The Courage to Act

November 2, 2015
Central bank officials don't normally star in thrillers, but this memoir of the 2008 financial collapse and the Great Recession by the former chairman of the Federal Reserve provides an exception to that rule. Economist Bernanke recounts how his research into financial panics and the Great Depression prepared him to lead the government's response to the 2007â8 subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing collapse of banks and credit. As landmark Wall Street companies implodeâincluding Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers, AIG, and Fannie Mae and Freddie MacâBernanke and his comrades, Vice Chairman Tim Geithner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, invent new ways to shore them up, arm-twist recalcitrant executives, and flood the economy with loans to stymie panic. The result, he writes, was "a new era of monetary policy activism" that drew intense fire from grandstanding populists. Along the way he unveils the workings of the secretive Fed, from internal wranglings over interest rates to the minute parsings of public statements for jittery markets ("Should I say that additional interest rate cuts âmay be necessary' or âmay well be necessary'?"). Written in clear, accessible prose, Bernanke's memoir demystifies central banking and high finance with admirable lucidity; it makes an indispensable guide to the 2008 upheaval and the controversial measures that quelled it. Photos.

June 1, 2015

Not long after Bernanke's 2006 appointment to the Federal Reserve, the housing industry collapsed, shoving the global economy into a tailspin. Here Bernanke recounts the Fed's use of every resource it could muster to pull the country through the Great Recession. With details of the run-up to events starting in 2002, when Bernanke first arrived in Washington; a six-city tour.

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