Bernanke: Policymakers Must Act to Avert Crises

While “financial conditions have improved considerably” and no complete collapse occurred, the severe fallout from the financial crisis should prompt policymakers “to take action to reduce the probability and severity of any future crises,” Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Friday.

“Although the crisis was an extraordinarily complex event with multiple causes, weaknesses in the risk-management practices of many financial firms, together with insufficient buffers of capital and liquidity, were clearly an important factor,” Bernanke said at a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference, according to prepared text released by the Fed.

“Regulators and supervisors did not identify and remedy many of those weaknesses in a timely way,” he said.

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