Fisher, Richard

Now, let me be clear: I do not believe the Fed to be blameless in the run-up to the crisis we are now working our way out of. For quite some time, I have respectfully differed with Chairman Bernanke, saying that I felt the Fed held interest rates too low for too long in the early half of the 2000s, thus fueling reckless speculation in housing and other sectors. And I have freely admitted that a host of regulators, including those at the Federal Reserve, were caught unawares by the risk being taken by large financial institutions that later came a cropper.