In 1997, Bernanke earned his FAA private helicopter license, concluding over four years of weekend flight training.
A Crash Course for Central Bankers
By Ben S. Bernanke
History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.
foreignpolicy.com
Ben's Printing Press Speech
federalreserve.gov
...Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.
Of course, the U.S. government is not going to print money and distribute it willy-nilly (although as we will see later, there are practical policies that approximate this behavior.....
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