IS BEN BERNANKE DESCENDED FROM THE BOURBONS ? / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS ( HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

Is Ben Bernanke descended from the Bourbons?

By John Cassidy

Published: January 7 2010 20:13

Behind his white beard, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has a wry sense of humour. On reading his recent speech to the American Economic Association, in which he defended the Fed’s actions during the housing bubble, I initially suspected it was a practical joke. Rather than conceding that he and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, made a hash of things between 2002 and 2006, keeping interest rates too low for too long, he said the Fed’s policies were reasonable and the main cause of the rise in house prices was not cheap money but lax supervision.

Searching in vain for a punch line, I was reminded of Talleyrand’s quip about the restored Bourbon monarchs: “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Mr Bernanke is far smarter than Louis XVIII and Charles X, two notorious boneheads, and has done a good job of firefighting. But his unwillingness to admit the Fed’s role in inflating the housing and broader credit bubble raises serious questions about his judgment.

The individual elements of his presentation were questionable enough – is it really plausible to suggest that record low mortgage rates did not contribute much to the rise in US house prices? – but most disturbing was its failure to address the larger picture: from the mid-1990s, the Fed adopted a stance that encouraged irresponsible risk-taking. In periods of growth, it raised interest rates slowly, if at all, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the course of asset prices. But when a recession or financial blow-up beckoned, it slashed rates and acted as a lender of last resort.

On Wall Street, this asymmetric approach came to be known as “the Greenspan put”. It gave financial institutions the confidence to raise their speculative bets, using borrowed cash to do it. None of the Fed’s actions since then have addressed this central issue of moral hazard. Indeed, the problem may have become worse. For all the damage that the financial industry has inflicted on itself, when disaster arrived the Greenspan/Bernanke put did pay off. By slashing the funds rate and providing emergency credit facilities to stricken financial firms, the Fed further entrenched the perception that its ultimate role is to provide a safety net for Wall Street.

Unlike his predecessor, Mr Bernanke recognises the problem of excessive speculation and the massive externalities its sudden reversal can impose. In that sense, intellectual progress has been made. But he and his deputy, Donald Kohn, still refuse to acknowledge the Fed’s role in motivating reckless behaviour.

Take its current commitment to maintaining rock bottom rates for “an extended period”. Hedge funds and Wall Street dealing desks view this as an open invitation to borrow as much as they can and invest it in risky assets. As former Citigroup chief executive Chuck Prince might have put it, the music is playing, and it is time to dance. (The danger of being left without a chair when the music stops is greatly mitigated by the Fed’s promise to provide ample warning of it unplugging the sound system.).

Mr Bernanke and Mr Kohn remain opposed to using interest rate rises to burst bubbles in their early stages. Mr Bernanke says this task should fall on a new systemic risk council of senior regulators. You do not have to be a devotee of Milton Friedman to wonder where these super-regulators will be found – surely not at the Fed, which botched its supervision of mortgage lenders and bank holding companies.

But the problem goes deeper than one of hiring. When credit is artificially cheap and asset prices are rising, banks have enormous incentives to circumvent capital requirements. In such circumstances, even the smartest regulators will struggle to contain a dangerous rise in leverage.

In seeking to separate decisions about interest rates from issues of financial stability, Mr Bernanke is returning to the wishful thinking of the Greenspan era. In a financially driven economy, it takes vigorous oversight and a responsible monetary policy to prevent bubbles. Before the next boom gets under way, the Fed needs a credible commitment to limiting leverage and raising interest rates and doing what is necessary to shock people out of cloud-cuckoo land. The last thing we need is a return to the misguided policies that got us into this mess. Until Mr Bernanke pledges a decisive break with Mr Greenspan’s legacy, his confirmation for another four years should be put on hold.

John Cassidy is author of How Markets Fail and a staff writer at the New Yorker

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.