Bernanke defends for US Fed's actions during financial crisis

Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, could find it hard to secure another term at the helm of the Fed.

His current four-year term expires at the end of January next year. And he is facing an unusually high level of opposition from lawmakers critical of the Fed's actions leading up to and during the financial crisis. But Ben Bernanke is arguing that bad as things were, they could have been much worse without strong action from the Federal Reserve.

Ben Bernanke said "Taken together, the Federal Reserve's actions have contributed substantially to the significant improvement in financial conditions and to what now appear to be the beginnings of a turnaround in both the U.S. and foreign economies. As serious as the effects of the crisis have been, however, the outcome could have been markedly worse without the strong actions taken by the Congress, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and other authorities both here and abroad."