Rising to standing ovations at the Schwab IMPACT conference for his account of how Quantitative Easing rescued the American economy when it seemed on the verge of collapse, Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted that the same plan might not be appropriate to lift Europe out of its current woes, according to CNBC.
He feels that the program would be to aggressive for the European Central Bank and the are more barriers to the program than there were in the U.S, “The barriers to doing it are not really economic. The legal and political barriers being thrown up are going to make it very difficult to do that, ” he said.
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Responding to critics of QE, which has led to significant government debt at the price of stimulating the economy, Bernanke responded, “There was never any risk of inflation. The economy was in great slack. If anything, we were worried about deflation. Four years later, there is not a sign of inflation. The dollar is strengthening. They’re saying ‘wait another five years, it is going to happen.’ It’s not going to happen.” Not only was the economy functional after the policies were enacted, but the stock market has risen 200% since 2009.
