Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has won the Nobel Prize in Economics. The Nobel Prize Committee believes that he has “significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, especially during financial crises.” Many, however, blame Bernanke for “driving us to the brink of collapse and under a mountain of debt with quantitative easing.”
Former Fed Chairman Bernanke won the Nobel Prize in Economics
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Monday that it has decided to award the Alfred Nobel Memorial Swedish Riksbank Prize for Economic Sciences to Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dibig.” The award is “for research on banking and financial crises. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for the selection of Nobel laureates in the field of economic sciences.
Details of the announcement are as follows.
This year’s economics laureates, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dibig, have made significant advances in our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, especially during financial crises. A key finding of their work is why it is important to avoid bank failures.
“Ben Bernanke analyzed the worst economic crisis in modern history, the Great Depression of the 1930s. In particular, he showed that bank failures were the decisive factor in making the crisis so deep and prolonged.”
Bernanke is currently a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Diamond is the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Dibig is the Boatmen’s Bancshare Professor of Banking and Finance at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.
‘Bernanke Got Us to the Brink of Collapse’
(Bernanke got us to the brink of collapse
Many took to social media to ridicule the Nobel Prize committee for awarding Bernake.
Big Short investor Michael Bree tweeted:” Bernanke won the Nobel Prize in Economics. No joke,” Alasdair Macleod, head of research at Goldmoney,“If it had before, I think that this shows the Nobel Prize Committee has lost all credibility.”He writes.
Peter Schiff, a gold bug, tweeted,:
How fitting that Ben Bernanke should win the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on the financial crisis that Greenspan caused. Ironically, the larger financial crisis that awaits is almost entirely his fault. It is a shame that the Nobel committee is as ignorant of economics as Bernanke.
Frank Giustra, CEO of the Fiore Group and founder of Lionsgate Entertainment,: “I am speechless”: a return to “normal” Fed monetary policy in 2009 How could a Nobel Prize be awarded to someone who promised that the Fed’s monetary policy would return to “normal” in 2009, that is, that the central bank would return to a reasonably sized balance sheet? Instead, we got a historic bubble&of inequality.”
Vanek advisor Gabor Grubacsnoted that:
Bernanke drove us to the brink of collapse with his quantitative easing and let us build a mountain of debt. The whole thing is a scam. He doesn’t hide it anymore. In fact, he celebrates it.
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