With Janet Yellen firmly in the reigns of the world’s largest central bank, many are looking to the legacy left by her predecessor Ben Bernanke. Love or loathe him, Bernanke undoubtedly pioneered a new style of central banking based on large scale direct market intervention, mainly through policies such as quantitative easing. With the policy now being scaled down, it is useful to ask whether QE and more broadly whether the Federal Reserve has been successful in supporting the US recovery.
Unemployment in America: the forgotten economic crisis
Most of Washington’s economic debate is over the long-standing budget deficit and the national debt, when the focus for policymakers should be on the long-term crisis in unemployment.