The stick-in-the-muds who write headlines for the Washington Post may have thought that this customized baseball card for retiring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wasn’t up to his accomplishments (see I saved the economy and all I got was this custom baseball card), but die-hard Nats fans – of which Bernanke is one – realize that this beats a gold watch any day!
What true fan wouldn’t want to see themselves immortalized in that one medium that tells how good you really were…the baseball card. I loved the career stats on Bernanke’s card:
2002: First drafted from the Ivy League
2006: Signed offer as Chairman
2008-2009: MVP for most four-letter acronyms created
2009: Named Time magazine Person of the Year
2010: Inked new deal as Chairman
Plus he had 79 Congressional testimonies and 226 speeches given in his “career.”
Now, if you feel you need something more than a baseball card to capture Bernanke’s contribution to saving our economy (which – it should be noted – came with a great deal of help from the newly minted President Obama), read David Wessel’s insightful In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic. As one of the most important grown-ups in the room at the time, Bernanke really did whatever it took to avoid a collapse of the banking system and our economy in 2008-2009.
I’m sure Bernanke received all sorts of expensive retirement gifts. But for me, this is the coolest!
More to come…
DJB
