Fed 'Will Get on Top of This,' Says Bernanke Mentor

Scope 'far exceeds' that of previous crises
By Jim O'Neill,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 18, 2008 10:35 AM CDT
Fed 'Will Get on Top of This,' Says Bernanke Mentor
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008.   (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Ben Bernanke has the savvy to inject enough liquidity into the US economy to push it through the current credit crisis, says a leading economist who advised the Fed chief's MIT doctoral thesis. “The Fed will get on top of this,” said Stanley Fischer, ahead of this afternoon's meeting in which the board was expected to announce a rate cut of up to 1%.

Fischer, a top IMF official during the Asian and Russian financial upheaval of the 1990s, acknowledged that the global impact of the current US crisis "far exceeds the things I've seen previously." Nevertheless, he said, "Ben Bernanke is an excellent economist" who will spur growth while avoiding the double-digit inflation that the bank faced in the early '80s. (More Ben Bernanke stories.)

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