Bernanke's lonely battle
Ben Bernanke may or may not succeed in saving the economy, but at least he has the courage to try - and the honesty to tell the truth. The same cannot be said of our elected officials. Congress is buried under a crushing surplus of cynicism, while the White House seems paralyzed by a deficit of courage.</br></br>An expert on the Great Depression, Bernanke is determined not to be the Federal Reserve chairman who allows the nation to plummet into Great Depression II. Since our political leaders can't be bothered to do what urgently needs to be done - stimulate the fragile economy before it sputters out - Bernanke is using a rare bit of legerdemain called "quantitative easing" to pump $600 billion into the financial system.</br></br>Fed chairmen are usually as silent as the Sphinx, except in official testimony. But Bernanke, facing criticism for his action, went on "60 Minutes" to explain why he's prepared to do even more.</br></br>He took the even more unusual step - for an economist - of using language that non-economists can understand. "The unemployment rate is just not going down," he said in the interview, which aired Sunday night. "Unemployment is just about the same as it was in mid-2009, when the economy started growing. . . . And it looks that at current rates, that it may take some years before the unemployment rate is down to more normal levels."</br></br>The jobless rate is a devastating 9.8 percent. Bernanke calculates that unless the recovery is somehow accelerated, it will take four or five years for unemployment to come down to a "more normal" range below 6 percent.