Fed can't get caught up in inequality debate: Bernanke

New York

BEN Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has given short shrift to those who doubt the economic impact of his bond-buying campaigns in helping to bring the US economy out of the Great Recession.

Last year he wrote off various academic studies that have struggled to find evidence of clear benefits by joking: "It works in practice but it doesn't work in theory."

So it is striking to find Mr Bernanke more receptive to a different critique: that the bond-purchasing efforts, known as quantitative easing, increased economic inequality.

"Monetary policy is a blunt tool which certainly affects the distribution…