Fed Chairman Talks to Nation in Missouri 'Town Hall'

The 75-minute “forum,” produced by The NewsHour on PBS and taped at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City on Sunday night, did not break any new policy ground.

But the session -- for network broadcast with a studio audience asking questions -- was the first of its kind for a Fed chairman. The moderator, NewsHour anchor and executive editor Jim Lehrer, called it “historic” and “an unprecedented event.”

Bernanke responded to questions about the current recession; the Fed’s economic outlook; the Obama Administration’s stimulus package; home foreclosure prevention; consumer protection; the stock market and investing; proposals to reform financial regulation; and the Fed’s aggressive policy moves as the financial crisis unfolded last fall -- including rescuing insurance giant American International Group (AIG: 12.36, 0, 0%), backing a merger of Bear Stearns with JPMorganChase (JPM: 37.91, 0, 0%), and other historic steps.

“I was not going to be the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over the second Great Depression,” he told one questioner critical of the Fed’s bailout efforts. “For that reason, I had to hold my nose and stop those firms from failing.”

Throughout the session, he repeated his position that regulatory reforms now under consideration in Congress would provide the Fed and other regulators with additional powers and tools to oversee firms better in the future and, when necessary, close them in an orderly process.