Obama Renominates Bernanke for Fed Chair
CHETRY: Twenty-two minutes past the hour. I mean, the music just coming right in on us. We had a small coffee collision, as well.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS: John has cleaned up the whole mess. Everything is great. You could never tell. If we didn't tell you, you would...</s>CHETRY: It smells like Colombia in here. Well...</s>ROBERTS: I mean it. I figured I should clean it up.</s>CHETRY: Christine Romans is "Minding Your Business" this morning. She joins us now. And we've been talking all morning about the appointment or the reappointment...</s>ROMANS: Right.</s>CHETRY: ... I guess you could say of the Fed chair, and who is supporting it and what it means moving forward.</s>ROMANS: Speaking of clean-up, this is the clean-up man, Ben Bernanke.</s>CHETRY: True.</s>ROMANS: The president expected this morning to reappoint him, to re-nominate him for a second four-year term. What are the criticisms of Ben Bernanke, the Fed chief, is that he was slow to realize the magnitude of the problem. But then once he did, he was aggressive and creative in different ways and try to clean it up. I want you to listen to something he said May 17th, 2007, when we were all asking what's going to happen with this little subprime problem.</s>BEN BERNANKE, FED CHAIRMAN: We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.</s>ROMANS: And, of course, now, we know there was incredible spillover, historic spillover historic spillover. And now...</s>ROMANS: Exactly. And the depression -- the depression expert Ben Bernanke who signed on in 2006, ended up presiding over something that he was trying to prevent another depression, irony of all ironies. Now, the big question for him, will he be able to help unwind all of this so we don't have further problems down the road? Chris Dodd is the chairman of the powerful Senate banking committee. This is what he said, "Chairman Bernanke was too slow to act work during the early stages of the foreclosure crisis. But he ultimately demonstrated effective leaderships and his reappointment sends the right signal to the markets. We'll be hearing with the president, with Ben Bernanke by his side, I suspect. Later this morning.</s>ROBERTS: Do you have a "Romans' Numeral" for us?</s>CHETRY: I certainly do and the number is the 1937, I remember it well -- 1937, and the significance of this "Roman Numeral," this is an important year in the depression. The depression was two big horrible spikes. 1937, after the economy started to recover, there had been a lot of emergency measures as they began to take away those measures, there were some blunders and we went boom, right back down. 1937 is the number that people like Ben Bernanke, like the president of the United States, people like every economist and business leader in this country. 1937 is the number that they are afraid of. They don't want to happen to us again.</s>CHETRY: All right. So, you spoke yesterday of Nouriel Roubini, right, saying it's the double dip recession, meaning you start to climb out of it and boom, you drop back down.</s>ROMANS: That's why it's incredibly important to keep, I think, the president's calculation, his incredibly quite to keep his team in place, Ben Bernanke who started this whole thing. And, look, he's got a lot of depression experts around him, Christina Romer on the Council of Economic Advisors. Larry Summer is certainly who's been, you know, around the block and he knows his stuff. All of these people -- now, they have to make sure that we don't make it worse.</s>ROBERTS: Yes. Let's hope, fingers crossed.</s>ROMANS: Right.</s>ROBERTS: Christine, "Minding Your Business" this morning -- Christine, thanks so much. And don't forget, President Obama expected to nominate Ben Bernanke. At 9:00 a.m. Eastern, you can see that live right here on</s>CNN. CHETRY: All right. Well, we talk about the health care debate and a lot of people that have vocally opposed, in many cases seniors, some of them worried about what any changes would mean to them. Well, it looks like some are taking it out on the AARP and actually dumping their membership. We're going to talk to somebody who did that and also to a former AARP board chair about what's going on. Coming up. Twenty-five minutes after the hour.