Ben Bernanke And Today's Economy

Ben Bernanke gives an unprecedented Federal Reserve press conference. We’ll look at the Fed’s performance, the U.S. economy now, and what the chairman has to say.

Federal Reserve Bank chairmen don’t hold press conferences explaining what they’re up to. Or they didn’t, until yesterday.

Under pressure to explain what’s up with his policy and the economy, Fed chair Ben Bernanke went before reporters to lay it all out. The near-zero interest rates. The “QE2”. Inflation. Unemployment. What the Fed can do and, he said, what it can’t.

Bernanke’s taken a lot of heat for his big-money interventions, but the economy’s got a ways to go.

This hour On Point: The Fed and the U.S. economy now.
- Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jon Hilsenrath, economics reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal

Ken Rogoff, professor of economics, Harvard University. He is former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and co-author of "This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly."

Ronald McKinnon, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University. He is senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Policy Research. He was one of the signers of an open letter to Ben Bernanke in November urging the Federal Reserve Chairman to discontinue its second round of quantitative easing.