For anyone who had heard former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke discuss monetary policy and wonder if he was speaking English, the answer may be coming soon.
Bernanke on Monday launched his own economics blog, hosted by his employer, he Brookings Institution. The former Fed chief doesn’t win points for creativity. It’s called Ben Bernanke’s Blog.
“His perspective is unique. He went from studying the Great Depression as an academic to avoiding another Great Depression as chairman of the Fed,” Ted Gayer, vice president and director of Economic Studies at Brookings, said in a statement announcing the blog. “Now he has time to reflect on what happened and why -- and how we can reduce the risk of another close encounter with financial calamity.”
The bookish, bearded former Fed chief has kept a low profile since stepping down in early 2014 from a post he’d held since 2006. That’s in part because he, like many others before him that were involved in trying to arrest the 2008 financial crisis, was working on a memoir. It’s due out later this year, and Bernanke is now a sought-after public speaker.
Bernanke’s debut blog focused on why interest rates are so low across the globe. Brookings expects the blog to touch on domestic and international financial issues of importance, and just maybe a touch of baseball. The former Fed boss is an admitted baseball statistics wonk.
For those who want to build up some economics muscle, Bernanke even gives a shout-out to early 20th century economics thinker Knut Wicksell of Sweden, who came up with the equilibrium interest-rate theory.
“The equilibrium interest rate is the real interest rate consistent with full employment of labor and capital resources, perhaps after some period of adjustment,” Bernanke wrote. “Many factors affect the equilibrium rate, which can and does change over time.”
Got that?
No word on whether the former Princeton University professor will also give quizzes.
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