[seanhunter]

Speaking as a non-American, and without the lens of partisan politics, it seems incredibly obvious to me that

Kevin Warsh < Jerome Powell < Janet Yellen

... in terms of credibility as an economist, with Ben Bernanke one step to either side of Powell depending on how much you feel he was a victim of circumstances in the 2008 crisis.

That said, the current problems in the US economy are entirely out of the control of the Fed and all to do with the current administration's policies (mainly the war vs Iran driving commod vol and the on-again off-again trade tariff shuffle driving fx vol) and the long-term deficit position driving rate curve shenanigans. The AI and private credit bubbles are just adding to the anxiety. All of this ultimately feeds into domestic inflation and job market malaise.

The bond market generally doesn't take shit from anyone and it's not surprising to me that bond investors are not impressed. None of that is on Warsh.

[webninja]

I am a U.S. citizen so I have a stake in the success or failure of our country. Old Dinosaur Janet Yellen single handedly added more to the U.S. federal debt more than any other person in modern history. The damage she did, is the kind of damage someone would historically burn at the stake for. Trillions of debt that your future kids will have to repay casually makes you want to bring up the topic of back tar and feathering. I don’t know enough about Kevin Warsh yet to comment about him but Powell (unlike Janet) was at least very at his job, even if he frequently treated lagging economic indicators like leading indicator. Through lagging heavy actions that made me wealthy enough to put a down-payment on a house, Powell turned the Fed from a fairly unknown, hidden organization into a household name. The Fed should not be as popular as a celebrity on TMZ because it brings politics and incompetent influencers into the decision outcomes.

[fragmede]

It is misleading to imply she personally chose to create that debt. Congress and the President decided on it, she was simply the head of the Treasury department responsible for financing them. And the "them" is Covid, the CHIPs act, interest rates and refinancing.

[pseudohadamard]

It wasn't Janet Yellen who holds the record, it was Marriner Eccles, who took it from 40% of GDP to 112% of GDP. Who woulda thought debt would blow out from such a silly thing as a world war, or a pandemic?

[cyberax]

Look at outcomes, not just words. Bernanke made a correct prediction that the rate had to stay low and that it wouldn't result in high inflation.

Meanwhile, the ECB started raising the rate once the economy stopped crashing. And that promptly caused the second recession in Europe.

[orwin]

What caused the second recession in Europe was a decrease in energy supply. Country that depended the most on the North sea or North Africa oil and gas exports suffered the most.

We still live under the constraints of our world, and energy availablity is a big one.

[cyberax]

I'm talking about the rate hikes in 2010-2011 after the economy started picking up.

It caused the double-dip recession in 2012: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/euu/eur... and https://www.statista.com/statistics/621489/fluctuation-of-fi...

The actions of the ECB caused at least 10 years of misery for Europe. The 2008 crisis was inevitable, but the US bounced back from it within 2 years. While Europe is _still_ not fully recovered.

Bernanke deserves a lot of credit for that. He was brave enough to ignore the deficit hawks who were screaming about "inflation" and "debasing the dollar".