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MONETARY POLICY AND THE 

STATE OF THE ECONOMY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MARCH 2, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services 

Serial No. 112–11 

( 

(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama, Chairman 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas, Vice Chairman 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RON PAUL, Texas 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri 

BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan 

SEAN P. DUFFY, Wisconsin 

NAN A. S. HAYWORTH, New York 

JAMES B. RENACCI, Ohio 

ROBERT HURT, Virginia 

ROBERT J. DOLD, Illinois 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

MICHAEL G. GRIMM, New York 

FRANCISCO ‘‘QUICO’’ CANSECO, Texas 

STEVE STIVERS, Ohio 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Ranking 

Member 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

JOE BACA, California 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JAMES A. HIMES, Connecticut 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

JOHN C. CARNEY, JR., Delaware 

LARRY C. LAVENDER, Chief of Staff 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

March 2, 2011 ................................................................................................... 1 

Appendix: 

March 2, 2011 ................................................................................................... 53 

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2011 

Bernanke, Hon. Ben S., Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 

System ................................................................................................................... 7 

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Paul, Hon. Ron .................................................................................................. 54 

Bernanke, Hon. Ben S. ..................................................................................... 55 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Bernanke, Hon. Ben S.: 

Monetary Policy Report to the Congress, dated March 1, 2011 ................... 66 

Written responses to questions submitted by Representative Carolyn 

McCarthy ....................................................................................................... 122 

(1) 

MONETARY POLICY AND THE 

STATE OF THE ECONOMY 

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2128, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Spencer Bachus [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Bachus, Hensarling, Royce, 

Lucas, Paul, Manzullo, Biggert, Capito, Garrett, Neugebauer, 

McHenry, Campbell, Bachmann, Marchant, McCotter, Pearce, 

Posey, Fitzpatrick, Westmoreland, Luetkemeyer, Huizenga, Duffy, 

Hayworth, Renacci, Hurt, Dold, Schweikert, Grimm, Canseco, Stivers; Frank, Waters, Maloney, Velazquez, Watt, Ackerman, Sherman, Meeks, Capuano, Clay, McCarthy of New York, Baca, Lynch, 

Miller of North Carolina, Scott, Green, Cleaver, Moore, Donnelly, 

Carson, Peters, and Carney. 

Chairman BACHUS. This hearing will come to order. We meet 

today to receive the semiannual report to Congress by the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System by 

Chairman Ben Bernanke on the conduct of monetary policy and the 

state of the economy. Without objection, all members’ written statements will be made a part of the record. 

For the purpose of an opening statement, I will recognize the 

gentleman from Texas, Dr. Paul. Prior to that, we want to welcome 

you, Chairman Bernanke, to the committee. I want to personally 

commend you for your stand that we need to address the national 

debt and the deficit. I know that makes your job much harder and 

presents challenges in managing our monetary policy. 

Dr. Paul, you are recognized at this time for 11⁄2 minutes. 

Dr. PAUL. Thank you. It has been said ever since the crisis hit 

that one of the causes has been that interest rates were kept too 

low for too long, and that is more or less a consensus. Now, the 

treatment over these last couple of years has been to lower interest 

rates even longer and keep them low for a much longer time. 

We were told yesterday that we shouldn’t expect any permanent 

increase in price inflation, that it will be temporary and modest 

and the CPI is under control. If we look at the free market economists, we find out that the measurement of the CPI the old-fashioned way is going up at 9 percent and the true money supply as 

measured by the Austrian economists is going up at 24 percent. So 

I would suggest that we still have a lot of inflation in the system. 

It is going to get much worse. 

2 

The excuse for the prices going up right now is that we have 

growth. So I guess the answer will be to destroy growth. And that 

is generally the case. What we have done in the past, we have 

growth, and the Keynesian economists always claim because of 

growth, prices go up. But prices don’t go up when you have growth 

in the electronics industry, so it is hardly an excuse to purposely 

diminish growth, which is generally done. But all kinds of blame 

are placed, whether it is on the Middle East, the weather, labor, 

prices, speculation; all these things. That is the reason prices go 

up. 

Rarely, if ever, would we see the admission that the real cause 

of price inflation, which is a deadly threat to us right now, is the 

Federal Reserve System and our monetary policy. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Ranking Member Frank for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Bernanke, welcome. I appreciate this chance, frankly, to hear from you. One of 

the phenomena we have is that people are able to make very negative predictions, and if nothing comes true, the predictions are ignored. I looked back over the efforts you have engaged in over the 

past few years, beginning really in 2008 when the crisis hit, and 

there have been a series of things; the quantitative easing, before 

that, the TALF and other extraordinary interventions. 

I would note that people should be aware—and I am going to ask 

you to comment on it later—that some of what you did, for instance, with regard to AIG and that crisis in which we had very 

little time to deal with alternatives, could no longer be done in 

those terms. With your participation, we have redrafted the legislation so that, for example, the unilateral granting by the Federal 

Reserve of funding to AIG, people should understand is no longer 

legally possible. We amended a statute that had been 70 years on 

the books, and there was a consensus actually on both sides that 

it should be changed, and leave you with some ability to act, but 

in a more structured way. 

But I want to go back over this whole line of interventions, including today, quantitative easing. There has been a series of criticisms that have been made and negative predictions, and my view 

is that none of them have come true. And I think it is important 

for us to note that. I know you have talked about this. I know you 

mention in your statement some of the points. 

We were told, for instance, that it was going to be very inflationary. I know it is your view as of now, and I think supported 

by the facts, that inflation is not now a problem, and we do not see 

inflation—certainly, not one caused by any of what has been done 

going forward. We were told this was going to be extraordinarily 

expensive; that it was going to cost a lot of money. I believe the 

answer is that on many of these things, the Federal Government 

has made a profit by the intervention. 

The oddest criticism, of course, was one which we got from a 

number of other countries, and, to my surprise, from some of my 

Republican colleagues who said that what you were doing with 

quantitative easing was unfair to the rest of the world because it 

was a form of currency manipulation that would hold down the 

value of the dollar. 

3 

And I was especially struck by the Chinese complaining that you 

were engaging in currency manipulation. It seemed to be clear your 

motivation was to try to stimulate the American economy or to provide some assistance there. But I have to say that being accused 

by the Chinese government of currency manipulation struck me as 

equivalent to being lectured on birth control by the Octomom. 

But I would say that it does not seem to me that these fears that 

you were somehow destabilizing the international currency system 

and provoking retaliation proved to be correct. There was one 

other—and we have seen this—and it was the suggestion that the 

Federal Reserve, in a cloak of secrecy, was engaged in a whole variety of inappropriate transactions with private parties. There were 

some suggestions of improper collusion, etc. 

One of the things we have done as a result of the legislation 

passed last year was a transparency that all of the transactions in 

which you were engaged were to be made public. And my recollection is that the news was the fact that it was being made public. 

But virtually no specific revelation was of any interest to anybody; 

that is, in the sense that it showed anything bad. Because we do 

know the view is that good news is no news. In the absence of anything negative, that went forward. 

So I want to say, finally, I was pleased to see you note that you 

are reserving judgment on quantitative easing being continued. We 

hope it won’t be necessary. But we have had this situation. Late 

in the last quarter of 2009, things were looking better, and also in 

the first quarter of 2010, and then the European crisis caused problems here in America. We are again moving well, although the last 

quarter’s numbers were somewhat disappointing, in part I notice 

because while the private sector has been steadily increasing employment, State and local governments have been forced to cut 

back, and that has detracted from the overall employment number 

and subtracted a little bit from growth. There is also the potential 

problem caused by the problems in the Middle East. 

So I think it is entirely appropriate that you are reserving judgment as to what to do in a couple of months when the decision will 

come forward again. But I do think it is important that people who 

have been so critical of quantitative easing tell us what negative 

effects they think have happened, because I think the record is 

pretty clear that they haven’t been. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Ranking Member Frank. 

At this time, on our side, we are going to recognize 6 freshmen 

for 1 minute and 10 seconds each. 

At this time, Ms. Hayworth. 

Dr. HAYWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, 

Chairman Bernanke, for testifying today and for your focus on jobs 

and unemployment. I consider, with my colleagues, that our primary task in this Congress is job creation. And your testimony yesterday was a very welcome voice of reason in the debate about how 

we go forward, particularly your assertion that the program with 

spending cuts we are leading in the House will not, as some predict, impede growth. 

Certainly, I am among many who would respectfully contend 

that we need substantial and sustained spending cuts in order to 

achieve growth. I am a physician by profession and I look at our 

4 

current State and the state of the patients, our economy, and in a 

sense it is in suspended animation, sort of cryogenic suspension. 

The actions that you have taken with regard to inflation and the 

monetary supply have had, perhaps at this point, their maximal 

beneficial effect and we are awaiting a definitive cure, a reanimation by lifting the burdens that have been placed in so many ways 

by the Congress of the most recent session, Dodd-Frank being a 

key focus for us. 

So I look forward to your testimony about how we go forward and 

we animate and reactivate our economy. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Hurt. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Chairman Bernanke, and thank you for appearing 

today. 

I represent Virginia’s Fifth District, a region that has been dramatically affected by our country’s recent economic struggles with 

unemployment exceeding 20 percent in some places. With $14 trillion in debt and $1.6 trillion in deficit spending, my constituents, 

central and south side Virginians, are extremely concerned about 

the economic outlook of our country. And now businesses and individuals are facing rising fuel costs at a time when they can least 

afford it. My constituents want to know what actions we Federal 

policymakers will take to lower unemployment, tackle our 

unsustainable debt and deficit, and halt the increases in oil prices. 

Without such actions, these problems will continue to make our circumstances even more challenging and stifle our economy. 

I am very interested in your perspective of our Nation’s overall 

economic outlook, and I welcome your assessment of specific proposals to put our country on a more sustainable fiscal track. 

I look forward to your testimony and appreciate your appearance 

today. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I yield back. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Dold. 

Mr. DOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Bernanke, thank you for being here today. 

Obviously, we are facing many economic challenges. First, our 

fiscal policies have unsuccessfully relied upon trillions of dollars of 

new and unsustainable deficits. Even if the Federal Reserve handles monetary policy and regulatory supervision perfectly, it is 

hard to see how our economy and our future generations can prosper over the long term if Congress and the Executive Branch refuse 

to make the difficult but necessary fiscal choices now about excessive borrowing and spending. 

Second, we are seeing continuing and disturbing weakness in the 

labor market despite some recent GDP growth. Congress must 

focus on creating the best conditions for private sector job growth 

while considering the effectiveness of the Federal Reserve efforts to 

also promote full employment under its existing mandate. 

Third, despite continuing low-core inflation rates, we are seeing 

continuing price increases and instability in the important sectors 

like energy, food, and other commodities. In addition to interVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:35 May 12, 2011 Jkt 065672 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\65672.TXT TERRIE
5 

national political instability, these sectors could trigger larger inflationary consequences which would then require the Federal Reserve to correctly identify and effectively address those inflationary 

consequences. 

Finally, the Federal Reserve has significant new rulemaking and 

supervisory authority, which presents many new challenges for the 

Fed and our economy. 

I look forward to hearing from you on all of these topics, and I, 

again, thank you for your time. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Mr. Watt is recognized for 3 minutes. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome back, Mr. 

Bernanke. It is great to have you back. 

Listening to the comments of some of my colleagues, I am happy 

to say that we have an independent Federal Reserve, because if we 

listen to the political comments that are being made, they are all 

over the lot. The primary task is job creation. Yet, we just did a 

whole bunch of things last week or the week before last, which, if 

they were put into effect, every economist that I have read predictions from suggest that they would result in substantial job loss. 

When you get economists of all ‘‘political stripes’’ suggesting that 

we could lose 800,000 to a million new jobs as a result of some of 

the cuts that are being proposed, it leads me to wonder whether, 

in fact, as the gentlelady said, the primary task of this Congress 

is job creation. 

Of course, our political slant is always to be preoccupied with 

whatever is negative. If things are going in the right direction and 

moving in the right direction, then we worry about whether that 

is going to cause inflation. When they are moving in the wrong direction, then we worry about whether that is going to cause deflation. When we are creating jobs, we worry about whether we ought 

to be doing deficit reduction and slowing down the pace of job creation. When we destroy jobs, then we worry about how we can 

build them back up. 

So in that context, it is refreshing to know that we have had 

good judgment to create an independent Federal Reserve that sets 

monetary policy without regard to whatever the popular political 

emotion of the moment is. 

With that in mind, I am happy to welcome Mr. Bernanke back 

today to talk about those things in a nonpolitical way impacting 

the economy. And I look forward to your testimony. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

At this time, I recognize Mr. Schweikert. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Bernanke has made it clear that the debt crisis is our 

top long-term priority. In my long term as a Member here, 50-some 

days, I have come to realize that this body doesn’t move unless 

there is a pending crisis. I respect the chairman’s concerns that the 

pending debt vote should not be tied to fiscal policy reform. But 

what leverage will this Congress have without a pending crisis? 

That is why I would love the Chairman to speak to Pat Toomey’s 

full faith and credit legislation that makes it clear that our priorities, God forbid we operate without raising the debt ceiling, that 

6 

the financial markets know we pay our debts first. Will that have 

a calming effect on the national and international markets? 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Mr. Grimm. 

Mr. GRIMM. Good morning, and thank you, Chairman Bachus. 

Thank you, Chairman Bernanke, for appearing before the committee. I do applaud your recognition that we are, in fact, in a debt 

crisis. But, Chairman, when I look at the current state of our economy and the effects that the recent Federal Reserve policy has had, 

it does cause me some concern. And since the Fed has announced 

its second round of quantitative easing on November 3rd, oil prices 

have gone from $84 a barrel to $100, an increase of almost 19 percent in 4 months. And I understand there is turmoil in the Middle 

East, but it is still something we have to address. 

Officially, unemployment is at 9 percent. When you look at alternative measures such as the Gallup survey, you see unemployment 

has been increasing and actually stands at 10 percent. According 

to Gallup, when you factor in all the part-time workers who want 

full-time jobs, underemployment stands at a staggering 19.6 percent. It is simply not sustainable, and we must start meaningful 

gains in employment and real economic growth. For that reason, I 

am very eager to hear your testimony today and your thoughts in 

addressing these concerns. 

Thank you very much, and I yield back the rest of my time, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Grimm. 

Mr. Canseco. 

Mr. CANSECO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Bernanke, thank you for coming here today. 

Although there are many concerns on the minds of American 

people, the number one concern is jobs. For the past 2 years, the 

solution to job creation coming from my colleagues on the other 

side of the aisle was simply to fling open the Federal Treasury in 

an attempt to buy an economic recovery instead of creating one. 

Just like the Beatles sang ‘‘Can’t Buy Me Love,’’ you just can’t buy 

an economic recovery. Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money on a failed stimulus bill, all taxpayers have 

to show is an economy where nearly 1 out of every 10 Americans 

is unemployed and many Americans are struggling to pay their 

mortgages, pay their health care premiums, and now, to fill up 

their cars. 

I recently spent several days visiting with my constituents across 

700 miles of the Texas 23rd Congressional District. What I heard 

from my constituents is that they believe we can create jobs by getting government out of the way and removing the uncertainty from 

the economy, cutting spending and putting our fiscal house in 

order, and just letting business do what business does best, and 

that is create jobs. I look forward to hearing from you on that regard. 

Thank you. And I yield back. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Canseco. 

Chairman Bernanke, without objection, your written statement 

will be made a part of the record. You are now recognized for a 

summary of your testimony. There will not be a time limit. 

7 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BEN S. BERNANKE, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE 

SYSTEM 

Mr. BERNANKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will talk about the 

economic situation and then some monetary policy issues. 

Following the stabilization of economic activity in mid-2009, the 

U.S. economy is now in the seventh quarter of growth. Nevertheless, job growth remains relatively week and the unemployment 

rate is still high. In the early stages, the recovery was attributable 

to a number of factors, including the stabilization of the financial 

system, expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, and inventory 

rebuilding. Economic growth slowed in the spring and summer of 

last year, due to a number of factors, including the European debt 

issues. More recently, we have seen increased evidence that a selfsustaining recovery in consumer and business spending may be 

taking hold. And I take special note of solid growth in consumer 

spending as well as increased business investment. We also have 

had good gains in U.S. manufacturing outputs, supported by 

stronger demand. 

Our projection is that we should see stronger economic growth in 

2011. The Federal Reserve Board does projections, which it prepared in late January, which have real GDP increasing 31⁄2 to 4 

percent in 2011, which is higher than projections we made in November. Importantly, the private sector forecasters are very much 

in line with this improved outlook. 

Despite the improvement in the growth outlook, the labor market 

remains improving slowly. We lost about 8.75 million jobs in the 

downturn. We have only regained about a million back, which is 

barely enough to accommodate the new entrance to the labor force. 

We do see some grounds for optimism, including declines in the unemployment rate, declines in the new unemployment insurance 

claims, and improvements in firms’ reported hiring plans. But even 

so, this could take quite a while for unemployment to come down 

to desired levels at current expected growth rates. And, in particular, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) projects unemployment still to be in the range of 71⁄2 to 8 percent by the end 

of 2012. Until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation, 

we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established. 

The housing sector also remains weak. In particular, even 

though mortgage rates and house prices are low, many potential 

home buyers are finding mortgages difficult to obtain and are still 

worried about additional declines in house prices. Inflation has 

been declining overall. Overall inflation, including all prices, energy included, was 1.2 percent as of January, down from 21⁄2 percent a year earlier. And associated with that is slow wage growth; 

1.9 percent nominal wage growth over the last year. 

The FOMC sees inflation staying low, expecting about 11⁄4 to 13⁄4

percent overall inflation this year, and a range of 1 to 2 percent 

in the subsequent 2 years. And we get similar numbers from private sector forecasters from the Inflation Index Treasury Bond 

Market and from surveys of households. Overall, expectations are 

for inflation to stay low. 

Now, as people have noted, we have seen some increases in highly visible prices, including gas prices. Some of these come from the 

8 

unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. Others are coming 

from higher global demand for raw materials associated with 

strong growth and emerging markets as well as some problems 

with the global supply, such as weather conditions and the like. I 

in no way want to understate the hardships associated with higher 

gas prices, but they reflect primarily a change in the relative price 

of this commodity, not an overall inflationary impact. 

We have seen in the past that the rate of pass-through from commodity price increases to broader inflation tends to be quite low, 

in part because materials inputs are only a small part of production. In addition, the cost pressures from commodities are being offset by very low increases in labor costs. 

Finally, inflation expectations have been quite well-anchored, 

which helps to keep inflation stable even if there are temporary 

movements coming from commodity prices. 

That said, sustained rises in the prices of oil and other commodities would represent a threat both to economic growth and to overall price stability, particularly if they were to cause inflation expectations to become less anchored. So we are going to continue to 

monitor these developments and we will respond as necessary to 

best support the ongoing recovery in the context of price stability. 

I talked about alternative monetary policy. I talked earlier about 

the slowdown we saw beginning last spring. Over the spring and 

the summer, we saw slowing growth to a level that was not sufficient to reduce unemployment. We were concerned that unemployment might begin to increase and that the economy might suffer 

a double-dip recession. At the same time, we saw inflation falling 

to very low levels and indeed markets were expressing concerns 

about deflation. 

Under such circumstances, usually the Fed would ease monetary 

policy. The way we would normally do that would be to lower the 

Federal Funds rate. But the Federal Funds rate has been close to 

zero since December 2008, so we needed to do something different. 

What we did is to provide monetary policy accommodation by 

buying longer-term securities in the open market, such as Treasuries and Agency securities. We had a program that lasted from 

December 2008 through March 2010, which appeared to have a lot 

of success in contributed to growth and stabilization in the economy, and in particular, following the expansion of the program in 

March of 2009, we saw a pickup in growth as well as improved financial conditions. 

In August of last year, given our concerns about the slowing 

growth and potentially rising unemployment as well as the continuing declines in inflation, we decided to return to a more accommodative strategy. The first thing we did was we began to reinvest 

the securities that were running off so that we would keep our balance sheet constant in size and we began to indicate to the market 

that we were looking to possibly expand our balance sheets through 

additional Treasury purchases. In November, we announced our intention to buy $600 billion additional Treasury securities by the 

middle of this year. 

A lot has been said about so-called QE2. I think it is important 

to understand that it works very much the same way ordinary 

monetary policy works. Ordinary monetary policy works by lowVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:35 May 12, 2011 Jkt 065672 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\65672.TXT TERRIE
9 

ering short-term interest rates and by affecting longer-term interest rates indirectly because of the expectation that short-term interest rates will be lower for a period; that those lower interest 

rates stimulate spending by household and firms and helps increase demand and production in the economy. We get a very similar effect when we buy Treasuries directly. It pushes down interest 

rates and leads to easier financial conditions, which helps support 

economic growth. 

There is very strong evidence in favor that the first round, which 

was in 2009, was very successful, and we are seeing similar indications of success for the second round. Since August, in particular, 

we have seen considerable improvement in financial markets, including significant gains in the equity market and more narrow 

spreads in the corporate bond market. Inflation expectations have 

normalized from what we were before at unusually low levels. We 

have seen less volatility. And in general, we have seen the kinds 

of response in financial markets that we would expect from a monetary policy easing. 

In addition, as I have already noted, since August, and again 

since November, private sector forecasters as well as the markets 

have upgraded their expectations of growth in 2011, which may or 

may not be due to our policy actions, but certainly doesn’t refute 

the possibility that our actions have been constructive. I want to 

assure the members here that our committee will continue to review this asset program meeting by meeting, assessing the state of 

the economy, and will act as needed to meet our mandate of maximum employment and stable prices. 

We are also quite aware of the need to exit, to unwind this accommodation at the appropriate time, and I want to assure you we 

have all the tools we need to do that even if the amount of reserves 

in the banking system remains high. The FOMC is unwaveringly 

committed to price stability in particular, and we will make sure 

that the rate of inflation in the medium term is consistent with the 

Federal Reserve’s mandate. 

Finally, just a few words on transparency. The Federal Reserve 

has been given operational independence by the Congress to meet 

its mandate that independence is very important because it allows 

us to make decisions in the longer-term interest of the economy 

without regard to short-term political considerations. But the flip 

side of that independence is that we need to be transparent and accountable—and we are indeed transparent and accountable, and 

becoming increasingly so over time. 

On monetary policy, I am submitting today the Semiannual Monetary Report. But beyond that, we also provide a statement after 

the meeting. We provide minutes after 3 weeks. And after 5 years, 

we are the only central bank that provides in that kind of timeframe a detailed transcript that includes every word spoken at the 

meeting of the FOMC. 

As Congressman Frank alluded to, we have also been very transparent about our balance sheet and our financial operations. We 

voluntarily provided a great deal of information about the special 

credit and liquidity facilities we put in place in this crisis, most of 

which are shut down or largely closed down. 

10 

In addition, as required by Dodd-Frank, on December 1st, we 

provided the information related to 21,000 transactions. And these 

have been reviewed substantially. There have been no problems 

identified. And indeed the evidence seems to be that these programs were not only well run but they were also successful in helping to stabilize financial markets. A recent example of that is a 

study by the Board’s independent IG. In addition, we continue to 

work closely with the GAO, the SIGTARP, and the Congressional 

Oversight panel, the Congress, as well as private sector auditors, 

all of who are looking at our books making sure that everything is 

as it should be. 

We are supporting and cooperating with that effort. And we will 

continue to seek ways to enhance our transparency because we believe that transparency and accountability are the flip side of the 

independence the Fed needs to make good long-term policy decisions. 

So thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr. Chairman. I will be 

happy to take your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Bernanke can be found on 

page 55 of the appendix.] 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before we start 

with our questioning, the Federal Reserve Chairman has informed 

us that he will need to leave at 1 p.m. today in order to accommodate other appointments. That is actually a generous allocation of 

his time. Anyone who doesn’t have an opportunity to question him 

orally, your written statements will be made part of the record if 

you didn’t get an opportunity to make a statement today. 

Mr. FRANK. Let me say on our side we will go through the seniority list. Where we stop is where we will start when Mr. Bernanke 

returns for his second visit this year. So we will go through in seniority. When Mr. Bernanke returns, we will pick up, as members 

come here, as we left off. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. At this time, I yield myself 5 

minutes for questions. I don’t really have a question at this time. 

Normally, I have short questions. But, Chairman Bernanke, I really want to speak to the members on both sides. 

The Chairman has consistently told Members of Congress that 

reducing the deficit will have both long-term and short-term benefits for the economy. While acknowledging that a credible deficit reduction plan will require difficult choices, Chairman Bernanke has 

stated unequivocally that Congress must act to take government 

spending off an unsustainable path. A year ago, in his testimony 

before this committee, which was on February 24th, he said it is 

very, very important for Congress and the Administration to come 

to some kind of program, some kind of plan, that will credibly show 

how the United States Government is going to bring itself back to 

a sustainable position. It would be very helpful, even to current recovery to markets’ confidence, if there were a sustainable, credible 

path to the extent that we can achieve credible plans to be reduce 

medium and long-term deficits will actually have more flexibility in 

the short term if we want to take other kinds of actions. 

And that was in response to a question I asked him. 

Earlier this year—really, 1 month ago today—he told the House 

Budget Committee that acting now to develop a credible program 

11 

to reduce future deficits would not only enhance economic growth 

and sustainability in the long term, it would yield substantial nearterm benefits in terms of lower long-term interest rates and increase consumer and business confidence. Obviously, that would 

lead to more jobs. 

He also said 1 month ago to the House, by definition, the 

unsustainable trajectories of deficits and debts that the CBO outlines cannot actually happen because creditors will never be willing 

to lend to a government with debt relative to national income that 

is rising without limit. 

So normally, I would ask him, ‘‘What do we do?’’ But he has told 

us time and time and time again that we need to get our fiscal 

house in order. So my question would normally be that. But, obviously, my question is going to change a little bit. 

I am going to ask you, you are in charge of, the Federal Reserve 

is in charge of monetary policy, as I understand it. I think that is 

true. The Congress and the Executive Branch are in charge of fiscal policy. And you can advise us but you can’t take charge of that 

policy. Our failure to address fiscal policy in a responsible manner, 

how does that make your job as Fed President and the Federal Reserve’s charge to manage monetary policy harder and more difficult 

and what effect has it had on what you are to do? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Thank you for quoting me from earlier testimonies. I stand by those statements. The concern is if the Federal 

deficit remains on an unsustainable path, that we could see at 

some point a sharp increase in interest rates, which would be both 

bad for recovery and bad for financial stability. It would obviously 

go against the efforts of the Fed to keep interest rates low so that 

we can have recovery. 

So, while I understand these are difficult decisions and we certainly can’t solve it all in the current fiscal year, I do think we 

need to look forward. And I know the House Budget Committee 

and others will be setting up a 10-year proposal. It is very important and would be very constructive for Congress to lay out a plan 

that would be credible that will help bring us to sustainability over 

the next few years. 

In particular, one rule of thumb is cutting enough that the ratio 

of the debt to GDP stops rising, because currently it is rising relatively quickly. If we can stabilize that, I think it would do a lot 

to increase confidence in our government and in our fiscal policies. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Chairman Bernanke. Let me say 

to the members, we have mentioned QE2 today. I think the Federal 

Reserve, whether you applaud or criticize that decision, our lack of 

responsibility here, QE2 has given us some opportunity to act on 

our debt and deficit. And we have not taken advantage of that. It 

limits those options. So any criticism directed at the Chairman, you 

need to point that finger back at yourself. 

Ranking Member Frank. 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for that very thoughtful 

statement at the end, and I appreciate your stressing the constructive assets. You have to appreciate the Federal Reserve Chairman 

has to operate within this particular context. So I want to echo the 

point that we need a long-term deficit reduction plan. I did notice 

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term. And it does seem to me clear, if we are able to do mediumand long-term plans, we get more flexibility in the short term. That 

is clearly what he said. At a time when the private sector has been 

growing jobs, although not at a fast enough pace, and the State 

and local governments shedding jobs, that has been one of the constraints. 

So I do agree a medium- and long-term plan is very important 

and it lets us have a little more flexibility in the short term. But 

I want to stress one very important part of that. We will not 

achieve a credible medium- and long-term plan for reducing the 

deficit if we continue to exempt the military from any significant 

reductions. Military spending was about $300 billion at the end of 

the Clinton Administration. It is now over $700 billion. It is not 

just a large percentage increase but, of course, a huge dollar increase. 

I must say I share the need to reduce the deficit. But when people who voted for the war in Iraq, that enormously costly terrible 

mistake made by the United States, which continues to cost us tens 

of billions of dollars when we have those noncombat troops over 

there refereeing Iraqi religious and political disputes, when they 

lecture me and tell me why I have to cut policemen from the cities 

that I represent, I am not impressed. So, yes, I do think we need 

to do this. 

Some of my colleagues argue somewhat inconsistently that the 

Federal Government is a job-killer except when it comes to military 

spending. I have been struck by the number of my colleagues who 

will get to the Floor and talk about how military spending creates 

jobs. We have a form of militarized Keynesianism in which only the 

military does job creation. So I agree there are areas I would like 

to see expanded, but they cannot be. 

I was also struck, of course, that the House recently voted to con- tinue to send $150 million per year to Brazilian cotton farmers so 

that we can preserve our legal right to subsidize American cotton 

farmers. That $150 million could have been doubled. We could have 

saved $300 million if we simply cut Americans the same as our 

Brazilian friends. 

So there are inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the spending cuts. 

And if they are done seriously across-the-board, I will be supportive. 

Mr. Chairman, I now just want to ask you; we have heard people 

speculate that the whole form of ‘‘too-big-to-fail’’, in which you were 

engaged a few years ago, that it is no different today than it was 

when you confronted it in 2008. And you confronted it, as we have 

said, with a very limited set of choices. So it is not a question of 

criticism then. What was your reaction to the notion that we are 

no better off as a government in trying to deal with ‘‘too-big-to-fail’’ 

and those consequences than we were during 2008? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I have to first say that the Dodd-Frank Act is not 

fully implemented. That is very important. So we are not really 

where we will be eventually. But we do have now a significant 

number of tools to address ‘‘too-big-to-fail.’’ They include tougher 

capital and liquidity and other requirements for systemically significant firms. They include: tougher supervision, including supervision by the Fed; living wills; the ability to break up firms if they 

13 

are viewed as posing systemic risk; and, very importantly, something that you and I talked about during the crisis, it would be nice 

if we had an alternative bankruptcy mechanism that would allow 

the government to wind down a failing financial firm without cost 

to taxpayers but also without creating a highly disruptive situation 

in the financial markets. 

Now, those things are in the process of development. I wouldn’t 

say that we have worked all these things out completely, and we 

may— 

Mr. FRANK. Could I just say, what you just described, that the 

financial reform bill does give you the basic building blocks for 

doing that? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes. 

Mr. FRANK. The last question—we talked about how you wound 

down most things, even including the AIG intervention, which you 

have acknowledged we could not do again and you wouldn’t want 

to do again in that form. What has been the net cost to the United 

States taxpayer from your interventions over the time, including 

QE2? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It has been highly profitable. The financial stabilization policies, including intervention in AIG and the like, assuming that the Treasury can sell its shares in AIG at something 

close to the current market price, the entire program involving 

TARP and financial market interventions will be a net profit positive. In addition, the Fed’s monetary policies and financial stability 

liquidity facilities have also been profitable. We turned over to the 

U.S. Government $125 billion in the last 2 years of profits. Now, 

I want to emphasize that was not the purpose of those interventions. 

Mr. FRANK. And we are not going to do it again. 

Mr. BERNANKE. And we are not doing it again. But we have, I 

think, managed it at least well enough that the taxpayer can feel 

that they will have gotten, at least in this respect, they have gotten 

their money back. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Ranking Member Frank. 

Dr. Paul, chairman of the Monetary Policy Subcommittee. 

Dr. PAUL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just say a word 

about the deficit. The spending and the deficit was a concern of 

mine in the early 1970s because I foresaw that after the breakdown 

of Bretton Woods, we would have endless spending, endless deficits, endless financial bubbles. And we have had that. As to whether or not we have military Keynesianism, we do. And I reject that 

as well as I reject domestic monetary economic Keynesianism. And 

until we put the two together and reject them, we are going to continue with these problems. 

But the reason why I don’t think it is a Federal Reserve job to 

lecture the Congress, even though I agree Congress is at fault, is 

they spend too much money. Congress at times will say the Fed is 

at fault. Congress and the Fed are symbiotic. They have a symbiotic relationship because the Congress spends and they know 

there is a moral hazard involved here because they know that if 

interest rates go up, the Fed accommodates them. So the Fed really 

facilitates this spending. And until we realize this, I think the Fed 

is involved with our deficit and encourages this as well as the ConVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:35 May 12, 2011 Jkt 065672 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\65672.TXT TERRIE
14 

gress. But it is true, Congress’ initial responsibility ought to be to 

cut the spending, because this deficit is exploding, inflation is exploding, and interest rates are going to go up. So we are going to 

have one heck of a problem here in the near future. 

But I want to ask a question dealing with monetary policy because it used to be that was the key to this hearing. Today, economic management, central economic planning, and everything is 

up for grabs. The monetary policy, of course, it was stated that the 

job of the Fed is to give stable prices and full employment. But if 

you look at the last 3 or 4 decades, there is nothing stable about 

it. 

Unemployment today, if we are honest with ourselves, if we look 

at all the people who no longer look for work, it is over 20 percent. 

To pretend it is going down and everything is rosy, I think we are 

deceiving ourselves to think that is happening. So I would say it 

is a total failure. 

One other reason I would like to suggest and get your comments 

on is how can you manage monetary policy, which means to manage the dollar, if we don’t have a definition of a dollar? I can’t find 

in the Code what a dollar is or a Federal Reserve note. And everybody knows a Federal Reserve note is a dollar, you create a note, 

which is a promise to pay, and that is another dollar. So the more 

debt you have, the more dollars you have. 

But I would like to know if you know whether there is a definition of a dollar and when it became known that a dollar was a Federal Reserve note. I want a definition of money. That seems to be 

the real job. We want a measurement of value. And this is a reason 

I believe that we made a big mistake by declaring fiat money, 

paper money would be our measurement of value. There is no way 

to maintain a true measurement of this. 

If you look at what the stock market—if you bought the stock 

market in the year 2000, the index, it would have taken 44 ounces 

of gold. In 1980, it would have taken 1.5 ounces of gold. Today, it 

is back down to 8 ounces. So in true value, the stock market is in 

a crash. You say, oh, no, gold is not money. And you and I will 

have a disagreement on whether gold is money or not. But the Fed 

holds gold, the Treasury holds gold, the central bank holds gold. 

My opinion doesn’t matter either because it is history. It is the 

marketplace. Gold is the true long-term measurement of value. 

So how can you run your operation without a definition of the 

dollar, and what is your definition of a dollar? 

Mr. BERNANKE. You raise some important points, Congressman. 

Our mandate is maximum employment and price stability. My definition of the dollar is what it can buy. Consumers don’t want to 

buy gold. They want to buy food and gasoline and clothes and all 

the other things that are in the consumer basket. It is the buying 

power of the dollar in terms of those goods and services that is 

what is important, and that is what I call price stability. The fact 

is that after the 1970s, where there was a lot of instability, and inflation was very high, since Chairman Volcker in the early 1980s, 

and I know you have talked about your relationship with him, 

brought inflation down, that inflation in the United States has 

been low and stable around 2 percent for some time. In fact, it has 

15 

been 2 percent over the last 5 years, despite everything else that 

has been going on. 

Moreover, in terms of the unemployment part of the mandate, it 

is certainly true unemployment is unsatisfactory now. My own view 

is that is largely due to the financial crisis, which, in turn, had a 

lot to do with problems in both the private markets and in the supervisory and regulatory regime. But putting that aside, over the 

period of the last 25 years or so, stability of unemployment has 

been much greater than it was in previous decades. So there has 

been improvement. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Dr. Paul. I appreciate that. 

At this time Ms. Waters is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much. I would like to thank you, 

Mr. Bernanke, for coming in one more time to talk with us about 

the economy and to help us to understand exactly what you are 

doing. First, I want to clear up something. You were in the Senate 

and there was some discussion about whether or not the $60 billion 

budget evident cut would be a major drain on the economy over the 

coming year. I think you basically said no, not major, but it would 

have some impact, negative impact. I wanted to try and get a sense 

of that. 

I think the studies show that 650,000 government jobs would be 

lost. Overall, 700,000 jobs would be lost. But some jobs would be 

lost. Could you explain to us what you meant when you said it 

would have a smaller impact? What are you talking about in real 

numbers? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We have tried to analyze this to try to get the 

answer to your question. And I should say that this issue is raised 

by some other analyses in the private sector, and I am not intimately familiar with those analyses and I am not sure that we are 

making the same assumptions or anything like that. But our sense 

is that a $60 billion cut spread out in the normal way, because the 

reduction of an authorization doesn’t mean an immediate reduction 

in the spending. It usually takes a little time to actually feed 

through. It would reduce growth. But we think given the size, it 

is more in a couple of one to two-tenths in the first year, another 

tenth in the next year, something in that order of magnitude, and 

that would translate into a couple hundred thousand jobs. So it is 

not trivial, but I think those numbers are little high. 

Ms. WATERS. I think that explains it. About a couple hundred 

thousand jobs rather than 700,00 or 650,000. But in a sluggish 

economy, that is important, even if the number is less than we 

thought. 

Let me get to the interview that you had in December 2010, with 

60 Minutes. You noted that rising economic inequality was creating 

two societies within America and was generally a bad phenomenon 

for this country. This issue is extremely important to me, as you 

know. In fact, I have been very focused on a recent study out of 

Brandeis University, which demonstrated that the wealth gap between White and African-American families increased more than 4 

times since 1984—between 1984 and 2007. The study pointed to 

our Nation’s tax policies as the main culprit for this rising inequality. 

16 

As you know, I have talked with you many times about a lack 

of access to capital of some of our small banks, which I know you 

don’t regulate, but also a lack of access to capital for small and minority businesses. And I am really concerned that those institutions that you do regulate, the kind of ‘‘too-big-to-fail’’, seem to be 

flush with cash, based on the generosity of the American taxpayer, 

but we don’t see that money coming back into communities. 

Also, I am concerned that minorities were targeted in the 

subprime meltdown and our homes were basically the most wealth 

that many of us had. And I want to know, can you elaborate on 

why income inequality is bad for America and do you think that 

the tax cut deal from the end of last year reduced or exacerbated 

income inequality in this country? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I think it is part of the American ideal that everyone has opportunities to advance themselves economically and 

to participate fully in our society. So I take it as self-evident that 

a highly unequal society will be one where opportunity is not as 

broadly spread as it should be and where many people will suffer 

poverty and depravation. So I would hope that we can move towards a more equal society, at least in terms of opportunities. 

My own view is that education has a lot to do with it, and we 

can see this looking at public and private schools across the country, that there is a great deal of variation in the quality of education and in the amount of time that students spend in school. 

Given the highly technological globalized society that we live in, 

that is inevitably going to lead to increasing differences in wages 

and wealth. 

Tax policy can help to some extent help close those gaps, but I 

think fundamentally you need to have opportunity, which in turn 

requires people to have the education and the skills they need to 

take advantage of those opportunities. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Chairman Bernanke. Vice Chairman Hensarling. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, 

Chairman Bernanke. I want to follow up on a line of questioning 

of our chairman dealing with the long-term structural debt of the 

United States. Certainly, when I have talked to CEOs, frankly 

small business people in East Texas whom I represent in Congress, 

this is a great concern, one that I believe is impeding economic 

growth. In fact, I woke up today and while I was putting on my 

tie and watching television, Mike Jackson, the chairman and CEO 

of AutoNation, stated that his number one concern was the national debt. A year ago, you said it would be very helpful to put 

the Nation on a credible plan for fiscal exit. And most recently, you 

have used the term ‘‘critical threat.’’ 

So my question for you is, with the passage of 1 year, do you 

have a greater concern about the Nation’s fiscal trajectory and do 

you hear what I hear from job creators in our economy that this 

is becoming a greater impediment to economic growth today? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It remains a very significant risk for the same 

reasons that I described before. It affects confidence, it affects expectations in the future. It, on the margin, may affect interest rates 

either now or in the future. So it remains a very serious problem. 

In terms of progress, clearly it has become a more central issue in 

17 

the congressional debate, and we have seen also the results of the 

various commissions and the like. But obviously, so far we have not 

really seen any concrete measures to address the longer term concerns that still leave us on an unsustainable path going forward. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Let me ask you a question about QE2. You and 

I have had the opportunity to discuss—I am not particularly a fan 

of QE2 because I very fundamentally view September 2008 differently than March 2011. Again, I believe in statistical evidence. 

I also believe in anecdotal evidence. The folks I talk to have a 

greater concern over the fiscal trajectory of the Nation and have a 

greater uncertainty about tax policy. They have a greater uncertainty about the regulatory burden of ObamaCare, of Dodd-Frank, 

that is what I am hearing. 

I believe there are limits to what monetary policy can achieve, 

particularly, if I have observed correctly, the last date that I have 

seen out of the Fed is that public companies are sitting on roughly 

$2 trillion of excess capital, banks about a trillion excess. 

We appear to be awash in liquidity and we are in an environment of negative to zero real interest rates. Clearly, a number of 

respected economists, and frankly, as you well know, more than 

one of your regional Federal Reserve presidents have indicated concern as well. So my question really is the timing. As I looked at 

your testimony, I am not sure you directly addressed the timing of 

the end of QE2, besides its natural termination in June. Are there 

any conditions that you see that you would anticipate a QE3? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Congressman, that has to be a decision of the 

committee and it depends again on our mandate. What we like to 

see is a sustainable recovery. We don’t want to see the economy 

falling back into a double-dip or into a stall-out. And obviously, we 

are looking very closely at inflation both in terms of too low and 

too high. So I want to be sure that you understand that I am very 

attentive to inflation and potential risks for inflation. And that will 

certainly be a major consideration as we look to determine how to 

manage this policy. 

Mr. HENSARLING. As you well know, a number of people and 

economists are concerned that the Fed is monetizing the debt. You 

and I have had an opportunity to discuss this. I understand the arguments on both sides. Let us put reality aside for a moment and 

let us talk about perception. There is, as you well know, particularly in international markets where we have seen commodity 

prices spike, a number of these are dollar-denominated transactions. We know that there is movement within the G-20, I think 

within the IMF to make moves to where the world’s reserve currency would no longer be the dollar. I don’t know if you saw it. 

There was a piece in the Journal this morning about why the dollar’s reign is near an end. Did you happen to see that piece this 

morning? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I saw it, but I didn’t read it carefully. 

Mr. HENSARLING. I know my time is running out. But by his calculations, because of the perception that the United States is monetizing its debt, he believes the dollar will fall roughly 20 percent 

and our U.S. living standards will be reduced by 11⁄2 percent of 

GDP. So the real question is, regardless of the reality of your acVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:35 May 12, 2011 Jkt 065672 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\65672.TXT TERRIE
18 

tions, if the perception causes the dollar to no longer be the world’s 

reserve currency, what are the implications of it? 

Mr. BERNANKE. First, I don’t see any evidence that is happening. 

So let us be very clear about that. If the dollar was no longer the 

reserve currency, it would probably mean that we would have to 

pay higher interest rates to finance the Federal debt and that 

would be a negative obviously. On the other hand, we might not 

suffer some of the capital inflows that contributed to the boom and 

the bust and the recent crisis. Again, there was also a countervailing argument in the Journal this morning as well, and I just 

don’t see at this point that there is a major shift away from the 

dollar. I would add also on the commodity prices that the fears of 

some foreign governments that we were ‘‘manipulating the currency,’’ which means we were reducing the value of the dollar, have 

not come true. 

The dollar has not moved very much at all and the commodity 

prices have risen just about as much in other currencies as they 

have in terms of the dollar. So while I take those commodity price 

increases very seriously, I don’t think that they are primarily a dollar phenomenon. 

Chairman BACHUS. Mr. Clay. 

Mr. CLAY. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. 

Bernanke, for being here. Mr. Bernanke, under the HumphreyHawkins Full Employment Act, the Federal Reserve has four 

benchmarks for the economy. One of the four is price stability. Currently, economic statistics show an increase in energy prices. What 

can or will the Fed do to try to stabilize the prices in the energy 

sector? Is there anything that can be done? 

Mr. BERNANKE. You have to distinguish between the prices of individual goods and services like gasoline and the overall price level, 

what people pay for all the goods and services that they buy. And 

again, I recognize that the increases in gas prices are very troubling for a lot of people and very difficult. But they are not inflation per se. Inflation is an increase in the overall price level which 

is very low. The inflation rate right now is 1.2 percent for all goods 

and services. 

So the main risk from a price stability point of view would be if 

higher gas prices would start feeding into the broader basket that 

is because people came to expect higher inflation, can demand 

higher wage increases or those costs were being regularly passed 

on by producers that overall inflation would begin to rise. And that 

would be the point at which we would become very concerned and 

make sure that we would take monetary policy actions to avoid any 

significant increase in overall inflation. 

The relative price of oil, again, is primarily due to global supply 

and demand. I think it is important to note that the United States 

is consuming less oil today, importing less oil and producing more 

oil than it did before the crisis, that all the increase in demand is 

coming from outside the United States, particularly in emerging 

markets. So there is a limited amount of what the Fed can do 

about oil prices alone. Again, we want to be very sure that it 

doesn’t feed into overall inflation. And we will make sure that 

doesn’t happen. 

19 

Mr. CLAY. And from an environmental standpoint, less consumption is better. 

Mr. BERNANKE. To the extent that we are worried about carbon 

emissions, absolutely. 

Mr. CLAY. Sure. One of the other benchmarks is full employment. 

And currently unemployment is high, even though the economy is 

growing. Currently, Congress is proposing additional cuts in the 

Federal budget. Are you concerned that these cuts might undermine the Fed’s efforts to ensure a reduction in the unemployment 

rate? Do you see any correlation? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Taken on their own, the short-term cuts, as I 

mentioned to Congressman Frank and also Congresswoman 

Waters, would probably lead to some reduced growth in employment in the short run. My preference is to see whatever changes 

are made to the budget in the short run coupled with the longer 

term plan, a credible plan that will persuade markets that there 

is going to be real progress made against the deficit over the next 

5 and 10 years. I think that would have a lot of benefits to the current recovery without the short-run job affecting impact of nearterm changes in spending. 

So I don’t object to beginning the process of reducing the deficit 

now, but I think it will be much more effective if there is a longerterm plan underlying those cuts. 

Mr. CLAY. And by longer term, you mean a more comprehensive 

approach to reducing the deficit through possibly increased revenues coming into the Treasury as well as reductions in budgets 

throughout the Federal Government? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It is up to Congress how exactly to do it. It is 

going to be hard, demanding in any case. But we do need to make 

sure that the deficit doesn’t continue to spiral upward; it would be 

very destabilizing if it did. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for your response. Mr. Chairman, I yield 

back. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Neugebauer. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, are 

you familiar with the term ‘‘debt saturation’’? 

Mr. BERNANKE. No, but I can guess what it means. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. There is a formula basically dividing the GDP 

by the change in debt. And if you look back at—according to the 

U.S. Treasury, you see one flow and it said back in 1960, a dollar 

in debt basically equated to a dollar in the increase in productivity 

or GDP in this country. From 1960 until present, this economy, 

both at every level of government, individuals and companies, have 

been leveraging themselves. 

So where we are today is that we are to a point where we have 

reached debt saturation. And basically for every new dollar in debt, 

there is in some cases a negative increase in GDP. That results because a lot of companies, even though they would like to borrow 

money, they don’t have the capacity to borrow because new borrowing creates new debt service, and many of them don’t have the 

income necessarily to service that debt. 

In fact, if you look at the United States of America, for example, 

our revenues are a little over $2 trillion and our debt service is increasing to, I think, about half a trillion dollars and headed up. So 

20 

when you look at our monetary policy and our fiscal policy in this 

country right now, it is all about borrowing and spending. And we 

are wondering why this isn’t working. 

And one of the reasons that it is not working is because, quite 

honestly, there is not capacity for a lot of folks to take on new debt. 

And when you look at a lot of companies that I talk to, they are 

building net cash on their balance sheets. When you look at quantitative easing that you have done, that money really didn’t go out 

into the economy. A lot of those folks are holding those moneys in 

reserves in your bank. 

So the question I have is, you are beginning to see families and 

businesses deleverage because they understand that they have 

reached that debt saturation point, yet the Fed and the United 

States Government has not gotten that message. So when you say 

that you think quantitative easing is working and you point to unemployment—I was a little puzzled by that last unemployment 

number going from 9.4 to 9 percent. But when you look at what 

I think is the real unemployment number in this country, which is 

U6, that number actually went up. So if the money is not going 

out, why would we continue a policy of the Fed borrowing more 

money and trying to put more money in the system when the system seems to be pretty leveraged up and I don’t see the benefits 

from that? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Congressman, you are right, that the economy 

got overleveraged during the crisis, households borrowed too much, 

some firms borrowed too much. And one of the reasons that the recovery is slow is that this deleveraging process is going on. People 

are building up their savings, their wealth again. Firms are trying 

to reduce their debt, and in some cases, their investment for that 

same reason. 

So that is part of the process. With respect to the Federal Reserve, what the Fed is doing is we are buying securities in the open 

market which we will subsequently sell back into the market. We 

are not making any affirmative change in our balance sheet. And 

in particular, the effect of this is not felt primarily through the reserves and banking sector. As we buy securities in the open market, we both lower term premiums in the open market and we push 

investors into other kinds of investments like the stock market or 

corporate bonds and the like and the results do show that bond 

yields are lower relative to treasuries, the stock market is up and 

those things do affect people’s behavior and have helped contribute 

to a growing economy. 

What the Fed is doing is not the same thing as government 

spending. We are buying securities which are asset, which pay interest and then when the appropriate time comes, we will sell 

those back into the marketplace and return to our previous balance 

sheet. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I disagree a little bit with you on it because 

the monetary policy you have right now is to keep interest rates— 

you have them basically at zero. I don’t guess you can take them 

any lower than that. If you can, I might want to borrow some 

money where they pay you to borrow money. But we are nearly to 

that point. So we are really trying to encourage people to borrow 

because we have interest rates at a very low rate. And what I am 

21 

saying is it isn’t working, and that is the reason that the economy—even in your own testimony, you said we are not quite sure 

if we can attribute the things we are doing to the little bump in 

the economy here. 

I would submit to what is really going on in the economy and the 

bump that we are getting is the fact that some portions of our economy do understand what was going on. They are taking actions to 

correct their balance sheets, families are lowering their credit card 

debt, but that the policies that we have, both at the Fed and with 

this Congress of borrowing and spending don’t work and, in fact, 

are going to have a negative impact that the more we borrow now 

from this point forward in this economy—I believe, particularly at 

the government level—it begins to diminish our GDP and not increase our GDP. So I thank the Chairman for his comments. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer. Mrs. Maloney. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Would you compare and contrast the recovery 

that is under way in Germany with ours? Are there any lessons 

there? Are there any steps that we should be taking to emulate, 

or in essence, achieve Germany’s results? 

Mr. BERNANKE. That is a tough question. Germany certainly 

didn’t have as much job loss as we did, and that part was because 

of policies they had to subsidize firms to keep workers on even 

when they weren’t fully utilized. I think the recovery of Germany 

has brought them about back to where they were before the crisis, 

which is comparable to what has happened in the United States. 

Unlike the United States, Germany has benefited substantially 

from the rebound in global economic activity because they are very 

much a trade-oriented, export-oriented economy and they worked a 

long time to develop those markets. So I guess if I would draw a 

lesson, it would be that we need to do what we can to increase our 

competitiveness, to increase our efficiency and to improve our ability to compete in global markets. I think that would be good for 

jobs and good for growth in the longer term. But you don’t want 

to overstate the difference. I don’t think that Germany overall has 

had a stronger recovery than the United States from this cycle. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Speaking about the international economy, it 

does appear that the EU is going—it is not going to adopt the 

Volcker Rule. That is what I seem to be reading. And it is unclear 

whether or not they will adopt the standard of transparency for derivatives, and are you concerned about the regulatory arbitrage between Europe and the United States in terms of competitiveness? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Particularly, the CFTC is talking to Europe 

about making standards as close as possible for derivatives and for 

clearinghouses and the like. You are right. I don’t think, to the best 

of my knowledge, that Europe is planning to adopt the Volcker 

Rule. That will create some competitiveness disadvantage. I don’t 

know how great. Congress made that choice because you believed 

that taking those proprietary trading activities out of banks would 

increase the safety, stability of the banks. That is a tradeoff that 

Congress decided to make. In the past, there have also been other 

differences. 

For example, our banking systems operated with a leveraged 

ratio for a long time, whereas Europeans did not have one. Under 

Basel III, a leverage ratio will be extended to foreign banks as well 

22 

as the U.S. banks. So that is one place where competitiveness will 

be actually improved. But you are right, there will be a difference 

in capacity. 

Mrs. MALONEY. And, Mr. Bernanke, there is a possibility that 

the capital requirements may be tougher here in the United States 

under our regulatory Dodd-Frank requirements than the Basel III 

7 percent. Would that not give us a competitive disadvantage? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I don’t think there is going to be that much difference in capital requirements. The Collins amendment only requires that the capital be greater than it was as of last summer. 

Mrs. MALONEY. That is good news. All right. Your most sobering 

comment was that until we see a sustained period of stronger job 

creation, we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established. 

I would like you to comment on how do we reconcile the reality of 

a—basically a jobless recovery as you pointed out in your testimony 

with persistent, stagnant wages for 90 percent of workers over the 

past 20 years with the statement that the recession is over in a 

sense with such high unemployment and sustained stagnant wages 

it appears for 90 percent of our population? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The recession is over only in the technical sense 

that we are no longer falling, we are rising. We have been in 7 

quarters of expansion. It doesn’t mean we are back to normal by 

any means, obviously. Growth has only been about enough to accommodate the new entrance to the labor force. And therefore, the 

effects of the unemployment rate have been very moderate. And 

since the demand for labor is weak, then wages are naturally weak 

as well. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Garrett. 

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Chairman, it was reported in the American 

Banker yesterday that the Fed has helped to broker a deal with regard to Dodd-Frank with regard to—where the FDIC is and the 

OCC is with regard to the QRM and the issue of servicing agreements. You are fine with that? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I don’t know the exact status. We have been 

working with the FDIC and the OCC to try to come up with some 

kind of agreement about— 

Mr. GARRETT. Try to get the two sides to come together. And the 

rub in that, I guess—I have been in one of the meetings where they 

got together and they didn’t come to agreement was with the servicing language. Do you know what the legal authority is for them 

to be including servicing—the terms of servicing requirements 

within the QRM, which is, from what I understand, is going to be 

included in the final deal which has been brokered with the help 

of your agency? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The law gives the banking agencies the ability 

to define a qualified residential mortgage as a mortgage which is 

of a certain quality so as to avoid the need for retained risk. 

Mr. GARRETT. But is there anything in there that really goes to 

the language of servicing? I don’t think that was in Dodd-Frank 

and that is where the OCC comes from on this and they would say 

there is no legal authority. 

Mr. BERNANKE. I would have to get back to you on that. Again, 

I think the servicing is part of the contract, it is part of the mortgage contract. What rights does the borrower have? And in parVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:35 May 12, 2011 Jkt 065672 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\65672.TXT TERRIE
23 

ticular a mortgage which can be restructured efficiently is a better 

quality mortgage than one that cannot be restructured. 

Mr. GARRETT. All things agreed. But if you could get back on 

that point, it would be great. Another portion—back on this whole 

issue of the mortgage market, back in October, you folks issued a 

report with regard to the risk retention issues, and some of the 

things I totally agree with. Risk retention is not a panacea as far 

as dealing with this. And reforms should be tailored by asset classes. I agree with that. Risk retention could impact upon credit availability if it is not done correctly. So as I understand it, there is 

going to be a phase-in of this once it goes through. There is a 

multiyear opportunity to phase all of these in by asset classes. 

Does it make sense if we realize we are dealing with this in different asset classes and doesn’t it make sense, as you all say, that 

it could impact upon credit availability, that really the regulators 

in this area sort of go slow and maybe see how the different assetbacked security markets evolve before they—I will use the adjective—precipitously make some rules beforehand on these things? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We certainly want to get it right. But our study 

took into account the current practices, how these markets have operated. There are usually good reasons for why markets have 

evolved the way they have. And our proposals try not to radically 

change the current practices in those markets. 

Mr. GARRETT. Right. But there is a phase-in for 1 year for the 

RMBS, 2 years for the CMBS, and so on. Doesn’t that give all of 

us and the regulators the opportunity to examine how they actually 

evolved during that period as opposed to saying we are going to do 

it, treat it one-size-fits-all right now for all asset classes regardless 

of how it actually phases in later on? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes, we recommend being very sensitive to the 

particular type of assets— 

Mr. GARRETT. Thank you. Going back to the other issue of the 

day, which is the QE2, monetary policy and the like. Some have 

intimated that the QE2 is $600 billion sort of—some would say is 

pulled out of thin air in the creation of it. But the reason that the 

Fed has done this, of course, as they say is because they are safe, 

because inflation is running under 1 percent right now. Should we 

feel confident? Should the markets feel confident if that in a week 

or a month or several months down the road, or even a longer period, inflation starts running at about 3 percent, that at that point 

in time, the Fed will be ready to, what, sell off, to unwind the $600 

billion of QE2? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Inflation can vary considerably in the short run. 

Of course, inflation went up to about 5 percent in the summer of 

2008, then that was unwound and we had a period of negative inflation for a while as commodity prices went up and went down. 

Mr. GARRETT. So it is going to be a short period that you look 

forward before the unwinding occurs? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It is very short because of the unwinding that occurred after the crisis in the fall of 2008. During the summer of 

2008, we had the big spike in oil prices and then later in the year 

and around the turn of the year, we saw actually negative inflation 

as commodity prices collapsed. So our objective is to hit low and 

stable inflation in the medium term. To the extent that we have 

24 

entirely temporary fluctuations which are not being fed into the 

broader inflation basket, we have to look through those to some extent. But again, we are going to be looking very carefully at inflation expectations and making sure that people remain confident 

that inflation will stay low and we will address that. Again, I want 

to reassure you that central bankers have learned the lessons of 

the 1970s. We will not allow inflation to get above low and stable 

levels. 

Mr. GARRETT. I guess my question is for how long it takes before 

you act the unwinding, how long the inflation stays at that level 

before you need to see— 

Mr. BERNANKE. It depends a lot on whether inflation expectations remain anchored and what is happening to the broader basket. Again, oil prices alone with nothing else moving would probably not be enough to make us respond. 

Mr. GARRETT. I thank the chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Ms. Velazquez. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Bernanke, 

the Federal Reserve has stated that steady, low inflation levels 

around 1.7 to 2 percent will be helpful to assist monetary policy in 

the economic recovery. What role should Federal spending play 

over the next year to help maintain inflation at these levels? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The inflation rate is mostly the responsibility of 

the Federal Reserve, and we take responsibility for that because 

monetary policy determines inflation in the medium to long term. 

I think that the Congress, in looking at fiscal policy, needs to consider two issues. One is the very short term, making sure not to 

do anything that will derail the current recovery, but at the same 

time, taking over a medium- to long-term period, taking the necessary hard steps to cut the deficit, to restore sustainability and restore confidence in the markets that our fiscal policy will be sound. 

So I would focus not on inflation, I would focus on the mediumterm prospects for the fiscal trajectory and with attention to the 

current recovery as well. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, a common refrain 

among critics of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act is that it 

has contributed to the credit crunch for small businesses. But as 

early as July 2008, 2 years before the bill was enacted, your testimony before this committee took note of the growing credit crisis, 

especially for small businesses. Do you believe that financial regulatory reforms contained in the Dodd-Frank Act are impacting the 

availability of credit for small businesses? Do you have any evidence of that? 

Mr. BERNANKE. As you say, we have had significant problems 

with credit availability for a couple of years now. And although I 

know that many community bankers have concerns, whether legitimate or not, about the regulatory impact of Dodd-Frank so far, almost nothing has actually happened. The CFPB is not operating, 

capital requirements have not changed, etc. 

So that is a very difficult problem, the availability of credit. The 

Fed has been working very hard and the other banking agencies 

with the banks, with our examiners trying to make sure that good 

loans get made. But I think the main problems at this point are, 

on the one hand, caution on the part of the banks and on the part 

25 

of the borrowers in many cases, financial problems that make them 

less qualified for credit. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. But we do know that the Federal Reserve survey of senior loan officers, the latest one that was released right 

after Dodd-Frank, shows that lending standards are easing for 

small businesses. 

Mr. BERNANKE. As I said in my testimony, things are looking a 

little better and we expect credit to improve in 2011. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. The Federal Reserve stated at its last open markets meeting that it will continue with the status quo of a near 

zero funds rate for the foreseeable future. Is there any concern that 

continuing to communicate an expectation that the Federal funds 

rate will remain at an exceptionally low level for an extended period could increase inflationary risks? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The communication is just one way that we use 

to provide additional policy support to the economy, which, in our 

judgment, it still needs. The economy’s recovery is not firmly established and we think monetary policy needs to be supportive. Clearly, if we leave policy to accommodate it for too long, that would 

lead to inflation and so that is why we need to unwind the language, the asset purchases, the interest rate policy, all of those 

things are going to have to be unwind at the appropriate time. So 

I think at this point, it is not creating inflation, but it would if we 

didn’t unwind it at the appropriate time. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Pearce. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your being 

here today. And they have kind of worked the inflation question 

over, but I would just make a comment. Roswell, New Mexico, is 

in my district and there are more people who believe the aliens 

landed in Roswell than believe inflation is 1.6 percent, with all due 

respect. They are paying higher prices for gasoline and food, and 

I don’t know exactly what they don’t buy that is not inflating. But 

just earlier this week, we got a report that drill pipe and heavy 

construction metal for the oil field is not available because people 

are so worried about what the future price is going to be, that they 

are holding onto the supplies so there are people out there who are 

being affected, whether or not inflation shows on the books to be 

increasing. And I am interested in your comment on page 3 that 

mortgages are difficult to obtain. Do you have any speculation of 

why that might be? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Partly because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 

have tightened up their standards and more generally because 

lenders are quite uncertain about where house prices are going to 

go. They are still being very cautious after the debacle, mortgage 

debacle of the crisis. So what we are seeing is that lenders are requiring unusually high downpayments, high FICO scores. And so 

people without those qualifications are just not able to get mortgages. 

Mr. PEARCE. I was just recently talking to a young couple. They 

both just graduated from college and both have pretty good jobs 

and can’t get financing, exactly the circumstance here. And when 

we talked to bankers and we talked—we had a conference call with 

New Mexico bankers and they said that the safety and soundness 

26 

reviews were not problematic; it is the compliance reviews. Things 

that used to simply get written up as exceptions now have a 

$50,000 potential fine with them. They said why would we loan 

money on the houses when a typographical error or when a failure 

to calculate the floodplain which it has been since Noah’s time that 

some of these mountainous areas in New Mexico that we have had 

flood insurance claims and we are paying for the people on the 

coastlines, with all due respect to the chairman and those guys, 

but—New Mexico, flood insurance is not a big deal except if you 

make one little mistake in it, you are going to get a $50,000 fine. 

Why would you loan money? 

If you ever get a chance to talk to the people on the other side 

of the aisle over there, the regulators, you might hint to them that 

the compliance reviews are scaring the daylights out of people 

when they used to just get written up into a report. Looking forward to evaluate our ability to respond to crisis, I would like to 

look backward at the way that we responded to the crisis. And so, 

who was actually in a pilot seat in the troubles in 2008; was that 

the Treasury or was that the Fed? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We cooperated. We both were— 

Mr. PEARCE. Are you indeed familiar with the decisions? Who 

made the decision—keep in mind that we bailed out Fannie Mae 

and Freddie Mac, we bailed out Bear Stearns, we let Lehman fail. 

And then 2 days later, 3 days later, we bailed out AIG. Who made 

the decision to let Lehman fail? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I was not personally in that meeting. I was in 

Washington when these discussions were taking place in New 

York. But my belief and understanding was that it was not a decision. It was an inevitability that we could not find any way to 

avoid the failure. If we could have, we would have. 

Mr. PEARCE. It was inevitable for Bear Stearns to fail too. We 

had inevitability facing us. In fact, statements made in that period 

of time indicated Fannie and Freddie were really sound and, in 

fact, it was the variability, it was the ad hoc nature of the implementation of these things that caused great instability in the market on Wall Street. The price of stocks began to fall. As people said, 

we can’t trust that the government is going to be predictable in this 

and we better be bailing out. So I just would look at that time as 

a period of overreaction, underreaction, and questionable judgments. False statements were made and I believe that it severely 

impacted the length and the depth of what was going on. Do you 

have any comments? 

Mr. BERNANKE. My comment is that we did everything we could, 

given the limited tools we had, to prevent any collapses, we did 

find a way to solve the Bear Stearns problem. What I think Lehman demonstrated is that if we had allowed other firms to fail as 

well, that the entire financial system could have collapsed and we 

would have seen a far worse recession than the one we had. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HENSARLING. [presiding]. The time of the gentleman has expired. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, 

Mr. Watt, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Chairman 

Bernanke, for being here. Chairman Bernanke, you know and I am 

27 

sure the folks at the Fed know that as chairman of the Monetary 

Policy Subcommittee for the last couple of years, I gained a healthy 

respect for the work that you all were doing, and I think that you 

all did a great job to get us to where we are today. And I want to 

applaud the work of your staff on that front. My questions today— 

I really want to go outside the box a little bit because I think I 

have some concerns about things that are further down the road 

that I think could really be difficult economic, fiscal, and social impacts to our economy. And my question is, to what extent are you 

all doing things in these areas, studying or looking down the road 

to anticipate some of these issues? 

There are two of them that I want to talk about. One is climate 

change, which from all indications is going to result in dramatic 

weather swings at the extremes that will have devastating impacts 

economically that make New Orleans look like small potatoes on 

the coast, in the west, in the Gulf, in Florida, in places where just 

a 2- or 3-point temperature change has dramatic impacts on weather conditions. 

The second is on the growing gap between the well-off in this 

country and people who are not well off in this country. The gap 

is growing. I think we are about to experience a greater growth because this whole Fannie and Freddie discussion, and the way it is 

being shaped now will result in fewer and fewer people of modest 

wealth and incomes being able to be homeowners and the great 

bulk of low-income and moderate-income people’s wealth is in home 

equity, not in stocks, not in companies, entrepreneurship and all 

that. 

I know neither one of those things, climate change or the gap, 

is specifically in the rubric of inflation control, monetary policy and 

job things. My question is, what work or research, if any, are you 

all—is the Fed doing to anticipate the impacts of either one of 

those things? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Congressman, on the climate change, there has 

been good economic work done on this by people like Bill Nordhaus 

and others. And I am sure that we have staff who are familiar with 

that work. But we really haven’t had the capacity to do a great 

deal of work on this as far as I am aware at the Federal Reserve. 

The story is somewhat different with the inequality issue because 

we—within the sphere of our duties, we are looking at things like 

access to banks and access to credit, wealth creation, education and 

labor, skill development. All of those things fall within our financial, regulatory, and labor market responsibilities. And we have 

quite a few people looking at those issues. 

I don’t know whether we have anyone looking at the really longterm consequences for the economy of inequality, but the components relating to labor markets and financial markets, we certainly 

have people looking at those issues. 

Chairman BACHUS. The time of the gentleman has expired. The 

Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. 

McHenry. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Chairman 

Bernanke, thank you for your service to your government. You 

have certainly done so in extraordinary times and we certainly appreciate that, much less having to endure a number of these hearVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:35 May 12, 2011 Jkt 065672 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\65672.TXT TERRIE
28 

ings. It is certainly a challenge. But I wanted to ask you today 

about the municipal bond market. It has been a concern of a number of us here on the Hill and a number of policy proposals have 

been put forward trying to bring transparency to that marketplace, 

in terms of State indebtedness and municipal indebtedness, especially with their pension programs. 

I am not asking you to comment about Wisconsin or any of that 

going on. But do you believe that the municipal bond market could 

pose a systemic risk to our Nation’s recovery? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It could in principle. I should just be clear. While 

I understand that municipals are facing some very difficult budgetary situations, both in the short term because of the recession, 

but also in terms of long-term obligations for health and pensions. 

Recently tax revenues have been coming up with some recovery in 

the economy. A lot of painful cuts have already been made in many 

States and municipalities. So I think that these States and localities are making progress to addressing those issues. That being 

said, I would applaud any efforts to improve transparency, clarity. 

It would help investors certainly and it would force the States and 

municipalities themselves to address these problems more head-on. 

Mr. MCHENRY. So transparency would be helpful. In terms of the 

municipal bond market, is this something where the Fed actively 

reviews what is happening and the impact it could have on treasuries and our lending at the Federal level? Borrowing. 

Mr. BERNANKE. We review essentially every financial market and 

this is one of them. And we do have people who are paying close 

attention to the developments there. I think recently things have 

improved a bit is my sense. The tone has improved a bit lately in 

part because of the better economy and because of the progress 

that is being made on the budget. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Certainly. And we are going to shift a little bit. 

This is something that—at our last hearing on the implementation 

of derivatives regulations, I know Mrs. Maloney touched on this. 

But international harmonization, when we look at the derivatives 

piece and implementation of derivatives legislation, the regulators 

implementing the derivatives piece of the Dodd-Frank bill, we see 

that other major markets around the world aren’t coming along as 

fast as we are. You could see Europe is maybe a year behind us. 

Is that a concern? Is that something that you are trying to bring 

other central banks around to this? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I think in many of these cases, the Commodity 

Futures Trading Commission is taking the lead in terms of trying 

to harmonize transparency rules, recordkeeping rules, operational 

rules for clearinghouses and exchanges and the like. There are 

some differences, which I don’t think will be reconciled. Europe is 

not following the Lincoln amendment approach, the pushout of derivatives. So that will create some differences in the competitive 

position of American and other banks, I think. But it is difficult to 

assess at this point how significant that would be. 

Mr. MCHENRY. But in terms of ensuring that there is some harmonization with—where our market regulation is moving, are 

these conversations you actively have with other central banks? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes, we are. We are having those. And there are 

international committees like the Basel Committees, which look at 

29 

these issues and try to establish global standards. As we set prudential rules for financial market utilities, we take into account 

these global standards. So there is an attempt there to try to create 

a harmonization. 

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you. And I yield back. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from 

California, Mr. Sherman. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend you on your 

monetary easing policy. I know not all my colleagues agree, but the 

economy is a patient in critical condition and the traditional medicines are not available. Fiscal policy is politically over, and I don’t 

think you can lower short-term interest rates. 

So the fact is you have come up with a new and inventive medicine at a time when the easy thing to do for you would have been 

to walk away from the patient and say, everything that can be 

done, has been done, at least by the Fed. So you have shown courage, you have shown innovation. And I hope this new experimental 

medicine of yours works. A colleague just asked about municipal 

bonds. I would like to focus just on State borrowing. The rule is 

States can’t go bankrupt. People invest in State bonds with that as 

the rule, the assumption and there are some politicians talking 

about allowing States to go bankrupt. And these politicians don’t 

even want the bondholders to lose money. 

It is just they hate the public employee union so much they have 

lost sight of the reason we don’t let States go bankrupt, which is 

to encourage people to lend money to States. What effect would it 

have if there was a really serious discussion and we were close to 

passing a bill allowing States to go bankrupt? What effect would 

it have if a State actually went bankrupt on the ability of all 50 

States to borrow at the present time and in the coming years? 

Mr. BERNANKE. That is really hard to judge. I think if those 

States can’t go bankrupt, they can’t default. And that has happened 160 years ago. So bond, municipal bondholders do try to assess the risk that there will be a default. The bankruptcy idea is 

a very complex one because of States’ rights issues—you have to 

raise the question, could a bankruptcy judge tell a State to raise 

taxes. 

So I think there are some very thorny legal questions at the very 

beginning of that debate. Again, I am sorry I cannot really judge 

what impact the creation of the Bankruptcy Code would have on 

those risks. I think the bondholders fundamentally at the condition 

of the States and also rules like what is the precedence of interest 

payments and those sorts of things. 

Mr. SHERMAN. And I would point out that the State treasurers 

around this country do not want us to give the States the ability 

to go bankrupt. Right now, Fannie and Freddie are paying 10 percent dividend, the TARP banks paid a 5 percent dividend for annual payment. I am not at all sure on a net basis you are really 

going to collect anything from Fannie and Freddie. Why do you— 

why should we have a 10 percent payment that we are receiving 

from Fannie and Freddie? 

Mr. BERNANKE. As with the capital injection programs and the 

like, it was set up to be paid back via giving the government preferred stock and by having a dividend. But, as you know, Fannie 

30 

and Freddie have been requiring injections of money and they have 

not made any significant progress in paying it back. 

Mr. SHERMAN. As to my colleague saying that all of our constituents believe there is much higher inflation, they all do—that is because if you go to the market and lettuce is a $1.59 a head, you 

notice that. If onions are down to $.39 cents a pound, nobody 

winces. They just buy a few more onions. So people will always 

think prices are going up. Your predecessor testified before Congress that, in fact, the CPI overstates the inflation rate by 3 quarters of a point, perhaps a point or even more. Do you think that 

is a correct analysis or does the CPI best reflect inflation given 

quality improvements in a lot of our products? 

Mr. BERNANKE. You are correct that the professional economists, 

including the ones at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics who have 

looked at price measurement, do conclude that the CPI probably 

does overstate actual inflation, although they have made progress 

in addressing some of the issues that were identified a decade ago. 

That being said, we understand the visibility of gas prices and food 

prices and we want to be sure that people’s expectations aren’t adversely affected. I think it is important to note that according to 

the Michigan survey of consumers, long-term inflation expectations 

have been basically flat. They haven’t moved, notwithstanding ups 

and downs in gas prices, for example. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Gas prices are there, but flat-screen TVs are in 

the other direction. And I yield back. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from 

California, Mr. Campbell. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chairman 

Bernanke. Rather than ask you about the consequences of the actions you, the Federal Reserve, are taking, I am going to ask you 

about the consequences of the inaction that we, Congress, are doing 

relative to our fiscal problem. The chairman, the vice chairman and 

the ranking member all alluded to some of your prior comments 

relative to our fiscal trajectory. What if we don’t act? What if we 

don’t set any long-term sustainable policy or projection and that we 

run up a $1.5 trillion deficit this year, $1.6 trillion next year as estimated by the President and north of $1 trillion, so almost somewhere close to $5 trillion in deficit in the next 36 months. What 

impact does that have on jobs, the economy, interest rates, on everything? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It is hard to know exactly what the timing would 

be. But what we do know is that eventually lenders would decide 

the United States wasn’t a good credit risk and interest rates 

would spike and that would slow the recovery or slow the economy. 

It would create financial stress for not only holders of treasuries, 

but holders of other fixed-income assets. It would have effects on 

confidence. It would cause people to expect higher taxes in the future. So it is hard to say exactly when the confidence gets lost. Just 

recently, we have seen examples where on Tuesday everything was 

okay, but on Wednesday there was suddenly a fear that maybe the 

process was breaking down and there was not going to be sufficient 

progress and you saw sharp increases in interest rates and loss of 

confidence in that country’s economy and fiscal policy. 

31 

Mr. CAMPBELL. So over the next 3 years, it could happen, right? If we are running up that sort of—towards $5 trillion, it could happen at some point in there as you say, no one knows exactly when 

the markets might react that way? But it isn’t necessarily something that is 10 years away, is it? 

Mr. BERNANKE. No, it is not necessarily 10 years away. The way 

I think about it is that the markets are less looking at our economy 

because we have the capacity to address these problems. They are 

looking more at the political will and decision-making, and I hate 

to put this on you because I know these are hard problems, but an 

extended period of Congress ignoring or not making progress on 

these issues would be exactly the kind of thing that would create 

disruption in the bond market. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. And that, as you say, the consequences are interest rates—people stop buying bonds, interest rates go up. We get 

into a spiral, don’t we? Because the interest rate going up increases 

the interest on our debt which increases the deficit, which increases the interest rates, which reduces—we potentially get into 

a spiral from which it becomes very difficult to recover without significant economic damage; is that right? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Economists have a sterile term that they call 

debt dynamics, which is exactly what you described, which is that 

interest rates get higher, it makes the deficit higher, it makes the 

debt higher, it makes interest rates higher and things kind of spiral out of control. That is right. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. If we continue to, as we have been, not really 

deal with the problem at all in any long-term or sustainable manner, then it could have a very bad fiscal result in not too long a 

time? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I have said that a number of times, and I agree 

with that risk. Though again, as you point out, we don’t know exactly when. 

Mr. CAMPBELL. Right. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your comments and I appreciate your candor on this. It seems to me that 

Members of Congress, politicians in general, are generally kind of 

risk-averse. And that as we saw in 2008 when we were in the 

midsts of that crisis, we seemed to not be willing to act to solve 

the problem until the consequences of that problem exceed what we 

perceived to be the political consequences of inaction. And right 

now, unfortunately, it seems to me that in this town, the political 

consequences of action seem to be greater than those of inaction. 

But I think, as we did back in 2008, eventually we make people 

aware that the prospects for the problem were very strong and very 

imminent and we increased the level of rhetoric we used in order 

to emphasize the severity of the problem. But we are going to need 

to do that to get this place to act. And I yield back. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. The 

Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Chairman 

Bernanke. I have a number of questions on different topics that I 

want to ask. But before I get there, my concern is as we look at 

this and we talk about we all have—we talk about how we are in 

deficits, and we have to fix it. And it seems to me that we talk 

about cutting. We have to make sure that everybody feels some of 

32 

the pain. And as we are dealing with the current CR, etc., of 

course, because of some of the deals that we made prior, the only 

way we are talking about balancing this budget right now is on the 

cutting side and generally, you also have cutting and you have revenue. And some kind of way when you have both, it helps eliminate 

the deficit because you are cutting and you have more money coming in also. 

Then that kind of levels out the playing field to a degree also so 

that everybody feels some pain. And if we are going to create a situation where all Americans feel better about the current situation, 

it seems to me that everybody has to feel some pain. And part of 

the problem that we have here is some people feeling pain and others will say as in my City of New York, the others are getting huge 

bonuses and yet nobody is lending money, but somebody else is 

making money. And we are really not having the kind of balance 

that is needed so that there is pain felt on all the sides so that we 

can move and then have the kind of agreement that we need to 

have so that we can move forward. 

We still have individuals who are losing their homes. And it is 

hard to talk to those individuals about them losing more when they 

have lost everything they already have. And then it appears to 

them that others on the other side are not losing anything. In fact, 

they are back to where they were. They are still making—they are 

making more money than they ever made. And that really causes 

the schisms even in politics and causes politics to take place so we 

are not doing what we should be doing for the benefit of our country as a whole because we are—one side or the other side—and I 

am not trying to—the left or the right and we are not pulling this 

thing together so that we can have something that is down the 

middle that moves us forward. This brings me to my first question 

to you, because I want to get something clarified—I guess this was 

yesterday—in your statement on the impact of the CR, for example, 

on the economy. And I was wondering whether or not it was based 

on your in-depth analysis of the specific cuts to various programs 

or—because there is a discrepancy. Goldman Sachs came out with 

an opinion of what it would do to the growth of the economy, and 

you said it would be less than what Goldman said. 

So I was wondering, what was your statement based upon? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It was based on a rough and ready econometric 

analysis using models. But based on a total dollar amount of $60 

billion this year and $40 billion next year, without any real attention to the composition of that. So we didn’t really get into the 

breakdown. 

Mr. MEEKS. You didn’t get into the breakdown of this program, 

anything of that nature; those effects, which is what I kind of figured. 

Let me ask you another question. Let me just go off on something that I think that hopefully we can work on in a bipartisan 

manner in this committee to deal with and a statement you made 

also recently, and that is dealing with interchange. Two weeks ago, 

you told the Senate Banking Committee that you thought the 

smaller issue exemption for interchange fee regulation may not, in 

fact, work. I believe that is what you stated. So my question is, 

33 

what will the impact on community banks and credit unions be if 

that exemption fails? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We don’t know whether it will work or not, as 

I said. If it doesn’t work and if the reduction in interchange fees 

ends up applying or partially applying to smaller banks and credit 

unions, then obviously it will cut their earnings from that program, 

unless they can recoup it through other fees or charges to their depositors. 

Mr. MEEKS. In your opinion, in this area becomes very critical 

because this is something that I think we can work on because, 

going back and forth and in dealing with the Fed’s recent rulings 

with regard to interchange and whether they are looking at cost or 

not looking at cost as it pertains to some of the banks, and you look 

at the merchant side. So we really need a balance there also. And 

I think that as we move forward on this committee and we are having some dialogue, I hope we can work together across the aisle to 

try to solve that problem. 

I am out of time already. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. The 

Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Bernanke, I 

want to compliment you on your forthrightness. It is something 

that, unfortunately, we don’t see that much of on this side of that 

table. And thank you for being so frank with us when you appear 

before us. 

In your statement, you indicated that until we see a sustained 

period of stronger growth creation, we cannot consider this recovery to be truly established. Is it fair to say then that despite the 

claims from the academics to the contrary, this indicates the recession has not yet bottomed out? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Again, ‘‘recession’’ is a technical term. It just 

means that the decline has stopped and that we are now growing. 

So we have been growing. But I would say that if the labor market 

doesn’t continue to improve, the risk would be that consumers 

would see unemployment going back up again. They would lose 

confidence. And then you would have increasing risk that the thing 

might stall out. So that is the risk, although I think that risk has 

declined in the last few months. 

Mr. POSEY. I assume part of the Fed’s goal with QE2 is to provide an influx of capital into the economy to ensure that our financial institutions have adequate capital to lend for housing construction, commercial purposes, etc. And given that goal, I wanted to 

call your attention to a recent proposed regulation by the Internal 

Revenue Service that I believe could have a pretty devastating impact on our financial institutions. 

The proposed IRS rule would force banks to hand over interest 

payment information on foreign deposits. There would be no tax on 

the interest earned, but the IRS would turn this information over 

to a foreigner’s home country, which could have some adverse impacts on people who deposit their money here, which we enjoy 

using in our economy. The proposed rule could lead to, I am told, 

between $200 billion and $400 billion leaving our country and 

going to lower tax jurisdictions. Obviously, that could be very 

harmful to our economy. 

34 

I just wondered if you agree that this is a bad idea. I think it 

was a bad idea in 2001 when it was proposed before and the Administration and Congress opposed it and defeated it. I just wondered if you think this is as bad an idea right now as I do. 

Mr. BERNANKE. I hesitate making a judgment, not having read 

this regulation. It is the case that the United States has recently 

negotiated with Switzerland to get more information about Americans bank accounts in Switzerland because a lot of that was being 

used for tax evasion. I don’t know whether this is parallel to that 

or related to that or not. You just said I was forthright. I think I 

would like to say ‘‘no comment’’ on this one until I can look at the 

regulation more carefully. 

Mr. POSEY. Given the facts that I am aware of—and it is a proposed rule at this point—what Switzerland does is Switzerland’s 

business; what we do is our business. I don’t want us to be like 

Switzerland in a great number of ways, and I will leave it at that. 

I touch on this second issue because I have had personal stories 

about it happening in my district, and I know it is not a bad dream 

and discussed it with Secretary Geithner yesterday, and that is 

regulators—basically, overregulation back in our districts. Go to a 

bank to examine a bank and determine that in their opinion a performing loan should not be a performing loan, which can cause the 

bank obviously to have to take that off their books. They can’t earn 

interest on it. You know the consequences of a markdown. It is 

very, very damaging. 

I am told that the examiners have been directed not to micromanage these lending services. I just wonder what we can do about 

it. 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes, I should just say that we have made an 

enormous effort to train the examiners, to issue guidances, to have 

outreach conferences, to have meetings with small bankers and 

small businesses. So we are trying really hard. I know that maybe 

on the ground level it doesn’t always work, but we are trying really 

hard. 

What I would recommend to your constituents is if it is a Federal 

Reserve examiner as opposed to OCC or FDIC, we do have an ombudsman who will follow through and without giving the name to 

the examiners so they won’t have to worry about any kind of retaliation or anything like that. We will try to follow through if there 

are specific concerns. So please let us hear from them and we will 

see what we can do. 

Mr. POSEY. You realize how serious a problem that is then, and 

I am grateful that you do. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts, 

Mr. Capuano. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you, Chairman Bernanke, for being here. 

Before I get to my question, I have to make sure I heard you right 

on a couple of things. In response to Mr. Frank’s question on the 

amounts of money that were made or lost, I am not sure I heard 

it right, did I hear you correctly that all the bailouts that we did 

and all the windows that you opened earned a positive; I think you 

said $125 billion estimate. Did I hear that correctly? 

35 

Mr. BERNANKE. I will make two separate statements. The first 

one is you look at all the TARP-related financial investments and 

all the Fed special programs, facilities, etc., all of those have been 

or certainly will be profitable. That is the first statement. The second statement is that the Fed has remitted $125 billion in the last 

2 years to the Treasury. That money comes from those programs. 

It also comes from our purchase of securities where we take the interest and just give it back to the Treasury. 

Mr. CAPUANO. So after all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over 

the last 2 years, you and we just earned the American taxpayers 

$125 billion. 

Mr. BERNANKE. That is correct. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you. I was a little stunned. After everything I have heard for the last 2 years, apparently we were just 

throwing money away, but I guess that just didn’t turn out to be 

true. The other one I wanted to follow up on was Ms. Waters’ question. I know there was a little back and forth last week as to what 

you said or what you didn’t say; how it was interpreted. On the 

basis of the $60 billion in cuts to the Federal Government that has 

been proposed and passed by this House—not by the Senate but by 

the House—did I hear you correctly that the real disagreement was 

not on whether it would cost jobs, but how many jobs that would 

cost. Is that fair? 

Mr. BERNANKE. That is right. 

Mr. CAPUANO. You are in the 200,000 range? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Over a period of approximately how long? 

Mr. BERNANKE. A couple of years. 

Mr. CAPUANO. A year? 

Mr. BERNANKE. A couple of years. 

Mr. CAPUANO. So the debate is really whether they are going to 

cut 200,000 jobs versus 700,000 jobs. And I guess it would probably 

be fair to say that you don’t think cutting jobs is a really smart 

thing right now. 

Mr. BERNANKE. No, I would like to see jobs creation. And what 

I have been trying to focus on, we have to keep our eye on deficit 

reduction, but we need to think of it in a long-term framework. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Fair enough. I agree with that statement. But 

those two statements today, to me, were the two most interesting 

statements that have been made all day. I have lots of other questions I am not going to have time to ask, so I will send them in 

writing. 

I want to talk about the growing gap between the wealthiest and 

the poorest in this country but that will have to wait until later. 

I know other members have mentioned it. I want to talk at some 

point, and I will probably put this in writing to you, the real definition of how many people are really unemployed. It really bothers 

me that for some reason, we don’t count discouraged workers in the 

unemployed rank, because even though they are not looking for 

work and they really would like to work, we don’t count them. It 

really bothers me that we don’t take any account for the participation rate. The so-called participation rate has gone down. And we 

don’t seem to count them. I actually would like to really get your 

36 

opinion on the Red Sox’s chance for middle relievers this year, but 

that will have to wait as well. 

Mr. BERNANKE. I would be happy to talk about that. 

Mr. CAPUANO. I know you would. And I actually would respect 

your opinion on the matter. 

I do want to talk a little bit; do you have any estimate of how 

much money corporations are sitting on at the moment? I know 

there have been reported numbers all over the place; hundreds of 

billions, maybe even trillions of dollars that corporations are holding on their books. Do you have any estimate on that? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Two trillion dollars, I think that is cash on balance sheets. But a lot of that, I should add, is overseas. 

Mr. CAPUANO. But this is U.S. corporations holding it? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Okay. Do you think it would be good for the economy if that $2 trillion were to be moved into either investing in 

capital equipment or hiring people, or do you think it is best that 

corporations sit on the money? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It would be better if it was invested or used for 

hiring, but firms have to make their own determination about 

whether that is a profitable thing to do 

Mr. CAPUANO. Do you think it would be a reasonable thing for 

this government and for your agency to look at ways to encourage—not punish, not demand—them to move that money around 

and get it back into the economy? 

Mr. BERNANKE. That is one of the ways the QE2 works. It lowers 

yield in safe cash-like instruments like treasuries and makes it 

more expensive to hold cash. It makes people look for other things. 

Mr. CAPUANO. So you are already doing it. 

Mr. BERNANKE. We are trying to do that, yes, now. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Do you think it would be good for this government 

to do it as well if we can find appropriate ways to encourage them? 

Mr. BERNANKE. As you know, I have suggested looking at the 

corporate Tax Code. One aspect of it is the territoriality provision. 

If you were to allow firms to bring back cash from abroad without 

additional taxation or limited additional taxation, there might be 

more incentive for them to bring it home and use it domestically. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Excellent. I am not even going to use all my time 

because you have answered all my questions. I really want to 

thank you for being honest on those two items. Thank you very 

much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from 

Pennsylvania, Mr. Fitzpatrick. 

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Thank you. And good afternoon, Chairman 

Bernanke. I have just two questions: one has to do with trade; and 

the second is a little closer to home. In connection with the trade 

gap with China, which has shown no signs of closing and despite 

the fact there is currency that has appreciated somewhat, my question is: What share of the trade imbalance can be attributed to exchange rates as opposed to more structural and institutional issues 

like high corporate taxes, which I believe we will soon have the 

highest corporate tax in the world, and other challenges that manufacturing has in this country? 

37 

Mr. BERNANKE. Exchange rates are certainly playing a role. The 

other most direct factors have to do with the saving and investment patterns in the two countries. In China, savings rates are extraordinarily high even though their investment is also high. And 

so they have a lot of extra savings to send abroad. And that corresponds to the current account surplus that they have. In the 

United States, our savings rate is much lower, both at the household level but also at the government level. So we need to borrow 

abroad. That corresponds to that as well. 

So I think those two factors, saving investment patterns and exchange rates, are the most important. There are other issues related to the mix of goods that we produce; the manufactured goods 

and specialized goods and China’s need. A lot of what China imports is really components that they use to assemble and then export to other countries. 

Mr. FITZPATRICK. We still have a lot of manufacturing in Pennsylvania, so those issues are important. A little closer to home, my 

district, Pennsylvania’s Eighth, is Bucks County, northeast Philadelphia. Housing and financial services are key industries in the 

district. Both have been hit hard in this recession. My sense is that 

up until 2008, banks were making loans to persons of good credit 

and also persons not of good credit, perhaps as a result of several 

Administrations’ interest in housing policies. 

The question is: What can we do now in this economy to 

incentivize banks to start making loans again to persons of good 

quality credit? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I was referring to some of our efforts earlier. We 

have to strike an appropriate balance, which your question suggested. We don’t want banks to make bad loans. We want them to 

make loans to good borrowers and loans that will be paid back. I 

think banks are increasingly willing to do that. They are a little 

bit less shell-shocked than they were and their capital has built up 

and their profits are building up. So I think from a government 

point of view, our job and the Federal Reserve’s job is to make sure 

that examiners and regulators are playing a neutral referee role 

and not actively restraining lending. 

So, as I mentioned, we have made a lot of effort to provide guidance to the banks and our examiners; to train our examiners to 

talk to the banks, to talk to businesses. And I think we are making 

some progress, but I admit there may be situations where good 

loans are still not being made. But I am hopeful that we will see 

some improvement this year. 

Mr. FITZPATRICK. But it is your sense that regulators are becoming more neutral or more reasonable? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Of course, we are only one of several bank regulators. The Fed is only one. But we are working hard and trying 

to train our examiners and push them in the direction of a fair, 

neutral position on lending. 

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Chairman, may I yield 30 seconds to the 

gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Stivers? 

Chairman BACHUS. You have 1 minute and 13 seconds you can 

yield to him. 

Mr. STIVERS. I would like to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding. As the most junior member, sometimes I don’t 

38 

get to ask questions. If I have time when it comes back to me, I 

would love to follow up on your answer to Mr. Capuano and I 

would love to have your thoughts on things that are not in your 

purview—tax trade and fiscal policy—but I would like to focus on 

your monetary role and part of your two-tiered mandate from Congress with regard to price stability, first. 

I am hearing from a lot of consumers in my district about prices. 

Gas prices just went up 10 percent; thirty cents a gallon last week. 

Obviously, that will ebb and flow over time. Commodity prices are 

up, food prices are up. The question I have for you is: How often 

do you look at the basket of goods that make up the price index 

for personal consumption expenditures to see if it is really what 

people are spending and what they are seeing as inflation? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The CPI and the other inflation indices are 

weighted, which means that the prices are weighted according to 

how much people spend on them. So housing gets a heavy weight 

because people spend a large share of their income on rents. 

Mr. STIVERS. Sure. But how often do you look at what is in it? 

It is not really updated, is it? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which constructs 

those, updates the weights every few years, using survey data. 

Mr. STIVERS. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Hopefully, 

it will get back to me 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. At this time, Mr. Lynch. 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your willingness to help the committee with its work. 

I wanted to ask you, there has been a lot of discussion about 

quantitative easing—QE2—and your decision to go ahead and purchase long-term treasuries and the impact that has on interest 

rates going forward. I realize the fund rate is so low, you can’t do 

much more on that side. Is there any way to quantify the benefit 

of that QE2? Would you be able to make an assessment of what 

would happen without it and what the repercussions would be for 

a credit? 

Mr. BERNANKE. As with any macroeconomic policy, the question 

is what is the counterfactual; what would have happened. And you 

can never know that with certainty. We have done extensive analysis using models and so on. And there was a paper published that 

estimated, for example, that the $600 billion would provide an additional 700,000 jobs, and that if you looked at all of the efforts, 

including the first QE round, there would be several million jobs 

created by that. Also, that the QE efforts together have added 

about a percentage point to inflation, which means that it has 

helped us move away from the deflation risk zone, so to speak. 

So our analysis, which I think is pretty well-founded and based 

on a lot of research, suggests that these effects, while obviously not 

curing the problem, have been substantial. But, of course, I was agnostic in my testimony because that is a model that isn’t certain 

evidence. 

Mr. LYNCH. If I can ask you, though, the banks are saying that 

they are lending less because businesses are requesting loans less. 

It is not the availability. It is sort of the willingness. If that were 

true, then just providing us liquidity to businesses that don’t have 

that confidence, it wouldn’t necessarily create 700,000 jobs. 

39 

Mr. BERNANKE. There are a lot of reasons why lending is down, 

including lack of demand for loans, issues related to regulation and 

capital, and so on. Our view of how QE2 works is not through bank 

reserves. Our view is that it works by changing asset market 

prices, including stock prices and corporate bond yields. And those 

effects have been quite substantial. 

To show a link, if you ask small businesses why they are not borrowing and what is their biggest problem, they say lack of demand—people aren’t buying from me. But what we have seen in 

the last few months is a pretty significant pickup in consumer purchases. And that in turn is at least partly related to the increase 

in the stock market and lower interest rates and other factors making it more attractive for consumers to go out and spend. So the 

availability of credit to a firm is not the only factor. The demand 

from consumers is also a factor. It appears that we are affecting 

that. 

Mr. LYNCH. I know this has been hit on by a few of the members 

here. But Mr. Zandi’s—you know everything is political here. The 

CR that we just voted in would cut $60 billion out of the economy. 

Now, on previous occasions, I asked you about other measures that 

might have pulled money out of the economy. Is there any best 

guess that you have in terms of what it would result in terms of 

your mandate under Humphrey-Hawkins regarding full employment? Is there any delta that you think cutting $60 billion out of 

our economy would translate to in terms of the job market? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Everything else equal and assuming that there 

is no further improvement in the long-term deficit position, our 

analysis of that proposal gives a couple of tenths on growth and 

maybe 200,000 jobs over a couple of years. Again, it is just a simple 

analysis. I don’t know why we get smaller numbers than some of 

the private sector people do. It may be some differences in assumptions. But we have tried to do a realistic analysis of what those 

cuts would do over a couple of years. 

Mr. LYNCH. Right now, we have a $1.6 trillion deficit; something 

like that. We are borrowing that money from the Chinese and from 

the Saudis. So I am not sure if we are assuming we are going to 

borrow it for other reasons, should the budget require it. 

With that, I will let you go. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mrs. Capito. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome. Chairman 

Bernanke. I apologize if you have already answered this question. 

I had to slip out for a little bit. 

I have heard kind of conflicting information, and there was a 

news report, I believe in December, saying that $1 trillion is being 

held in cash on hand by corporations and companies and investors. 

They are kind of hunkered in, in a savings capacity. But in your 

report, it says that the total net national savings still remains low 

by historical standards. So my first question is, is this phenomenon 

of companies and investors holding their assets, is it large by historical perspective or is it lower? 

Mr. BERNANKE. It is a question not of the new savings being 

done but of how the overall existing wealth and what form it is 

held. Firms have taken advantage of low interest rates to pay off 

40 

debt or refinance debt and they are holding an awful lot of cash 

relative to longer-term norms. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Right. In terms of job creation, obviously if they let 

go of their cash or reinvest, that is going to create more jobs and 

more expansion of our economy. For instance, in my State—I am 

from West Virginia—a lot of our investors are kind of hunkered 

down because of the regulations regarding our fossil fuel industry; 

the uncertainty of where we are going to go with that. Do you see 

this as a problem in terms of the rulemaking that is going to be 

continuing on Dodd-Frank for the next several years? Do you think 

this will cause financial institutions and other investors to kind of 

hunker down on cash and not spread it out to create jobs we desperately need? 

Mr. BERNANKE. There are two schools of thought: one is that we 

should delay in order to get further information; and the other is 

that we should do it as quickly as possible to get past the uncertainty. We are trying to do both. The Dodd-Frank Act put some 

pretty tough deadlines in terms of how quickly we are are supposed 

to get this done. We are working flat out at the Federal Reserve 

with over 300 people working on these regulations. And we would 

like to get them done right, but we would also like to get them 

done quickly. We appreciate that uncertainty is bad for business 

and bad for lending. And the sooner we can get a clear set of rules 

on the table, the more quickly the firms can go back to business. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Right. My other question is, I ask on my e-newsletter: If you could ask a question to your Member of Congress, 

what would it be? It would be around a lot of different issues but 

the debt and deficit issue, the very simple question they ask is: 

What are you doing up there, just printing money? They do not understand the process. So I am going to take us back to the beginning process. In your report, you have said that Federal debt has 

risen but the demand for power securities is well maintained, particularly foreign custody holdings and foreign investments on the 

auction. 

The next question people ask is, who is holding our debt; what 

countries? Mr. Lynch mentioned this; that China is holding a lot 

of our debt. So we are not just printing money. We are creating 

debt and it is being held by foreign countries. What would you tell 

somebody in a very simplistic way how that is going to affect our 

national security, our trade, and our ability to move forward? 

Mr. BERNANKE. As you say, what we are doing is borrowing and 

giving IOUs, Treasury securities which say we owe you a certain 

amount of money, we will pay you back with interest. At this point, 

both foreign central banks and investment funds as well as domestic investors seem pretty content to hold that debt for relatively low 

interest rates, 31⁄2 percent for 10 years. So that shows that there 

is still a pretty good willingness to hold U.S. Treasury securities. 

That being said, what I have said a couple of times today with 

respect to questions about our deficit situation is that we do need 

to move to provide confidence to lenders that we will control our 

deficit over time so that our borrowing needs won’t explode. And 

if we can do that, then perhaps we can continue to borrow at reasonable interest rates. 

41 

If we can’t, then the risk that we are taking is that interest rates 

would spike up and then we would be in a really bad situation because not only would we have a big deficit, but we would also have 

to pay more interest, which would add further to the deficit and get 

us in a kind of vicious circle. 

It is just like borrowing, and like any unit firm or family, if you 

borrow more than you can repay, then eventually you are going to 

get in trouble. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Right. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Miller. 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Several members on the Republican side have said that the Federal 

Government, Washington, never deals until with a problem until 

there is a great urgency, until we are on the brink of catastrophe. 

But that is not always true. A decade ago, the government was 

running a surplus. Your predecessor, Alan Greenspan, was worried 

about the economic effect of paying off the national debt too quickly. And even though it did not seem to be a particularly urgent concern, the President and Congress set about solving that problem 

with great enthusiasm. And if there is one problem the Federal 

Government solved in the last decade, it was the problem of paying 

off the national debt too quickly. I have to admit, my Party can 

claim no credit for that. It was a Republican President and a Republican Congress who solved that problem so thoroughly. 

And the tax cuts that were so much part of solving that problem 

did seem to skew dramatically to the richest Americans—65.5 percent of the tax cuts went to the top quintile, the top fifth. A lot of 

these folks really are hardworking and middle class. 26.8 to the top 

14.7 percent to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. Those are families 

making more than $2 million a year, and the average benefit to 

them of those tax cuts was $340,000. And we saw just a couple of 

months ago in December how important it was to Republicans that 

they protect the tax cuts to the very richest Americans. 

It seems if we were worried about helping the economy, that 

would not have been where the focus was, because the people who 

are the richest are going to spend the least of their marginal income adding to demand for the economy. And now, to pay for that, 

supposedly we are cutting dramatically funding for education, we 

are firing tens of thousands of teachers in the CR, the continuing 

resolution, with special educators, cutting scientific research, cutting job training, cutting Pell Grants that middle-class families 

could afford which allow middle-class kids to go to college; Head 

Start programs to help the kids who show up for kindergarten too 

far behind ever to catch up, and on and on. You said you wanted 

to solve the deficit problem in a long-term framework. That does 

seem to be the long-term framework. 

But the question I wanted to ask you about was three sentences 

in your testimony about housing. You said the housing sector was 

exceptionally weak. That certainly seems to be a fair statement. 

Overhang of existing homes on the market or the shadow inventory, 10 to 11 million units. The home values continue to go down. 

You have said that the biggest problem in the economy now is demand more than anything else, that businesses are sitting on $2 

trillion in cash, but not increasing their operations, not making 

42 

more stuff because they are not sure anybody is going to buy their 

staff if they make it, which does not seem to—making stuff people 

won’t buy does not seem to be a good business decision. 

Declining home values seem to be affecting people’s life savings 

or net worth in a pretty dramatic way. What effect is that having 

on our demand? 

Mr. BERNANKE. You just said it. First, what probably is a smaller 

effect is that if people aren’t buying houses, then there is no demand for construction to build houses. So the construction industry 

is quite reduced. The other effect is that people, in thinking about 

their retirements and so on, and their savings, will take into account to some extent their equity in their home. Unfortunately, one 

of the effects of the crisis is that a very significant number of people who had equity now are ‘‘underwater.’’ 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. About one in four. 

Mr. BERNANKE. Meaning that they don’t have any equity anymore. And that makes them—in order to therefore meet their retirement goals, they have to save rather than spend. So it has an 

effect on their spending decisions. 

Mr. MILLER OF NORTH CAROLINA. The biggest single driver of the 

continued decline or the failure to rebound of the housing market 

appears to be foreclosures, that when more people are underwater, 

they can’t really get out. They are stuck if they can’t pay their 

mortgage for some reason. If they lose their job or someone in the 

family gets sick or they go through a divorce, they can’t sell their 

house, they can’t refinance. They are stuck. And they end up losing 

their homes to foreclosure. Foreclosed houses sit vacant in neighborhoods, pulling down the home values for everybody else. There 

are a great many markets in the country where well more than 

half of the homes on the market are foreclosures. Those are priced 

to sell. 

How urgent would you put dealing with foreclosure; foreclosure 

mitigation? 

Mr. BERNANKE. You are absolutely right. That is a major problem and it causes a lot of hardship as well. So I would say it is 

a very high priority. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a whole lot of 

success. We had some success, but it is a tough problem because 

if somebody is unemployed and doesn’t have any income, it is hard 

to figure out how to keep them in their home if they can’t pay their 

mortgage. So it would be terrific if we could reduce foreclosures— 

and we have been making efforts as a government—but it is a difficult problem. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. Mr. Luetkemeyer. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Bernanke, thank you for being here today. 

A quick question with regard to interchange fees. The other day, 

whenever Governor Raskin was here speaking to us, you were on 

the other side of the building speaking to the Senate. We were led 

to believe by the comments that you made that you were considering extending the date for the rule on the pricing of interchange 

fees. Have you thought about that a little bit more in the last couple of weeks? Are you still thinking about extending the date for 

coming up with the pricing on the interchange fees or are you pretty hard and fast at the end of April here? 

43 

Mr. BERNANKE. We have just now gotten all the comments back. 

We got about 8,000 comments. We have a lot of work to do. We also 

have to do a lot more work on some of the issues where we really 

didn’t even make a proposal, like the fraud adjustment. So we are 

moving as quickly as we can, but whether we can make April 21st 

is a question at this point. Part of the law goes into effect in June, 

independent of whether we make the rules or not. But we are moving forward as quickly as we can. But, obviously, we want to do it 

right and we want to take into account the comments that we have 

received. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Are you still considering extending that time 

then? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We are not extending the time in the sense that 

we are doing so in order to get more comments or anything like 

that, but we will have to take as much time as we need to do the 

appropriate rule. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay. As a former examiner myself, what do 

you say to your examining folks whenever they go out to the banks 

and they are losing roughly 13 percent of their income by taking 

away the interchange fee? What do you say to them when you walk 

in and their income has been cut by 13 percent? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The examiners have no responsibility for it. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Yes, but they are examining the banks. They 

are looking at capital accounts. They are looking at the impact of 

the lack of income. What are you going to say to those guys? Are 

you going to give the banks forbearance as a result of this or are 

you going to come down harder, require them to go raise fees? They 

have been telling to who to do with their loans so are you going 

to tell them what to do with their income now? 

Mr. BERNANKE. They have to still be well capitalized and meet 

those standards. I don’t know what the income effects will be. Obviously, some of it can be made up by other fees or charges. So we 

will have to see what the impact is. It probably would be negative, 

you are right about that. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. It is a very real concern from the standpoint 

that if the income isn’t made up, the services have to go away. Because you can’t provide something at a cost and continue to keep 

your doors open. At some point, this is a problem for everybody. I 

was wondering if the examiners are going to be giving some special 

instructions on how to handle this or are you going to just see what 

happens? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I think I need to say that we are following the 

statute that Congress provided, and we don’t have the authority to 

make our own decisions on that. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay. With regard to what is going on over 

in Europe right now, there are a lot of difficulties with their economy over there. Our banks have, I think, $1.3 trillion of loans to 

the governments of those different countries over there. What effect 

do you think that is going to have on our economy and our monetary policy? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Most of the exposures that our banks have are 

to the stronger countries, the so-called poorer countries like Germany and France. They have limited, direct exposure to the countries of the governments that are dealing with fiscal issues right 

44 

now. Of course, they have exposures to banks and companies as 

well in Europe. So we are watching that very carefully. But at the 

moment, my expectation is that Europe will solve their problems 

because they are very committed to preserving the Euro and the 

European Unification project. 

So I wouldn’t put that in the very top rank of risks that our 

banking system has right now. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. We do not, though, as a fallback position for 

them, their access to our Fed discount window? 

Mr. BERNANKE. No. If they have a subsidiary in the United 

States, a subsidiary in the United States can borrow from our discount window, if it is fully collateralized. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. That puts us right in the middle, doesn’t it? 

Mr. BERNANKE. No, it doesn’t expose us to any credit risk. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Just very quickly, then, one quick concern I 

have is with regard to the QE2. I know over the course of last fall 

when I was talking to a lot of my businesses in my district, there 

was a lot of uncertainty. That is one of the reasons they didn’t get 

engaged with regards to land, they are trying to expand their businesses or whatever, if you are talking to banks or talking to manufacturers or whatever. One of the things was QE2. The other was 

a lack of extension of the income tax rates. At the end of the year, 

we did that. And, quite frankly, I would go talk to manufacturers. 

The next day after that happened, orders started to pick up because some of the businesses felt there was more certainty. 

Obviously, there is still some uncertainty with regard to QE2 because of a concern about inflation. How would you address, if you 

were in my position, trying to talk to some of the business folks? 

How would you address that problem? What do you want me to say 

to them? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I would say that consumers have come back. 

They are spending. We see some pretty strong numbers in auto 

purchases. And I think that there is nothing that will overcome uncertainty like demand in the store. If firms see that kind of demand, they are going to respond to that. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. I see my time is up. Thank you very much. 

Chairman BACHUS. Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr. Bernanke. 

Let me ask you just quickly a followup on the previous question 

concerning interchange fees that I certainly would urge an extension of time or delay to make sure we have our hands around this 

complete issue. There are a lot of conflicting reports coming in as 

to just what is in the best interest of the consumer and the fact 

that many of our smaller community banks were not a part of the 

survey. There is still the issue of fraud. And certainly, there is 

some dispute over what impact the debit has in relationship to the 

retailers as you compare their cost savings with actually getting 

the checks cleared. So there are a lot of issues here, and I would 

urge that the Fed take a little more time on this to make sure. 

I want to ask you about also the corporate tax rate and what implications and how impactful this is in terms of our ability of our 

companies and our corporations to compete on the world stage, and 

the fact that the need—how serious is the need for us to review it, 

for us to make some changes in it, and especially given the fact 

45 

that ours is the highest, at about 38 percent. I think only Japan 

is hiring, and they are considering lowering those, which seriously 

is going to put us at an impact. 

Would you comment on that and give us your thoughts on what 

needs to be done as far as the corporate tax rate is concerned? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Congressman, you are correct that our tax rate 

looks soon to be the highest among industrial countries. And that 

is not helpful because in firms deciding where to invest, where to 

locate, they may choose to go elsewhere. 

So I think most economists would agree that a good Tax Code 

typically would have a broad base, which means you eliminate a 

lot of special deductions and exemptions and credits and all those 

things. And by getting a broad base, you can lower the rate. That, 

in turn, provides greater incentives for firms to locate in the United 

States. So that is the kind of reform I think that most economists 

would probably advocate. I think there would be benefits for Congress just to take a look at this. 

The other issue was the territoriality issue. Do you tax based on 

profits earned in the United States or on global profits? We are 

somewhat out of sync in the United States with what the practices 

of other countries on that particular issue. 

Mr. SCOTT. What rate do you think we should aim for that would 

put us in the best position in terms of competition on the world 

stage? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I don’t have a single number in mind, but a lot 

of countries have cut their rates down into to the twenties, for example. Now, whether we can there and still maintain revenue neutrality, I don’t know. But there are obviously a number of deductions and exemptions and tax expenditures and so on that might 

be worth taking a look at 

Mr. SCOTT. But you would agree we certainly need to bring it 

into the twenties? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We should certainly get it down, if we can, and 

we can do that without losing revenue or without losing significant 

revenue by broadening the base. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, let me ask you about the unemployment levels, 

because a part of your charge is to keep prices stable and keep unemployment low. We have a real kind of contradictory dilemma before us when it comes to cutting Federal spending because on the 

one hand, we have to pay down the debt, we have to cut Federal 

spending, but at what cost to our faltering economy, that is still 

volatile, is still weak? And you mentioned a discrepancy between 

the Zandi report about 700,000 jobs—let’s just take the figure; the 

$61 billion cut that we passed last week. Why is there such a discrepancy between your figure of 200,000 jobs that would be lost 

and the figure of around 650,000 to 700,000? That is a huge difference. And I wonder, if you might, who do you believe here? Why 

is there a difference? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I don’t know the details of his calculation. I think 

it would probably behoove us, given the number of questions we 

have gotten, to be in touch with him and try to understand the reasons for the difference, but I don’t know the reason right now. 

Mr. SCOTT. And would you say that those 200,000 that you estimate accurately, in your estimate, do you feel that is worth it? Do 

46 

you feel that is collateral damage we are going to have to accept 

to put 200,000 more— 

Chairman BACHUS. Go ahead and briefly answer. 

Mr. BERNANKE. This is why I keep saying that we need to address the deficit. That is very important. But I think it would be 

most effective if we did that over a timeframe of 5 or 10 years and 

did not try to do everything immediately. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you. 

Mr. Hurt. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, again, Chairman Bernanke, for your appearance here today and for being willing to stay so late to answer our questions. 

As I said in my opening statement, I represent a very rural part 

of Virginia, and we have dozens and dozens of main streets with 

dozens and dozens or hundreds of small businesses, and small 

banks that provide capital so that those businesses can succeed. I 

think we all would agree that their success will drive our future 

economic recovery. 

I would like you to comment on your view of the atmosphere for 

lending by small banks in our rural communities, and was wondering if you could talk about that in the context of the regulatory 

structure that they have to deal with, the banking regulatory structure, as well as the upcoming implementation of Dodd-Frank. 

Mr. BERNANKE. First of all, I agree with you that small businesses are very important and they create a lot of jobs. We don’t 

have really good data on what is happening in terms of small business job creation, although I note that the ADP numbers this 

morning showed a lot of the bulk of the creation of jobs was in the 

smaller firms. 

So I think there is some recovery going on in small businesses, 

although the confidence is still pretty low. 

Anyway, the need for credit for small businesses is obvious. And 

we know from experience that small banks are often the ones that 

are best situated to provide that credit because they know the customer, they know the community, and so on. So we agree with that 

very much. As I have indicated on a couple of occasions here already, we can’t solve all the problems. We can’t ensure that all the 

small businesses are financially sound enough to warrant credit. 

We can’t ensure that all the banks have enough capital to make 

more loans. But one thing we can do is try to ensure that the examination process doesn’t unfairly penalize lending or discriminate 

against firms that are potentially profitable but are temporarily in 

a weak condition. 

Mr. HURT. Are there specific things that you can speak about 

that address the maybe perceived micromanagement by regulators? 

Are there steps that are being taken to avoid micromanagement 

and allowing the smaller banks and all banks to use their judgment to make capital available in their communities? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Absolutely. We have provided guidance to the 

banks and the examiners. We have provided extensive training to 

the examiners to try to get them to understand in great detail what 

kinds of considerations should be taken into account and which 

ones should not be taken into account. We have had various outreach programs like an ‘‘Ask the Fed’’, where banks and businesses 

47 

call in and ask questions and we respond. We have had meetings 

all over the country with small banks and small businesses, including a capstone the last summer in Washington. We have an ombudsman line if anyone wants to call in who has a concern. 

So we take this very seriously. We are putting a great deal of effort into this. We have also added a new community bank council 

that will have a member from each Federal Reserve district around 

the country that will meet with the board three times a year. We 

have had a community banking committee to our supervision function. 

We understand this is a serious problem. And within the limits 

that we have, we are doing all we can to try to eliminate at least 

artificial barriers to new loans. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you. Just one final question. With Dodd-Frank 

being in the process of being implemented—and there are concerns 

about micromanagement by regulators—do you think that the costs 

that will accrue to the smaller banks will make it more difficult for 

them to survive and thereby be subject to merger and thereby create the ‘‘too-big-to-fail’’ problem that I think that Dodd-Frank was 

purportedly designed to avoid? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We will see, but I don’t think so. The DoddFrank rules are very heavily concentrated, very heavily focused on 

the larger banks, because that is where the systemic risk occurred. 

Very few of the rules that are added are aimed at smaller banks. 

We will be very sensitive as we make the rules to the regulatory 

burden on small banks. I think to the extent that we can tighten 

up the supervision of large banks and also nonbank lenders, actually small banks may see that they have a more level playing field 

and may give them more opportunities than they haven’t had in recent years. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you, sir. 

Chairman BACHUS. Ms. Moore. 

Ms. MOORE. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, 

Chairman Bernake, for appearing. I hail from Wisconsin, and so I 

am very concerned about our economic development conditions in 

Wisconsin—and I realize you don’t have before you the budget that 

our Governor submitted yesterday, and in fact, I only have a 

thumbnail sketches from the Administration. So I am not going to 

expect you to respond in detail. But as a backdrop, I do want to 

ask you some questions about your role in monetary policy and in 

giving an overarching view of what makes a healthy economy. 

I notice from your comments that you started out immediately 

talking about the importance of consumer confidence and spending 

and about the importance of bringing down the unemployment 

rate. I want you to start out by giving me just a brief overview of 

your dual role for maintaining prices for monetary policy and how 

reducing unemployment fits into that equation for healthy balancing of monetary policy. 

Mr. BERNANKE. As you have noted, we have a dual mandate from 

Congress, which includes both maximum employment and price 

stability. The way we implement that is to try to help the economy 

return to a full employment situation, which doesn’t mean zero unemployment, because there are always going to be people moving 

between jobs and entering the labor force and so on, but to a level 

48 

of unemployment which is consistent with our resources being fully 

utilized in our economy. And so in the current situation, that 

means we are trying to help the recovery, we are trying to help the 

economy grow. 

Ms. MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having said that—again, 

I am from Wisconsin—the strategy that our State currently has is 

to try to attract investors to create 250,000 jobs. And so in doing 

that, we are establishing a 100 percent exclusion for capital gains 

for investors. We are spending $5.7 billion on our transportation 

system. We are reducing burdens on our local governments to have 

standards for clean water beyond the Federal mandate. We are 

ending our recycling programs. And in order to pay for this, we are 

going to increase our unemployment rate. 

We gained 36,000 jobs nationwide in January—but just in State 

workers, we are going to fire 21,000 State workers. Then we are 

going to lower wages for other State workers by ending collective 

bargaining, health benefits, by $725 million. Even those who receive transfer payments like welfare recipients, we are going to reduce their $653-a-month welfare check by $20, and make them pay 

copayments for Medicaid. We are going to reduce school aids a total 

of almost a billion dollars, and cut other aids to cities, counties, 

and the technical colleges to the tune of $636.9 million. 

So this is going to increase unemployment, reduce the ability for 

these folks to consume. This is all over the course of a 2-year period of time. And I am wondering just in sort of a generic framework how we can expect—will this attract investors, will this make 

our bond market stronger? And the 250,000 jobs that we are planning on creating, do you think that will—that these investments 

will suffice and override the damage that we are doing on the unemployment and on the consumer side? How do we balance those? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Congresswoman, Wisconsin, like other States, 

has a balanced budget requirement. And that means that over the 

last couple of years, as revenues have gone down, a lot of tough 

choices have been made. We have seen about 350,000 State and 

local workers laid off in the last few years. So there are very tough 

decisions being made there. 

Ms. MOORE. Does that help with home purchases? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I can’t judge whether or not without a lot more 

information and probably even then whether the private sector job 

gains created by attracting more business will offset the State and 

local. 

Ms. MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BACHUS. Our last member to ask questions will be Mr. 

Dold, who is up next. I do want to say to Ms. Hayworth, Mr. 

Renacci, Mr. Schweikert, Mr. Grimm, Mr. Canseco, Mr. Huizenga, 

Mr. Duffy, and Mr. Stivers, you will be first up in 6 months when 

Chairman Bernanke comes back before the committee. By that 

time, we will have a balanced budget. But at this time, Mr. Dold 

and other members are free to do whatever they want to do, which 

is to listen to Chairman Bernanke. 

Mr. DOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Bernanke, 

thank you so much for your time. A number of questions that I had 

have been answered—and we certainly have several. But we will 

try to make this somewhat brief. 

49 

On the rulemaking and supervision, one important component is 

identifying the supposedly systemically significant nonbank institutions for enhanced Federal regulation. Can you update on that 

process and can you help give me some assurances that this designation process won’t be overly broad or arbitrary? For example, 

I have talked to many insurance companies that are in the property and casualty business, life insurance companies that feel that 

they are going to get lumped into this process because AIG obviously was involved in this. But we know that their property and 

casualty business was really not a problem in this instance. It was 

the derivative side. So can you comment on that for me? 

Mr. BERNANKE. Yes. It is the responsibility of the Financial Stability Oversight Council to set rules and make these designations. 

We have put out for public comment a proposed rulemaking that 

would ask for input about what criteria should be used. We are 

looking forward to getting those comments and to establishing a set 

of general criteria that we will then apply. And then we hope to 

begin to make designations by mid-year, I think would be a goal. 

So the process is moving forward. 

There are different views about how broad this should be. I think 

the agencies on the Council will need to continue to discuss it. The 

Federal Reserve has indicated that we think that a relative handful of firms will be so designated. We don’t want to overextend this 

definition. That being said, we want to be sure to include every 

firm that would be a serious threat to systemic stability in case of 

its failure. I don’t know the exact answer because, again, there may 

be some different views around the table, but we should have some 

more clarity in the next few months. 

Mr. DOLD. Are we going to wait, because I know that the FSOC’s 

expert hasn’t even been named or appointed yet. Are we going to 

wait? 

Mr. BERNANKE. That is a good question. It certainly would be desirable to have the insurance industry represented. We have a 

State insurance commissioner now. But we need another position 

as well. But you are correct. 

Mr. DOLD. Thank you. Another question that I had is with regard to the methodology. What methodology did the Federal Reserve use to determine that $600 billion was the correct amount of 

money to deploy for the open market Treasury purchases? 

Mr. BERNANKE. We have been able, by looking at the impact of 

purchases on markets to derive a rough equivalence between purchases and points on the Federal funds rate, and our very rough 

equivalent is something like $150 billion to $200 billion of purchases at roughly the same as a 25-basis-point cut in the Federal 

Funds rate. So $600 billion was interpreted by us as roughly a 75- 

basis point cut, which would be a significant cut, but not an unprecedented cut; one that would be taken in a situation where significant additional stimulus was needed and we seemed to be seeing the kind of response that we would get with a 75-basis point 

cut. That was roughly the analogy. Of course, we used our forecasting models and the like to try to assess what that impact would 

be. 

50 

Mr. DOLD. What would you consider, Mr. Chairman, standards 

for determining success or failure of open market purchases, and 

should you need to go into them again? 

Mr. BERNANKE. The first question is efficacy; is it doing what we 

expect it to be doing. I think in a preliminary way it looks like it 

is. It seems to be having the effects on markets that one would anticipate. Beyond that, I think two criteria in corresponding to the 

two sides of our mandate. On the first side, we would like to see 

the recovery on a self-sustaining pace. When stimulus is withdrawn, we would like to be see the private sector leading a sustainable recovery. 

On the inflation side, I think we have succeeded in moving the 

economy away from deflation. We just want to be absolutely sure 

that we don’t allow inflation to go above the levels consistent with 

our mandate in the long run, which is, in our view, about 2 percent. 

Mr. DOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to yield what 

little time I have remaining to my colleague from Wisconsin, Mr. 

Duffy. 

Mr. DUFFY. I thank the gentleman from Illinois. Thank you, Mr. 

Bernanke. A few quick questions. We have a $14 trillion debt. We 

are going to borrow $1.6 trillion. We have talked about a lack of 

confidence or an issue with confidence, fear of interest rate hikes, 

fear of tax increases. Are you able to quantify the effect that has 

had on jobs and investment in the economy? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I don’t think I can easily quantify it. It is not so 

much an ongoing effect that we have today as in some sense a risk 

of a shock that this bond market might suddenly become less confident than we can repay those debts and interest rates with jobs. 

So it is more a risk than it is an effect. 

Mr. DUFFY. As I talk to my folks in my district, they talk about 

a lack or unwillingness to invest because of concerns for interest 

rate hikes, they are concerned about tax increases. 

Mr. BERNANKE. No, I don’t have a number. 

Mr. DUFFY. But you came out and said that a $61 billion cut is 

going to cost 200,000 jobs roughly. But you can’t quantify how 

many jobs will be saved when we start to get our fiscal house in 

order? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I was talking about that in isolation, looking directly at the effects of demand. If you couple that with a long-term 

plan that really shaved the deficit, I think that the overall effect 

would be much more favorable. 

Mr. DUFFY. Positive. So you aren’t saying that our actions are 

going to cost us 200,000 jobs. It is actually going to move in a positive direction? 

Mr. BERNANKE. I would like you to address the deficit in a longterm basis if you can. 

Mr. DUFFY. Okay. I yield back. Thank you. 

Chairman BACHUS. Thank you, Chairman Bernanke. I want to 

just close by saying I think you and Ranking Member Frank and 

I have all said that unless we demonstrate a strong commitment 

to making critical plans for midterm and long-term reductions in 

our deficit, then to quote you, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth. I think that is something that 

51 

we can unite across. And it seems as if there is agreement, hopefully in 6 months we will have some credible plans to demonstrate 

that commitment. 

With that, the Chair notes that some members may have additional questions for Chairman Bernanke which they may wish to 

submit in writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 30 days for members to submit written questions to 

this witness and to place his responses in the record. This hearing 

is adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 1:04 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(53) 

A P P E N D I X 

March 2, 2011 

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