Bernanke: By Unemployment, Not So Good

As Catherine Rampell notes, Ben S. Bernanke pointed to the low inflation in his tenure in Senate testimony on Friday. Inflation has been lower during his tenure than during that of any postwar Fed chairman. But the Fed has a dual mandate:

“The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.”

That mandate was established in 1977, but we took all postwar Fed chairmen and ranked them by average unemployment rate during their tenure. Mr. Bernanke has the second-worst record:

Paul Volcker, 7.7%
Ben S. Bernanke, 7.3%
Arthur Burns, 6.3%
G. William iller, 5.9%
Alan Greenspan, 5.5%
Thomas McCabe, 5.0%
William McC. Martin, 4.6%

If his term ended now, the rate would also have gone up more in his tenure than during any previous chairman since World War II.

All this means very little in determining how good a job Mr. Bernanke has done. He, along with others, deserves credit for keeping the Great Recession from being even worse than it was. The weak world economy had a lot to do with keeping inflation low and unemployment high. He does not deserve credit for the first, or blame for the latter.