{"id":243104,"date":"2010-01-28T16:14:20","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T21:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.34944"},"modified":"2010-01-28T16:20:43","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T21:20:43","slug":"bernanke-confirmed-for-second-term-by-70-30-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/243104","title":{"rendered":"Bernanke Confirmed for Second Term by 70-30 Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Senate voted to confirm a second term for Federal Reserve Chairman — and Time Person of the Year — Ben Bernanke.<\/p>\n

After the Senate voted 77-23 to move ahead with the confirmation, Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics tweeted that the Senate just voted for cloture on Ben Bernanke’s confirmation. Immediately thereafter came the tweet from Jim DeMint:  “By confirming Bernanke, the Senate rubber-stamped a failed economic policy.”  Perhaps, but what was the alternative? <\/p>\n

Throwing markets into turmoil as we toss Bernanke aside and start
\nover?  What sort of qualified candidates does Senator DeMint think
\nwe’ll get, after he’s punished one of the world’s greatest experts on
\nfinancial crises for, well, being in office when one happened?  More
\nfrightening to contemplate: what sort of candidate would have been
\nconfirmable if Bernanke’s nomination had failed?  It’s getting harder
\nand harder to get people into office, especially in finance, where any
\nnominee who knows anything is too apt to have ties to the banking
\nindustry, or have employed a nanny without paying social security
\ntaxes, or have some other disqualifying flaw that doesn’t actually have
\nmuch bearing on their ability to do the job.<\/p>\n

Bernanke’s current policies would have to be much more terrible
\nthan they are to justify throwing him out of office without even a
\nsuitable replacement in mind.  It would be one thing if Democrats (or
\nRepublicans, for that matter) had been carefully grooming a substitute
\nwith an excellent resume and a good shot at confirmation.  But the “no”
\nvotes are, in my perhaps cynical view, more about what happened in
\nMassachusetts last week than about any coherent policy agenda.  That’s
\nnot a good way to make decisions, and the likely outcome would have
\nbeen greatly inferior to whatever you think is going to happen in a
\nsecond Bernanke term.


\n

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The Senate voted to confirm a second term for Federal Reserve Chairman — and Time Person of the Year — Ben Bernanke. After the Senate voted 77-23 to move ahead with the confirmation, Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics tweeted that the Senate just voted for cloture on Ben Bernanke’s confirmation. Immediately thereafter came the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}