ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury Message Board
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Best and Worst FED Chairmen-the List
BEST: Win/Place/Show
WIN-William McChesney Martin, 1951-1970. Martin was best remembered for his remark that the role of the FED chief was to "take away the punchbowl when the party got good." Martin presided over the postwar period of steady growth with mostly low inflation. He brought the Korean War period inflation under control with adept use of monetary policy.
PLACE-Paul Volcker, 1979-1987. Volcker was brought in by President Carter to control double digit inflation in the wake of the Iranian oil supply shock. Volcker targeted the money supply, and controlled inflation at the price of a severe recession. But growth was rampaging again by 1984.
SHOW-Marriner Eccles, 1934-1948. Eccles used open market operations to stop the cliff dive of the early depresssion years. By 1935-37, strong growth had resumed, although unemployment remained high. The recession of late 1937-38 was due to fiscal tightening by FDR and Congress, not monetary tightening. Eccles was a early advocate of Keynesian deficit spending, and was opposed to FDR's 1937 spending cuts. Eccles kept inflation under control during the war, and the post-war inflation didn't get out of hand until the Korean War.
HON. MENTION (4th)-Benjamin Strong, 1919-1928. Strong wasn't the FED Chairman, but the President of the New York Fed. But at the time he was more powerful than the Chairman. Strong, with his associates, invented open market purchase and sales of government securities to control monetary policy. Strong died in 1928, so he had no role in the crash of '29 and the plunge into depression. If he were around, I think he would have aggresively used open market purchases to reduce the damage.
WORST: Win/Place/Show
1. WIN (worst): G. William Miller, 1977-1979. President Carter's FED Chairman. Stood by like a log as inflation surged to double digit levels. Resigned in 1979 to become Treasury Secretary; replaced by Volcker who cleaned up the mess.
2. PLACE: Alan Greenspan, 1987-2007. Who else but Alan? Bubble man. After a good start providing liquidity after the 1987 market crash, it was all downhill. Presided over serial bubbles: the tech market bubble of 1996-2000; the housing bubble of 2003-2006, etc. Famous for saying bubbles ("irrational exhuberance") were difficult if not impossible to recognize. Totally ignored his mentor, Ayn Rand. Also famous for pushing "WIN" Buttons (Whip Inflation Now) when he was economic advisor to Pres. Ford, just before inflation stopped during the 1975 recession.
3. SHOW-Arthur Burns, 1970-1977. Basically took orders from Nixon. A political operative. Allowed inflation to get out of hand in 1973-74 during the 1st Oil Shock.
HON. MENTION--Eugene Meyer, 1930-33. Stood by like a log as the depression deepened. Let the money supply fall and didn't provide liquidity to the failing banks.
Where will Bernanke be: one of the best or worst? If QE works, amybe one of the best. If it fails, one of the worst. Odds? 25% best; 75% worst.
What do the rest of you think of the list?-
After the 60 Minutes performance and the bond market collapse, "one of worst" seems more likely.
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When historians analyse and write about this period, Bernanke will be found to be not only terrible, but also guilty of crimes against Humanity. He and Geithner have abrogated responsibility as stewards of the world's reserve currency. As a result of inflation caused in dollar denominated commodities, in Third World millions will starve. In the US thousands of elderly will cut their meds, food quality/quantity, heating/cooling to try to make ends meet, as their necessities cost more and the interest on their savings are near zero. History should revile them and Obama, whose dirty work they are doing.
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Saw where even Bubbles Greenspan is being critical of QE2, joining Volcker. Ben must feel terribly alone.
- 1 Reply to market_logic2010
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""""Ben must feel terribly alone."""" He should be alone in a padded cell, in a straight jacket.
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Good list. One correction: Ben Strong served as Governor of the NY Fed from 1914-1928, not 1919-1928.
- 1 Reply to skeptical_diogenes
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Until 1922 FED was in "custodial mode" only, so it did not matter who was chair. Further, Strong's influence reached way beyond his retirement. The board battles of 1930 were centered on his general outlook and philosophy. It wasn't until Eccles took charge that anyone could say someone was in charge.
One has to keep in mind though that there's what they say and what they do. For example, McChes wrote papers and gave speeches that expounded the worst of economics with the least financial discipline, but that wasn't what he practiced. Burns could have been very successful except circumstance sunk his ship and exposed him as weak, weak to the Hahvahd Boyz and their new method of instant prosperity money engineering. Bernanke was doing ok including QE1 which was merely a swap to manage perceived risk, but this reversion to worse than Burns + Miller adjusted for AG's bad influences, has left him rapidly falling in the ranking.
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Since I knew all of them except Strong. Meyer, and Eccles, I agree,
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QE will work. Stay with the market...
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I would now put Ben as one of the worst, with his decision to implement QE2. If we have double digit inflation next year, he will be the worst. At least Miller didn't create the inlation--but Ben is deliberately letting the inflation genie out of the bottle. That is nuts.
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Good post,ben will go down as the best,of all of them,allen will be worst.ben put all the home loans on the back burner for the banks,saved them.allen could have stopped all this,along with hedge fund junkies,cdo,s.
- 2 Replies to killroy402000
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Yes, Ben is trying to clean up Mr. Bubble's mess, but I think QE2 is the wrong way and will make things worse. Much worse--currency and trade wars, runaway inflation, etc. Not the right medicine.
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Oh God, that's rich. Giving away money to criminals who should be in jail so that drooling retards can stay in houses they can't afford. Yes, punishing responsible savers and rewarding deadbeats, supervising the transfer of MILLIONS of titles to bank ownership. The best, yes. That communist pervert is destroying this country you idiot.
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I ignored all the pre-1920s FEDHEADS, since they basically were in the prehistoric age before monetary policy (esp. open market operations) had been invented.
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