Ben Bernanke

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[[File:Ben Bernanke testifying.png|thumb|right|Danke, Mister Bernanke.]]
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'''Ben Bernanke''', also known as '''Helicopter Ben''', '''The Beard''', '''Bubble Ben''' and '''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k The Ben Bernank]''', {{lived|1953}}  is a new Keynesian economist and former chairman of the [[Federal Reserve]], appointed by [[George Bush]] in 2006 to replace the retiring [[Alan Greenspan]]. He was rehired by Obama in 2010. 

He presided over the [[banking crisis|2007 home mortgage crisis]] which hit as soon as he took over. Bernanke was toxic by both parties around this time, because there always has to be a whipping boy for economic downturns. [[Alex Jones]] and [[The Young Turks|Cenk Uygur]] know their market well, and that Americans are as ignorant about the situation as they are.

Bernanke is a former [[Republican Party|Republican]] who now identifies as a moderate independent.<ref>https://qz.com/518111/bernanke-im-not-really-a-republican-anymore/</ref> He was awarded with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with {{wpl|Douglas Diamond}} and {{wpl|Philip H. Dybvig}} "for research on banks and financial crises", or, in other words, for his work on the economic history of the [[Great Depression]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022 |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2022/press-release/ |access-date=2022-10-16 |website=NobelPrize.org |language=en-US}}</ref>

==Career==

Ben Bernanke first achieved prominence through his academic work on the [[Great Depression]] that expanded on the work of [[Milton Friedman]] found in his ''Monetary History of the United States''. His ''Essays on the Great Depression'' entirely ignored works which treated the Great Depression as the result of stock market, banking, and credit imbalances. Instead he asserted that Market Capitalism was a system which always tended toward equilibrium and stability. His book's review of  Minsky, the foremost theorist of how depressions occur as a result of cumulative cycles of indebtedness resulting in economies trapped in Zombie Debt situations, was:

{{cquote|Hyman Minsky (1977a) and Charles Kindeberger (1978) have in several places argued for the inherent instability of the financial system, but in doing so have had to depart from the assumption of rational economic behaviour. [Footnote] I do not deny the possible importance of irrationality in economic life; however, it seems that the best research strategy is to push the rationality postulate as far as it will go. <ref> Bernanke, B.S., ''Essays on the Great Depression'' (Princeton, 2000) p.43, quoted in Keen, Steve, Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? (Cambridge, 2017) p.22 </ref>}}

Basically, Bernanke reconciled the factual existence of a system which tended towards disequilibrium and instability with the hypothetical state of a system which always tended towards a stable harmony of low inflation, high employment, and non-fluctuating 'true' prices. In reality, Bernanke was rationalising away the creation of massive bubbles. In particular, he basically treated major depressions as something that could never happen as a result of the capitalist market system functioning normally - but rather as the result of massive external shocks such as (price) wars, or an allegedly hugely damaging Federal Reserve Bank policy:

{{cquote|Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.<ref>[http://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/default.htm Remarks by Gov. Ben S. Bernanke on Milton Friedman's 90th birthday], The Fed</ref>}}

This quickly set off the [[conspiracy theories|conspiracy nuts]] (more on that in the next section). He also revived the image of Friedman's "helicopter drop" of money, i.e. the use of monetary policy to stave off deflation by drastically increasing the money supply. Bernanke's [[political]] views are difficult to pin down. Despite building his work on Friedman's and being known as a [[monetarist]], he did not use his chairmanship as a lectern from which to preach [[free market]] fundamentalism as Greenspan did. His concentration on fighting deflation over [[inflation]] angered some [[conservatives]] and he was generally unwilling to comment about political issues, making him seem rather [[centrist]].

Bernanke was charged with general stupidity, [[willful ignorance]], and criminal negligence due to his handling of the financial crisis. By [[Hanlon's Razor]], he is guilty of at least the first of those charges. In 2006, he started dropping the interest rate to 1% (and later to 0%) in the belief that it would lend stability to the market. In fact, it led investors to believe it was simply a continuation of Greenspan's policies (they were right) and talk of the "Greenspan put" turned into the "Bernanke put." Bernanke reassured everyone that everything was sunshine and gumdrops and issued what are now seen to be his famous last words in 2007:

{{cquote|At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.<ref>[http://www.slate.com/id/2171739/ Subprime Nonsense], ''Slate''</ref>}}

In 2010, [[Ron Paul]] and [[Bernie Sanders]] got their wishes granted to audit the Fed. As a result, Bernanke was found to have loaned a large amount of money to various companies in order to keep them from running out of money. Sanders derided the loans a "backdoor bailout."<ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/02/business/la-fi-crisis-lending-20101202 Lawmaker accuses Federal Reserve of conducting 'backdoor bailout' during financial crisis], ''Los Angeles Times''</ref>

==Conspiracy theories and other bullshit==
[[File:Aeronautica Militare elicottero 01 (RaBoe).jpg|thumb|left|Some say Bernanke flies a moneycopter. Others say it's a [[Black helicopters|black helicopter]].]]
Bernanke was criticized by [[wingnuts]] for putting the US in danger of heightened inflation or hyperinflation by printing money and throwing it from his moneycopter into the economy.<ref>This [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k shitty, factually inaccurate, but funny (for econ nerds) viral video] that [[Fox News|Faux Noise]] and CNBC picked up for some reason helped fuel the QE2 hysteria and led to his nickname, "The Ben Bernank." [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si5uGG_s-6w&feature=related This video] is a more realistic explanation and it still has cute fuzzy bears in it.</ref> These people simply do not understand how the Fed and Bernanke's moneycopter actually ''operated.'' Fed chairpersons can only control [[monetary policy]] — all they can do is print money to monetize debt by buying up bonds. During Bernanke's reign, most of this money sat in bank vaults as reserves hit a record high, which [[John Maynard Keynes]] called the "liquidity trap." This means Bernanke only increased the monetary base, but did not actually have an effect on the amount of money flowing through the rest of the economy. ([[Japan]] attempted to fight off deflation in the 1990s and 2000s using sustained quantitative easing and it was still ''not enough'' to bring back inflation, no matter how much they printed, giving us a good modern day example of a massive liquidity trap.) Easing is also done in small installments over a number of months so its effects can be tracked and the program can be curtailed if necessary. 

Bernanke did not simply print billions of dollars at once and throw it at people in the street. If excess inflation does occur in the US, it is far more likely to be from rising [[oil]], food, and housing prices than because of Bernanke-type policies (sorry, [[Luke Rudkowski]]-type). Interest rates can't go negative, so there's nothing such policies can do to help the economy any more either.

Part of the reason for this is that most people do not know the difference between currency and money. Currency is not money until it leaves the bank. That strikes most uninformed people as strange, but if the money is not "out and circulating" it cannot contribute to price hikes/drops or inflation/deflation, by definition. When the Fed hikes rates they aim to remove money from circulation to put it back into the banks to remove it from the "money supply" (the currency actually circulating). Sometimes it takes months to accomplish this if there is a lot of money circulating (the American economy has, as of 2022, about <ref>[https://www.statista.com/statistics/456754/value-of-currency-in-circulation-usa/ This does not appear to account for the fact that 67% of all of the money ever ordered printed by the Fed is outside the U.S., mostly to dictatorships and "allies" around the world. This practice, called "foreign aid," started during the Cold War to prop up some of our worst Cold War allies and dictatorships.]</ref> $2 <i>trillion</i> circulating.

It is also worth noting that because the Fed is targeting the money circulating, the Fed must cut into spending. This means going after the biggest spenders in the economy, who are often working class and live from paycheck to paycheck. That oftentimes means the poorest people lose their jobs (or have their hours cut) when layoffs hit as a result of businesses not being able to pay for labor because interest rate hikes mean they must spend more to the bank instead. This is also true for government jobs since recessions also result in budget cuts. This is also a reason for governments to provide a basic level of sustenance so that when governments have to resort to these measures, those who lose their jobs and livelihoods don't end up on the street.

Bernanke was also at the center of a tornado of conspiracy theories. After his statement that "we did it" in 2002, Fed conspiracy nuts went crazy, trumpeting Bernanke's statement as if all their [[Pseudohistory|deranged alternate histories]] were vindicated, as if the Fed had intentionally created the Depression for who knows what reason.<ref>[[The powers that be]] work in mysterious ways, right?</ref> If you actually read some of Bernanke's work, he simply expanded upon Friedman's thesis that the Fed could have prevented the Depression from becoming a Depression by not tightening the money supply and that [[Herbert Hoover]] was too insistent on maintaining the [[gold standard (economics)|gold standard]]. This view is in fact not controversial among most economists and historians (it has only been criticized by some for overstating the Fed's role<ref>Essentially, what Bernanke was saying is not that the Fed intended for it to happen, but that it was ignorant of the correct monetary policy that could have averted or mitigated a deepening of the crisis after the crash, which is understandable, as the Fed hadn't even been around for two decades at that point.</ref>). "We did it," in this context, is a paranoid [[quote mine]] by nuts who think the Fed controls just about everything.

Naturally, since Bernanke happens to be [[Jewish]] and a banker, there were a ton of [[anti-Semitism|anti-Semitic]] conspiracy theories claiming that he was a puppet of the [[Rothschild family]].<ref>[http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=418 This site] is a good example.</ref> Conspiracy nuts often claim that he intentionally brought about the financial crisis in order to destroy the [[dollar]] and bring about hyperinflation, thereby enriching the Rothschilds at the expense of America, keeping us in [[debt slavery]]. Not only is this outright [[bullshit]], it doesn't even make sense as a conspiracy. Wouldn't they want to keep the economy strong so they could skim money off the top and no one would notice, not destroy the economy so we can't pay back the debt while at the same time making people suspicious? Perhaps the Jewish bankers will claim ownership of the people? Well, you're barking up the wrong tree if you're looking for reason in conspiracy theories.
[[File:President Barack Obama meets with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke 4-10-09.jpg|thumb|Bernanke hypnotizes [[Obama]] using his Beard of Jewonomics]]

[[Austrian school|Austrian schoolers]] think Bernanke caused the recession, though their reasoning is non-racist but still dumb. Basically, they believe the Fed is responsible for business cycles.

==Awards==
Ben Bernanke was the recipient of a number of worthless awards:
*Distinguished Leadership in Government Award, Columbia Business School
*2009 ''TIME'' Person of the Year
*Nominated for Best Beard of 2010 by MSN News.

==See also==
*[[Fractional-reserve banking]]
*[[Monetarism]]
*[[George Soros]] — Jews deserve a vacation with all these things they're supposedly behind.

==References==
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[[Category:Economists]]
[[Category:Government incompetence]]
[[Category:Jews]]
[[Category:Living people]]

Categories: Economists, Government incompetence, Jews, Living people