Bernanke Expected To Maintain Course

Oct. 25, 2005

Praised for urging China on currency.

How much like Alan Greenspan will Ben Bernanke be as America's central banker? Don't expect a radical shift in policy.

"If I am confirmed to this position, my first priority will be to maintain continuity with the policies and policy strategies established during the Greenspan years," Bernanke said when his nomination was announced at the White House on Oct. 24. He is expected to assume the role around Feb. 1 following a smooth Senate confirmation.

Indeed, John Engler, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), expects Bernanke to continue Greenspan's "independent work at ensuring U.S. competitiveness, spurring productivity and continuing the path of strong non-inflationary economic growth." Revisiting a cause the NAM has championed for more than two years, Engler also notes that Bernanke "has urged the Chinese government to move toward greater exchange rate flexibility."

Bernanke's first challenge, however, will be to damp down inflation arising from soaring energy prices without driving the U.S. economy in the direction of recession.

Ben Bernanke

"Bernanke is a strong advocate of inflation targeting, but as simple and elegant as that sounds, it can prove an unrealistic goal," says Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business in College Park. "These days, too much of the inflation challenge stems from structural issues beyond the control of the Fed -- for example, hypergrowth in China and the resulting pressures on oil prices, and [for example,] the [domestic] mismanagement of energy policy and resulting shortages of refining and natural gas capacity," he explains.

Morici, nevertheless, is reserving judgment on Bernanke. "Just like a Supreme Court nominee, we won't really know how Bernanke will vote until he is on the job," Morici says.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.