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"You have to look at where you would have been if he hadn't gotten the stimulus package through," says Maury Harris, chief economist at UBS Securities. "We might be a lot worse off." --Romney Many of those who chose Romney couldn't cite any of the former Massachusetts governor's economic proposals. Nevertheless, his background won over the economists. Romney graduated from Harvard Business School and served as CEO of Bain & Company, a management consulting business in Boston, and Bain Capital, a spinoff investment firm, in the 1980s and 90s."He has the experience that the other candidates lack," says Harris of UBS Securities. Some of his Republican rivals have taken unconventional positions. Texas Rep. Ron Paul advocates abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has said it would be "almost treasonous" for Bernanke to try a third round of bond purchases to jolt the economy before November's election. Among Romney's chief economic plans: repealing the Obama administration's health-care law; cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent; and making permanent tax cuts on dividends, interest and capital gains from President George W. Bush's administration. "He thinks about the economy in a more global way" than his GOP rivals, Naroff says. "He's not a rigid ideologue." But Romney's business experience is also vulnerable to criticism. His Republican rivals have blasted him for profiting from putting companies through bankruptcy and laying off workers. "At a time when the American public is suspicious of corporate wealth and power, that could do real harm to Romney," Simmons says. The economists were not asked to evaluate Obama's economic policies against Romney's or any other Republican candidate. The economists gave good marks to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: 13 rated Bernanke as excellent, 14 as good and nine as fair. He was praised for taking extraordinary steps to calm financial markets after the collapse of Lehman Bros. in 2008 and to jolt the weakest economy in 70 years. "He's been dealt a tough hand, but played it as well as anybody could," says Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates. The economists praise Bernanke for his aggressive response to the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. He slashed short-term interest rates to zero, made loans to cash-strapped banks and bought Treasury and mortgage bonds to push down interest rates and calm financial markets. "The Fed's response (to) the financial crisis and recession was dramatic and swift," says Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida. When the economy stalled in the second half of 2010, Bernanke launched another round of bond purchases to push long-term rates lower. He has sometimes had to overcome dissent from others on the Fed's rate-setting board. And Bernanke's Fed has had to take the lead in economic policymaking because Congress and the White House are so often ensnarled in partisan bickering. Still, some economists say Bernanke's Fed has gone too far, that zero interest rates are hurting retirees and savers without delivering many economic benefits. "Perhaps the greatest criticism might be that the Federal Reserve has tried to do too much
-- trying to offset the impact of necessary budget cuts, European debt problems and other factors out of its control," says Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University.
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