A Reporter at Large: Anatomy of a Meltdown: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

A Reporter at Large: Anatomy of a Meltdown: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Bernanke’s knowledge of Lincoln was more limited, but one morning the man who organizes the parking pool in the basement of the Fed’s headquarters had given him a copy of a statement Lincoln made in 1862, after he was criticized by Congress for military blunders during the Civil War: “If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right will make no difference.”

Bernanke keeps the statement on his desk, so he can refer to it when necessary.