The secret alias Bernanke used as he tried to save the economy

Edward Quince pla⛄yed an important but little understood role in crafting the government’s response to the deepening financial crisis in 2008.

Who’s Edward Quince?

It’s the online alter-ego former Federal Re💜serve chief Ben Bernanke used to trade a flurry of e-mails with colleagues as they raced to sh♐ore up the nation’s teetering banks.

Six years after the crisis, the pseudonym only just emerged in a Washington courtroom on Wednesday during the trial over the gove🧔rnment’s conওtroversial bailout of AIG.

A Fed spokeswoman confiꦺrmed to the Wall Street Journal that Bernanke — who was the most powerful crisis-era figure in crafting the Fed’s policies — used thꦗe pseudonym but couldn’t explain why or whether the name held any particular significance for him.

Edward Quince was a party to a September 2008 email exchange about AIG that included then New York Fed ꦿchief Tim Geithner, WSJ.com reported. An attorney for the Justice Department told the court that Quince was B𒆙ernanke’s email alias, and Geithner confirmed it.

Wearing a dark gray suit and a black and white tie, Bernanke — not Edward Qui🐟nce — took the stand on Thursday in the AIG trial and appeared none t꧒oo pleased about it.

Bernanke, w෴ho followed the testimony of Geithner and former Treasury Secretary Hank Pau𒅌lson, responded to questions about the financial crisis and the rescue of AIG with mostly terse, one-word answers.

Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, a major shareholder and for♊mer CEO of AIG, is suing the government for as much as $40 billion, claiming Fed officials abused their powers in imposing an “extortionate” interest rate on the company and taking majority control in exchange for a lifeline.

Bernanke, who took the stand at 12:05 p.m. and 𝔉was scheduled ♊to leave at around 3:30 p.m., seemed exasperated by the questioning from Greenberg’s lead lawyer, David Boies.

At one point, he asked Bernanke about a half dozen questions about where the Fed stores physical copie💯s of its board meeting minutes — which are publicly available online — even after Bernanke said multiple times that he didn’t know.

Even Judge Thomas C. Wheeler seemed a﷽nnoyed with the questioning, telling Boies to “live with what we have.”

Bernanke’s testimony is expected to stretch into Friday. His testimony followed Geithner, who was grilled for more than 15 ꧟hours over three days.