama could have had a better Fed if he’d tried a little harder:

Ben Bernanke received 70 votes for confirmation — and 77 votes for cloture. That sounds like there was room for someone else, especially since Bernanke lost some Democratic votes (even on cloture). Two other nominees were approved in September 2010 on voice votes. Both nominees approved in 2012 — after the Democratic majority was slimmed down considerably — still cleared 70 votes.

Nor is this an area where I think anyone has made an argument that Barack Obama employed a full-court press on the Senate. Yes, there was some lobbying on Bernanke, but overall it’s clearly been a back-burner issue for Obama….I’m open to arguments on this one, but I just don’t see any evidence that Obama couldn’t have had a significantly different Fed if he had wanted one.

I definitely agree that Obama could have appointed a more liberal Fed chair than Bernanke. High profile appointments are different. It’s the others I’m not so sure about. But I’m open to arguments on this too.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate