America's recession "probably" will end this year if the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday in a rare television interview. In carefully hedged remarks in a taped interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Bernanke seemed to express a bit more optimism that this could be done. Still, Bernanke stressed — as he did to Congress last month — that the prospects for the recession ending this year and a recovery taking root next year hinge on a difficult task: getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally. "We've seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely," Bernanke said. "But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we're not going to see recovery. The government's four efforts to save the troubled insurance giant total more than $170 billion. A collapse of AIG would have wreaked havoc on the global economy, the Fed has said. AIG ignited fresh outrage over the weekend with news that it's making $165 million in bonus payments to executives on Sunday, most of them in the unit that sold risky financial contracts that caused huge losses for AIG. Bernanke admitted that the Fed could have done a better job of overseeing banks. Critics say lax regulatory oversight contributed to the crisis. Bernanke said he believes all the big banks the Fed regulates are solvent. Big banks won't fail under his watch, Bernanke said — though, if necessary, the government should try to "wind it down in a safe way."
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1 comment:
That first picture makes me think of the duckwings cartoon. when scrooge mcduck used to swim in his money. that was great.
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