Next Fed Chair: Ben Bernanke

Well G.W. finally nominated a scholar! By nominating Ben Bernanke as the next Fed Chair (technically - Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve), he has picked someone who seems to be a rather qualified candidate.

I guess it is no surprise on the heels of this Harriet Miers, Katrina, the FEMA fiasco, having a 2% approval rating among blacks (though I guess he doesn't care about that one), etc. Plus Bernanke and Kohn seemed to be the front runners anyway, at least according to the Wall Street Journal polls - which, as I understand, seem to be a reasonable indicator. But then again, with this administration, who knows?

Still, it is something to be pleased about, considering alternatives included Hubbard (yes, Columbia Business School, but still blech) and Marty Feldstein.

I've read a lot of blogs and commentators throwing about economic catch phrases saying how Bernanke is intelligent because he uses model X or an idiot for using Y. Really. Is that so? You can tell, as an untrained fellow lacking in mathematical and economical depth, whether or not a distinguished Princeton Professor is an idiot or not for employing some model that you learned about in your poli-sci meets econ course? Sigh.

Look, I love economics and really want to be an economist. That said, I'll be the first to tell you that I don't know a whole lot about about the subject. And the very very little I do know - it is limited to some elementary growth and development theory. I'd wager that I do know more about the economics of the NBA than "normal" economic theory at large. Point being - I certainly couldn't comment with any amount of competence on how a scholar would do his job as the next Fed Chair. It is quite a heavy job, you know.

But what I do understand is the following - Bernanke is a very respected academic. He rarely brings his ideology into his work. Even his closest of friends did not know that he was a Republican until the last few years. He has worked very closely with Alan Blinder (the liberal Princeton economist who I so admire). With Blinder, he did work on some very interesting monetary policy that is regarded as not really being "conservative" or "liberal" but if not anything else, I suppose people could call it "left leaning". And Blinder isn't the only one who says that he is fairly non-ideological in his economic dealings, which is pretty good. Krugman, DeLong, and many others seem to have good words to say about this pick, for the most part. (I do not know whether that is a contextual comment - when comparing him to the alternatives, or whether it is an absolute statement.)

I saw too many blogs trashing him as incompetent, or hailing him a a genius - all on little things such as his mention of the Philips curve. Right, like our sophomoric understanding of the Philips curve is really what Bernanke is relying on when making his decisions. See, I wouldn't really mind if people levied some decent criticisms specific to his arguments and models. But, as usual, I wish for too much. People just make ideological and blanket responses for everything. This is rarely ever good, in philosophy, in politics - and especially in economics.