Regrets, They've Had a Few

From the Washington Post's Neil Irwin, an interesting report on a conference sponsored by the Atlanta Fed commemorating the 100th anniversary of the conclave at Jekyll Island that laid some of the groundwork for the Fed's founding.

On the issue of the day: 

"There's a sense out there that, quote, quantitative easing or asset purchases are some completely foreign, new, strange kind of thing and we have no idea what . . . is going to happen," Bernanke said, sitting onstage in a conference space that was once J.P. Morgan's indoor tennis court. "Quite the contrary - this is just monetary policy. . . . It will work or not work in much the same way that ordinary, more conventional, familiar monetary policy works." 

It is reassuring to have a Fed chairman who knows enough economic history that he's seen (or at least studied) it all before.