WSJ Editor Likens Economic Relief to Surgery - David Wessel

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/09/22/Ben_Bernanke_vs_the_Great_Panic_David_Wessel

David Wessel likens Ben Bernanke's efforts to avoid an economic depression to a surgeon struggling to save a patient on the operating table. Comparing collapsing banks to a circulatory system, Wessel says, "you can't save this one organ at a time; the entire system is at risk."

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How did we find ourselves confronting the worst threat to the US economy since the Great Depression?

Journalist David Wessel explains what the Federal Reserve did right and did wrong, where the economy stands now and where it is headed. - Commonwealth Club of California

David Wessel is economics editor for The Wall Street Journal and writes the Capital column, a weekly look at the economy and forces shaping living standards around the world. He is responsible for overseeing coverage of the Fed and the Journals daily coverage of the macro economy, global trade and economic trends. He appears frequently on National Public Radio.

His book, In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic, will be published August 4, 2009.

Previously, Mr. Wessel was deputy bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. David joined The Wall Street Journal in 1984 in Boston, and moved to Washington in 1987. In 1999 and 2000, he served as the newspaper's Berlin bureau chief.

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News & Politics

Tags:

• bernanke
• fed
• federal
• reserve
• chairman
• financial
• crisis
• bailouts
• crash
• collapse
• economy
• economists
• markets
• fora.tv
• foratv
• fora
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[hasatum]

These apologetics for bubble building are just sad. It's willful blindness to bias at the Fed and Treasury for the big institutions is ridiculous.

His rationale seems to read that the only way to get us out of hole we've dug for ourselves is to dig deeper. Clearly there will come a time when that is no longer an option and the collapse will be lethal.

Most of the Too Big to Fails are already technically broke. Take them and the Fed in for Chapter 11 and bring home the military. Clean up.

[artformeandyou]

This is bull crap!

[funkalunatic]

You know the people who wish they could make money, but are too stupid, and instead just suck up to the people who have the power they wish that had? They become financial and economic journalists. Just listen to the admiration of his betters dripping from this guy's voice.

[Daniel44125]

I had my fill this week. I especially had it here in ForaTv which seems to be full of Marxist nitwits and intellectually impotence. I can't educate people anymore. I have been just giving book lists. There is tons of history proving them wrong but the myth that political historians spew has endured.

[freesk8]

I realize that my conversion rate is low, if not nil.

I just enjoy spouting my free market opinions.

Care to join me?

It's fun! :)

[Daniel44125]

Its not point man. You will end up arguing with idiots that will never listen. We can't educate everyone on the net. I tired and all it does is kill my optimism for the future of this country.

[freesk8]

Another analogy: Wall St. banks and investment firms are religious leaders. No one knows how they do their magic. Politicians wreck the economy through excessive spending and financial regulations that destroy the incentives for prudence. 

They want more power and money, so they tell us that the world will end unless we give them burnt offerings of the sheep we were going to give to our children for their herds. After the temple doors are closed, the priests and politicians eat the lamb.

[freesk8]

This guy is editor of the WSJ, who's motto is free people and free markets, yet he thinks that Roosevelt helped end the great depression? One would think that there would be some minimum economic education or qualification in order to become head of the WSJ.

Roosevelt made the depression last LONGER than it otherwise would have! His policies didn't save capitalism, they helped pave the way for today's disaster.

With defenders like this, capitalism needs no enemies.

Ugh.

[freesk8]

Better analogy: the economy is a sick member of the tribe, and Obama is the chief and is depending on his trusted advisers who are practicing voodoo economics.

Here is another one: the economy is a sick patient and sound money is the life-blood of the economy. Bernanke is using leaches to draw out the bad blood which has become diluted due to his own efforts at adding too much.

[carlfinkle]

Lehman Bros sat on a Wall

Paulson said the markets will fall

All the kings horses and congressmen

Will have to bailout the banking system again