Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Shudders!

From Time's profile of Ben Bernanke, chosen as the person of the year:
Before George W. Bush brought him to Washington, Bernanke's only political experience was on his local school board.
This may be the most ominous sentence ever composed in English or any other language.

(Sorry about the light posting lately. I've been trying to help a friend pass the GRE, which is, to a large degree, a vocabulary test. Ten-dollar words hold no terror for me, but those words -- yeesh! Ten bucks barely covers the state tax!)

4 comments:

Alessandro Machi said...

Let us not forget Harriet Miers, or that George Bush's cousin, Marvin Bush, ran security for the WTC just before it was hit.

Bob Harrison said...

Thanks for the reminder-- it's so easy to forget the nightmares sometimes.

Anonymous said...

Greenspan had ample political experience, including his commission's recommended and implemented 50% FICA tax rate hike, and the huge bubble(s) he failed to address.

Give me an economist without political experience instead, please! (And you don't become a economics department chairman at Princeton (with Nobel Laureates on faculty) without some political talent, btw.)

XI

Anonymous said...

Actually a colleague of his at Princeton told me that he stood as faculty chair and won. Of course no one else stood cos no one else wanted the job. The rumour was he made himself very unpopular very quickly.

Thinking of the movie "Animal House", which fraternity do you think Ben Bernanke would have been a member of?

To be fair at undergrad he had to work his way through. But he really isnt what I would call Mr. Personality. Ever seen Rain Man?

Finally, did you ever the the youtube clip of him on CNBC talking about the housing market? Priceless - apparently a decline in US housing prices is almost impossible cos it had never happened before. You gotta look it up.

Harry