It is Bernanke's job to promote price stability. How is he doing? Let's look at 1929 and 2008.
I have normalized Oct 1929 to be 100 (the stock market crashed at the end of that month) and Oct 2008 to be 100 (the stock market crashed at the beginning of that month).
Defenders of Bernanke can blame "falling commodity prices." That was the excuse in 1929, too. [In both 1929 and 2008, one could revise the CPI so that it excluded all items with falling prices, prove that the revised index did not fall, and thereby assign the blame for falling prices to the excluded items.]
I have normalized Oct 1929 to be 100 (the stock market crashed at the end of that month) and Oct 2008 to be 100 (the stock market crashed at the beginning of that month).
Defenders of Bernanke can blame "falling commodity prices." That was the excuse in 1929, too. [In both 1929 and 2008, one could revise the CPI so that it excluded all items with falling prices, prove that the revised index did not fall, and thereby assign the blame for falling prices to the excluded items.]
*Cough* Dual mandate *cough*.
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