Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank should have explained more effectively that bailouts during the financial crisis were aimed at helping people outside the finance industry.

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U.S. markets are backing up Ben S. Bernanke’s assertion that he has the best inflation record of any Federal Reserve chairman since World War II.

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The government argued that whatever Bernanke has to say is available from other sources, including Board of Governors meeting minutes and the depositions of lower-ranking officials.

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Consumers may see “almost no effect” on the costs of credit cards and auto loans because those rates are linked to the target federal funds rate, which the central bank plans to keep near zero until 2015.

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The U.S. central bank has expanded its balance sheet to $3.41 trillion to foster a speedier economic recovery and affirmed its plan to keep buying $40 billion in mortgage bonds and $45 billion in Treasuries every month.

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The simplest solutions continue to escape those trying to fix our broken financial system. Consider banks’ need to have enough capital on hand to weather market storms. Instead of requiring banks to simply raise and hold more common equity – ...

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Political drama over how to regulate the financial industry, replete with an f-bomb-filled rant from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, has obscured a huge unresolved issue: what to do about too-big-to-fail financial institutions. If anything, questions surrounding these institutions – banks, ...

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When Ben Bernanke arrived at the Federal Reserve, first as a governor in 2002 and then as chairman in 2006, he was known as an inflation targeter. He had written the book (literally) on the subject, based on his empirical ...

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Ben S. Bernanke may have something to learn from his former Massachusetts Institute of Technology colleague Mervyn King. By buying government securities to increase the supply of money, Bank of England Gov. King is taking a step that Federal Reserve ...

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Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Federal Reserve policymakers may have to ramp up their purchases of mortgage securities and other assets after the economy and job market deteriorated further since they last met. The Federal Open Market Committee, which gathered ...

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The world is full of victims of American International Group’s bad judgment, whether they know it or not. AIG’s push to market ever more exotic securities with ever decreasing attention to risk helped accelerate the economic tailspin felt around the ...

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