In Brief:
President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he will nominate Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to a second four-year term. "The man next to me, Ben Bernanke, has led the Fed through the one of the worst financial crises that this nation and this world have ever faced," said Obama, who is on vacation with his family on Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Although Bernanke's reappointment needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate--a virtual certainty--the news sends a positive signal to markets that someone who understands the financial crisis intimately will be in control of the central bank for the foreseeable future. As recently as June, Obama praised Bernanke's performance as Fed chairman, even while acknowledging that the central bank could have been more aggressive in preventing system-wide risk to the economy.. Since then, Bernanke has presided over a Federal Reserve that has rewritten the books for how a central bank should respond to a financial crisis. Within the last year, Bernanke has at times been the object of scathing criticism during his appearances on Capitol Hill.
