Um artigo de Eamon Javers, no Politico.com:
«Most people have annual performance reviews to determine whether they get to keep their jobs.
Ben Bernanke has the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
There is no better way to understand President Barack Obama’s decision to reappoint Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve on Tuesday morning than to look at the Dow – which was below 8,000 when the president took the oath of office in January, and closed above 9,500 on Monday.
“Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom; with bold action and outside-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic freefall,” Obama said Tuesday, taking a break from his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.
With Bernanke by his side, the president heaped praise on the Fed chief.
“As an expert on the causes of the Great Depression, I’m sure Ben never imagined that he would be part of a team responsible for preventing another,” the president said. “But because of his background, his temperament, his courage, and his creativity, that’s exactly what he has helped to achieve.”
Bernanke himself seemed relieved as he stepped up to the podium after Obama finished speaking. Bernanke thanked the staff of the Federal Reserve as well as his wife Anna and two children.
"We have been bold or deliberate as circumstances demanded, but our objective remains constant: to restore a more stable financial and economic environment in which opportunity can again flourish, and in which Americans’ hard work and creativity can receive their proper rewards,” Bernanke said in brief remarks.
The months-long rally that Wall Street has seen since the darkest days of late February and March will likely be viewed by historians as the result of muscular intervention in the markets by the federal government, and Bernanke was joined at the hip with Obama’s team in that effort.
In effect, his reappointment means that the Obama administration is doubling down on the Fed, validating Bernanke’s aggressive approach to cutting interest rates and pumping money into the economy – and signaling that Obama wants to stay the course in hopes of turning some recent positive signs in the economy into a full-fledged recovery.
Likewise, a decision by the president to install someone else at the top of the Fed when Bernanke’s term expires on Jan. 31 would have been seen as a course change in the policies that have underscored Obama’s approach to the global financial crisis of 2008. And any replacement would have met with howls of protest on Wall Street, where Bernanke is viewed as the man who saved the world economy.
“The president wanted the team that has been working to rescue this economy together," a White House official told POLITICO Monday evening. "This continuity is crucial."
Bernanke had broad support on Wall Street, and industry groups had begun a quiet whisper campaign to bolster his prospects of re-nomination, making sure to mention their high regard for Bernanke in White House meetings called on other subjects.
Bernanke was basking in good press in the hours leading up to his reappointment.
His comments on Friday that prospects for economic recovery appeared good were enough to fuel a stock market boomlet, prompting headlines like this one from the Associated Press on Monday: “Bernanke continues to give world stocks a lift.»
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