The Russell Sage Foundation and the Century Foundation hosted a conference on the financial crisis on Friday, April 13, 2012. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered the keynote address. A clip of his speech is available here.
Since Bernanke has never before acknowledged any fault on the part of the Federal Reserve in helping to cause the credit crisis, his speech on what did cause it was fairly entertaining.
Afterword: As always the questions were the more interesting part, especially the one where the idea was directly put to him that the policies of the Fed helped create the financial crisis. Of course, he disagreed.
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Of course he disagreed. Isn’t the criminals constant defense ‘everyone else did it but me’?
My local banker (smart female exec-type) had ‘words’ for the Fed’s actions whilst filling up my popcorn (free on Friday in lieu of ‘interest on savings’). She said the Fed’s policies are killing all of us.
Now little old Hinsdale IL is not exactly a poor provincial area, but it too suffers as even the real estate developers (one I spoke with on-site Saturday) say it will never be like the good old days. He has built a beautiful 5 bedroom brick shanty listing for a cool 2.75 million, financed by himself. Nice place, but a little out of my league. Wouldn’t want the attached headaches, ie Illinois. Hee hee. We are screwed.
Time to buy more Gold!