Bernanke All But Endorsed Obama: Journal Editors

The Fed once shunned politics, but chairman Ben Bernanke’s support for a second economic stimulus bill yesterday amounts to an endorsement of Barack Obama, write the outraged editors of the Wall Street Journal. By saying a stimulus would be "well targeted," despite GOP and White House resistance, he gave the Democrats a political green light and "all but submitted his job application to Barack Obama."

“Ben Bernanke apparently wants four more years as Federal Reserve chairman,” the editors write. Parsing the language of Bernanke's statement, they note that when he said the plan should “limit longer-term effects” on the deficit, he was advocating against Bush tax cuts.“We can remember when tougher Fed chairmen used to refrain from adjusting interest rates close to an election for fear of seeming to be political; they would never have dreamed of meddling in campaign tax and spending debates,” the editors write.
(More Ben Bernanke stories.)