EconomicCrisis.US

The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly widened in December as imports rose faster than exports, gains that signaled a pickup in global economic growth.

The gap grew to $40.2 billion, the biggest in a year, from $36.4 billion in November, according to Commerce Department data released today in Washington. Imports increased 4.8 percent and exports climbed 3.3 percent to the highest level since October 2008.

Faster growth in emerging countries and a drop in the dollar’s value that is making American goods more competitive may keep propelling gains in sales overseas and spur U.S. manufacturing. Efforts to rebuild inventories will probably also draw in goods from abroad, giving world trade a lift.
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Reporting from Washington – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has been praised by President Obama and hailed by most mainstream economists for bold policies that played a critical role in pulling the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster.

The Fed chief even won a celebrity accolade Wednesday when Time magazine named him Person of the Year.

But instead of basking in glory, the 56-year-old professorial Fed chairman is fighting for his job — and for the survival of policies at the heart of efforts by the central bank and the Obama administration to keep the nation’s fragile recovery on track.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who helped steer the nation through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, was named TIME Person of the Year 2009 on Tuesday, eclipsing finalists who included President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“He didn’t just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy,” Time’s Michael Grunwald writes in the cover story, which will be on newsstands Friday.

Asked by Time in a Dec. 8 interview if bankers make too much money, Bernanke replied: “I think that bankers ought to recognize that the government and the taxpayer saved the financial system from utter collapse last year. And in recognizing that, I would think that bankers ought to look in the mirror and decide that perhaps there should be some more restraint in how much they pay themselves, given what the government and the taxpayer did to protect the system.”
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When the time comes, the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to keep inflation under control, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday, adding that that time could be far away.

With the U.S. economy still very fragile and unemployment so high, inflation isn’t a pressing problem right now, Bernanke said in a talk to a group of economists in Washington.

For now, getting the economy back on its feet is the top priority. “We have come a long way from the darkest period of the crisis, but we have some distance yet to go,” Bernanke said, according to the text of his remarks released in Washington. Read Bernanke’s speech.
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