BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, may be dead wrong about the urgent need for the proposed $700 billion that the former professor and his buddy, U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, have been peddling to Congress.
Or he may be dead right.
It is also possible that Bernanke might be better equipped to cope with the calm of Princeton than the chaos of crisis. Perhaps, but one thing that Bernanke is certainly not: He is not Japanese.