Thursday, May 23, 2013

Wonkbook: Bernanke lashes Congress

Wonkbook sums up Bernanke's testimony to Congress that no one paid any attention to. Bernanke lashes Congress

"The result, as Neil Irwin writes, was an unusually blunt testimony from the central bank chief. He basically walked up to Congress and said, ‘You’re the reason the economy isn’t taking off more.

’This is why people need to stop celebrating our rapidly falling deficits. Our deficits aren’t dropping because we’re doing something right. They’re dropping because we’re doing everything wrong. We’re cutting deficits much too quickly in the next few years — that’s what Bernanke’s testimony is about. We’re letting them rise (albeit modestly) between 2016 and 2023. We’re doing basically nothing about long-term deficits, which is where the problem actually lies. And we’re using policies, like sequestration, that most everyone agrees are bad policy — so we’re cutting spending by cutting the wrong kind of spending.

No wonder Bernanke’s irked."

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