STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 5 March 2014

[Demeter]

3. ORIGINAL SOURCE: Bernanke says Fed could have done more during crisis

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bernanke-says-u-set-3-093333943.html

...Bernanke said he could now speak more freely about the crisis than he could while at the Fed - "I can say whatever I want" - and in remarks to over 1,000 bankers and financial professionals in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, he made clear that he had regrets.

The United States became "overconfident", he said of the period before the September 2008 collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. That triggered a crash from which parts of the world, including the U.S. economy, have not fully recovered.

"This is going to sound very obvious but the first thing we learned is that the U.S. is not invulnerable to financial crises," Bernanke said.

As the Fed provided tens of billions of dollars of emergency aid to the U.S. financial system, Bernanke said he felt the central bank was in a "terrible" political situation because it could be accused of bailing out institutions unfairly.

He also said he found it hard to find the right way to communicate with investors when every word was closely scrutinized.

"That was actually very hard for me to get adjusted to that situation where your words have such effect. I came from the academic background and I was used to making hypothetical examples and ... I learned I can't do that because the markets do not understand hypotheticals."

He concluded that he should "try to simplify the message, but not simplify too much".

Ultimately, Bernanke said, he wished the U.S. economy could have recovered faster but "we did good in a very complicated situation and in a very complex political situation, and the result is what it is."

YOU JUST KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THAT BEN, SO YOU CAN GET A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP...