Bernanke reflects on the Powell Fed at a Brookings event offering early retrospectives On the wins: -“A terrific job defending the Federal Reserve during a very, very difficult time” for Powell personally and for the institution. -Building up political capital with extensive outreach to lawmakers -Noting his pride in introducing press conferences, he says Powell “made them less wonky and more democratic, and more effective. That was a very important contribution.” -Powell made the Fed “more accessible” through skilled communications On the flubs: -He compares the Powell Fed’s mistake in describing inflation as “transitory” to his own misjudgment labeling subprime as “contained” and suggests following up such forecasts with “if” statements; ie, we think X, but if we are wrong, we are prepared to do Y. -He says the main real-time critiques of the transitory inflation call were right for the wrong reasons. They didn’t get the diagnosis of what drove the inflation right and that is important for calibrating the proper response to the error. Miscellaneous: On the size of the balance sheet and the argument for reducing the Fed’s footprint in the market: “That’s a meaningless statement.”(Nick Timiraos)