Bernanke's family sold the property more than a decade ago. It ended up on the block late last year after its former owners fell behind on their mortgage payments.
(Left, Bernanke's boyhood home with new owner Travis Jackson. "It's just a great sense of pride to know that one of the greatest leaders we have in our time period walked the same floors I walk," says Jackson. "It's just sheer excitement." )
Dillon County, where Bernanke grew up, is getting pummeled by the recession, largely because of the capital goods nature of the products made in factories in the area.
According to WSJ, Mohawk Industries in Dillon has shuttered a plant that made yarn for carpeting and employed 137 people. Wix Manufacturing, a unit of Affinia Group Inc., has cut hours and a few jobs at its automotive-filter factory. Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., which makes corrugated-cardboard packaging in nearby Latta, filed for bankruptcy protection last month. Overall Dillon's unemployment rate is at 14.2% -- almost double the national average.
Still in business is Bernanke's 80-year-old uncle, Mort, the only Bernanke still living in Dillon, continues to run his small company selling oxygen tanks, hospital beds and other medical equipment.
According to WSJ, Mohawk Industries in Dillon has shuttered a plant that made yarn for carpeting and employed 137 people. Wix Manufacturing, a unit of Affinia Group Inc., has cut hours and a few jobs at its automotive-filter factory. Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., which makes corrugated-cardboard packaging in nearby Latta, filed for bankruptcy protection last month. Overall Dillon's unemployment rate is at 14.2% -- almost double the national average.
Still in business is Bernanke's 80-year-old uncle, Mort, the only Bernanke still living in Dillon, continues to run his small company selling oxygen tanks, hospital beds and other medical equipment.
Do you think he praised Bernanke just because it seemed the standard, safe thing to do? What I mean is, do average Americans actually respect Bernanke?
ReplyDeleteBob,
ReplyDeleteI think it is a case of small town boy makes it big. I didn't include it but somewhere in the WSJ profile they pretty much say Bernanke can not do any wrong in Dillon.
I also just checked the stats.
Dillon, SC
Size 4.8 sq. miles
Population 6.316
In other words, Jackson would have had the same reaction if he moved into your old house, if you had grown up in Dillon. And I can't imagine what he would do after your next book comes out.