The Fed has taken criticism over the recession and Wall Street bailouts, but in the financial overhaul this year, it helped defeat proposals to strip away its power to regulate and supervise banks.
Mr. Bernanke, who had thought the worst was behind him, was unsettled by the suddenness of the recent attacks. He has said that the Fed was in a no-win situation; if it had not acted, it would have been criticized for ignoring the painfully slow pace of the recovery.
The situation forms an odd corollary to the early 1980s, when Mr. Greenspan’s predecessor, Paul A. Volcker, sharply raised interest rates, setting off back-to-back recessions in a painful but effective war on inflation.
Liberals attacked Mr. Volcker, a Democrat, as an inflation-fighting zealot who disregarded the plight of the unemployed. Now conservatives are portraying Mr. Bernanke, a Republican, as trying too hard to stimulate growth and underestimating the risk of inflation.
Read More http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/business/economy/23fed.html?_r=1
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