On the recordJanuary 28, 2010
we have been asked by the President to confirm Ben Bernanke to a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Given the current state of the economy, and the nature of the crisis that led to the recession from which we are struggling to recover, this request has generated a great deal of controversy. I am conflicted by this nomination, and I want to explain my decision to support it. The most striking feature of the economic crisis is that it was, to a large extent, a collective failure of financial regulation. It was not a function of the normal waxing and waning of the economic cycle. Instead, our financial institutions engaged in ever-more complex, highly dubious, and risky transactions, and when the risk was exposed, it set off a chain reaction that dragged down our entire economy. The lack of adequate financial regulations was a major cause of the crisis. We must reform that system on an urgent basis. Consumers' rights need to be protected. But in addition to the failures of the system, part of the crisis was made possible by collective failures of those entrusted to oversee the financial system. Chairman Bernanke was one of those people. He and others should have been more forceful in reining in the greed-driven abuses and excesses of our financial sector.
