The Federal Reserve Bank chairman, Ben Bernanke was reappointed to second four-year term in a move that seemed unlikely a few short months ago. Although a holdover from the Bush administration, Bernanke has repeatedly earned the thanks of President Barack Obama as he has helped to steer the US economy through these troubled economic times. www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i7ZxXpevkTny0tqWCIgC5TZZqe7g
Bernanke is a noted scholar of The Great Depression, and although he has apparently kept the US from a repeat of that calamity, he might be the first to admit that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and not himself, who was mostly responsible for keeping the nation from reaching new depths in the economy. The modern reader may be unaware of the enormity of the programs of The New Deal as implemented by Roosevelt. Among other things, FDR created the Unemployment Insurance Act, which has helped keep the ravages of unemployment to manageable levels for millions of Americans. He also created the Social Security Act which has helped growing segments of today’s aging population from feeling the full wrath of another major depression. The FDIC, also a Roosevelt initiative, has protected the savings of millions of Americans and prevented far more damaging bank collapses. The domino effect in the absence of any of these three programs alone would have plunged the world into a far more severe recession.
In a way, the programs initiated by Roosevelt have created “stop losses” throughout the economy. His programs at the time were railed against as being socialistic, but it is hard to imagine how far last autumn’s economic free fall might have lasted without them.
I in no way want to diminish Bernanke’s achievements. It is a far more complicated and a far more global economy than the one that stared back at FDR. But certainly Bernanke understands the historical context of his actions far better than most. Seventy-five or eighty years later, Roosevelt’s programs still represent a new deal for millions of Americans. It’s just that today, few of them realize it.
By Myron Gushlak
