UPDATE: Read and Listen to Bernanke and Paulson’s Testimony

by Tim Manni

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are testifying before the Senate Banking Committee this morning on the financial markets and the pending government bailout.

Click here to listen live on CNBC.

Bernanke’s Testimony, from the Wall Street Journal:

Chairman Dodd, Senator Shelby, and members of the Committee, I appreciate this opportunity to discuss recent developments in financial markets and the economy. As you know, the U.S. economy continues to confront substantial challenges, including a weakening labor market and elevated inflation. Notably, stresses in financial markets have been high and have recently intensified significantly. If financial conditions fail to improve for a protracted period, the implications for the broader economy could be quite adverse…

Paulson’s Testimony, from the Wall Street Journal:

Chairman Dodd, Senator Shelby, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I appreciate that this is a difficult period for the American people. I also appreciate that Congressional leaders and the Administration are working closely together so that we can help the American people by quickly enacting a program to stabilize our financial system.

We must do so in order to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets that threaten American families’ financial well-being, the viability of businesses both small and large, and the very health of our economy…

Tags: Bailout, Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson

2 Responses to “UPDATE: Read and Listen to Bernanke and Paulson’s Testimony”

Rebecca Wilder Says: September 23rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm

All I can say is thank goodness we have straight-thinking conservatives like Senator Shelby out there. Congress is our last best hope that this thing will NOT PASS!

Markets are nervous, not because of the path to stabilization that the new bill would put us on, but because of the rocky windy path of uncertainty and potentially astronomical debt to income ratios that this bill would put us on. With each day that goes by, some new bullet point of spending is tacked on to the bill (with a $1 billion minimum). It’s hard for me to imagine what just $1 billion means. If I had $1 billion and earned a 5% return on that, I would earn $50 million a year – and we are talking about $700 billion!

Thanks for the update.
Tim Manni Says: September 24th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

Rebecca — Thanks for checking in. I agree, $700 billion is a number I truly cannot comprehend, perhaps a reason so many Americans haven’t even contemplated the negative, or positive ramifications of the bailout. For me, it’s a kind of wait and see game that I’m feeling uneasy about playing.