Political Quotes

“I join my colleague, the Senator from North Dakota, in rising to support the confirmation of Chairman Ben Bernanke to a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. As has been pointed out throughout the course of this debate, his position at the Federal Reserve prior to September 2008 gave him the opportunity and the obligation to look carefully at a building crisis. His response was not as perceptive or as adroit as we all in hindsight would wish to see. He did recognize, however, by August of 2007 that this economy was slowing down, and he applied the traditional macroeconomic tools by beginning to lower the interest rate. By December of 2008, the interest rate was virtually zero, the Federal rate. That has helped, I think, keep the economy moving and has helped us move forward. But the point that so many of my colleagues have made is when it came to critical moments during the fall of 2008, Chairman Bernanke understood the problem and was able to use extraordinary measures, first persuading the Federal Reserve to follow his lead, and then using extraordinary measures to begin to blunt the worst effects of this economic crisis we faced, and continue to face, and his efforts to ensure that there was liquidity in the system-- precisely what was done incorrectly in 1929, 1930 through the early 1930s, where the Federal Reserve pulled back, accelerating the depression rather than cushioning the economy from further decline.”