I don't know how Ben Bernanke pictures the way future historians will look at his "legacy". The Princeton professor came to the helm of the Federal Reserve surrounded by his aura of expertise in the Great Depression of the 30s. He promised that the US Central Bank would not repeat the mistakes of its predecessors in those times.
Perhaps that is the reason why the chairman of the Fed surprised the market with his announcement that he would continue the program of printing money in all its splendor of 85 billion dollars a month.
To Ambrose Evans- Pritchard of The Telegraph, Bernanke's decision meant "avoiding the big mistake of 1937, when the Fed prematurely tightened the monetary policy". Unfortunately, Evans-Pritchard forgets that the president of the Federal Reserve has made a much bigger mistake: maintaining the ultra-lax monetary policies, in order to "cover-up" the responsibility of the US Central Bank for feeding the speculative bubble which existed prior to the beginning of the global crisis.
Did Bernanke really learn anything from the lessons of the Great Depression? It would appear he didn't, and that will be his true legacy, aside from the economic disaster he leaves behind.
Bill Fleckenstein, president of investment fund Fleckenstein Capital, said for King World News that the economic and financial situation of 2013 does not even allow the Fed to cut its stimulus program, even though the Central Bank of the United States was speaking, since back in 2009, about "exit strategies" for the program. "The Fed is completely trapped", Fleckenstein also said, who expects the "central bank will lose control over the market for government bonds".
An article by Bloomberg noted that "Ben Bernanke has consolidated his position as the most militant head of the Fed through his inaction at the last monetary policy meeting", and in doing so, "h
