Ben Bernanke
14th Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Incumbent
Assumed office February 1, 2006
President	George W. Bush Barack Obama
Deputy	Roger Ferguson Donald Kohn Janet Yellen
Preceded by	Alan Greenspan
23rd Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
In office June 21, 2005 – January 31, 2006
President	George W. Bush
Preceded by	Harvey Rosen
Succeeded by	Edward Lazear
Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
In office August 5, 2002 – June 21, 2005
Nominated by	George W. Bush
Personal details
Born	Ben Shalom Bernanke (1953-12-13) December 13, 1953 (age 58) Augusta, Georgia, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Anna Friedmann
Alma mater	Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ben Shalom Bernanke^[1] (English pronunciation: /bərˈnæŋki/ bər-NANG-kee;^[2] born December 13, 1953) is an American economist and currently chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke has overseen the Federal Reserve's response to the late-2000s financial crisis.

Before becoming Federal Reserve chairman, Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the department of economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave. From 2002 until 2005, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, proposed the Bernanke Doctrine, and first discussed "the Great Moderation"--the theory that traditional business cycles have declined in volatility in recent decades through structural changes that have occurred in the international economy, particularly increases in the economic stability of developing nations, diminishing the influence of macroeconomic (monetary and fiscal) policy. Bernanke then served as chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers before President Bush appointed him on February 1, 2006, to be chairman of the United States Federal Reserve. Bernanke was confirmed for a second term as chairman on January 28, 2010, after being re-nominated by President Barack Obama.

Family and early life[link]

Bernanke was born in Augusta, Georgia, and was raised on East Jefferson Street in Dillon, South Carolina.^[3] His father Philip was a pharmacist that managed a theater part-time and his mother Edna was an elementary schoolteacher.^[4] Bernanke has a brother and sister and is the eldest. His younger brother, Seth, is a lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, and his younger sister, Sharon, is a longtime administrator at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

The Bernankes were one of the few Jewish families in Dillon and attended Ohav Shalom, a local synagogue;^[5] Bernanke learned Hebrew as a child from his maternal grandfather Harold Friedman, a professional hazzan (service leader), shochet (coordinator of charitable donations), and Hebrew teacher.^[6][7] Bernanke's father and uncle co-owned and managed a drugstore they purchased from Bernanke's paternal grandfather, Jonas Bernanke.^[3] Jonas had been born in Boryslav, Austria-Hungary (today part of Ukraine), on January 23, 1891, and emigrated to the United States from Przemyśl, Poland (part of Austria-Hungary until 1918). He arrived at Ellis Island, aged 30, on June 30, 1921, with his wife Pauline, aged 25. On the ship's manifest, Jonas's occupation is listed as "clerk" and Pauline's as "doctor med."^{[8][9][10][11]} They moved to Dillon from New York in the 1940s.^[12] Bernanke's mother gave up her job as a school teacher when her son was born and worked at the family drug store. Bernanke also assisted there from time to time.^[5]

Young adult[link]

As a teenager, Bernanke worked construction on a new hospital and waited tables at a restaurant at nearby South of the Border, a roadside attraction in his hometown of Dillon, before leaving for college.^[3][13] To support himself throughout college, he worked during the summers at South of the Border.^[3][14]

Religion[link]

As a teenager in the 1960s in the small town of Dillon, Bernanke used to help roll the Torah scrolls in his local synagogue. Although he keeps his beliefs private, his friend Mark Gertler, chairman of New York University's economics department, says they are "embedded in who he (Bernanke) is".^[15] On the other hand, the Bernanke family was concerned that Ben would "lose his Jewish identity" if he went to Harvard. Fellow Dillon native Kenneth Manning, an African American who would eventually become a professor of the history of sciences at MIT, assured the family "there are Jews in Boston". Once Bernanke was at Harvard for his freshman year, Manning took him to Brookline for Rosh Hashanah services.^[16]

Education[link]

Bernanke was educated at East Elementary, J. V. Martin Junior High, and Dillon High School, where he was class valedictorian and played saxophone in the marching band.^[17] Since Dillon High School did not offer calculus at the time, Bernanke taught it to himself.^[18][19] Bernanke achieved a SAT score of 1590 out of 1600.^[18][20] Bernanke attended Harvard University, where he lived in Winthrop House with the future CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in economics summa cum laude in 1975. He received the doctor of philosophy degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979 after completing and defending his dissertation, Long-Term Commitments, Dynamic Optimization, and the Business Cycle. Bernanke's thesis adviser was the future governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, and his readers included Irwin S. Bernstein, Rudiger Dornbusch, and Robert Solow of MIT and Peter Diamond and Dale Jorgenson of Harvard.^[21]

Adult life[link]

Bernanke met his wife Anna, a schoolteacher, on a blind date. She was a student at Wellesley College, and he was in graduate school at MIT. The Bernankes have two children.^[22]

Academic and government career[link]

Bernanke meeting with United States President Barack Obama

Bernanke taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1979 until 1985, was a visiting professor at New York University and went on to become a tenured professor at Princeton University in the Department of Economics. He chaired that department from 1996 until September 2002, when he went on public service leave. He resigned his position at Princeton July 1, 2005. Recently, in 2012, Bernanke temporarily went back to teach a class at the George Washington University.

Bernanke served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002 to 2005. In one of his first speeches as a Governor, entitled "Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn't Happen Here", he outlined what has been referred to as the Bernanke Doctrine.^[23]

As a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on February 20, 2004, Bernanke gave a speech in which he postulated that we are in a new era called the Great Moderation, where modern macroeconomic policy has decreased the volatility of the business cycle to the point that it should no longer be a central issue in economics.^[24]

In June 2005, Bernanke was named Chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and resigned as Fed Governor. The appointment was widely viewed as a test run to ascertain if Bernanke could be Bush's pick to succeed Greenspan as Fed chairman the next year.^[25] He held the post until January 2006.

Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve[link]

Bernanke testifying before the House Financial Services Committee responding to a question from John E. Sweeney on February 10, 2009

On February 1, 2006, President Bush appointed Bernanke to a fourteen-year term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and to a four-year term as Chairman.^[25][26] By virtue of the chairmanship, he sits on the Financial Stability Oversight Board that oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He also serves as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policy making body.

His first months as chairman of the Federal Reserve System were marked by difficulties communicating with the media. An advocate of more transparent Fed policy and clearer statements than Greenspan had made, he had to back away from his initial idea of stating clearer inflation goals as such statements tended to affect the stock market.^[27] Maria Bartiromo disclosed on CNBC comments from their private conversation at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.^[28] She reported that Bernanke said investors had misinterpreted his comments as indicating that he was "dovish" on inflation. He was sharply criticized for making public statements about Fed direction, which he said was a "lapse in judgment."

During Bernanke's first term as Chairman, the Federal Reserve experienced its largest increase of power since its creation in 1913.^[29]

On August 25, 2009, President Obama announced he would nominate Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. In a short statement in Martha's Vineyard, with Bernanke standing at his side, Obama said Bernanke's background, temperament, courage and creativity helped to prevent another Great Depression in 2008.^[30] When Senate Banking Committee hearings on his nomination began on December 3, 2009, several senators from both parties indicated they would not support a second term.^{[31][32][33][34][35][36]} However, Bernanke was confirmed for a second term as Chairman on January 28, 2010, by a 70–30 vote of the full Senate,^[37] historically the narrowest margin for any occupant of the position.^[38] (For the roll-call vote, see Obama confirmations, 2010.) The Senate first voted 77–23 to end debate, Bernanke winning more than the 60 approval votes needed to overcome the possibility of a filibuster.^[39] On a second vote to confirm, the 30 dissents came from 11 Democrats, 18 Republicans and one independent.^[39]

Controversies as Federal Reserve Chairman[link]

Bernanke has been subjected to criticism concerning the late-2000s financial crisis. According to The New York Times, Bernanke "has been attacked for failing to foresee the financial crisis, for bailing out Wall Street, and, most recently, for injecting an additional $600 billion into the banking system to give the slow recovery a boost."^[40]

Merrill Lynch merger with Bank of America[link]

In a letter to Congress from then-New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo dated April 23, 2009, Bernanke was mentioned along with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in allegations of fraud concerning the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America. The letter alleged that the extent of the losses at Merrill Lynch were not disclosed to Bank of America by Bernanke and Paulson. When Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis informed Paulson that Bank of America was exiting the merger by invoking the "Materially Adverse Change" (MAC) clause, Paulson immediately called Lewis to a meeting in Washington. At the meeting, which allegedly took place on December 21, 2008, Paulson told Lewis that he and the board would be replaced if they invoked the MAC clause and additionally not to reveal the extent of the losses to shareholders. Paulson stated to Cuomo's office that he was directed by Bernanke to threaten Lewis in this manner.^[41] Congressional hearings into these allegations were conducted on June 25, 2009, with Bernanke testifying that he did not bully Ken Lewis. Under intense questioning by members of Congress, Bernanke said, "I never said anything about firing the board and the management [of Bank of America]." In further testimony, Bernanke said the Fed did nothing illegal or unethical in its efforts to convince Bank of America not to end the merger. Lewis told the panel that authorities expressed "strong views" but said he would not characterize their stance as improper.^[42]

AIG bailout[link]

According to a January 26, 2010, column in The Huffington Post, a whistleblower has disclosed documents providing "'troubling details' of Bernanke's role in the AIG bailout". Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky said on CNBC that he had seen documents which show Bernanke overruled recommendations from his staff in bailing out AIG. The columnist says this raises questions as to whether or not the decision to bail out AIG was necessary. Senators from both parties who support Bernanke say his actions averted worse problems and outweigh whatever responsibility he may have for the financial crisis.^[43]

Economic views[link]

With his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, looking on, Chairman Ben Bernanke addresses President George W. Bush and others after being sworn in to the Federal Reserve post. Also on stage with the President are Mrs. Anna Bernanke and Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

He has given several lectures at the London School of Economics on monetary theory and policy and has written three textbooks on macroeconomics, and one on microeconomics. He was the Director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the editor of the American Economic Review. He is among the 50 most published economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.

Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has published numerous academic journal articles. Before Bernanke's work, the dominant monetarist theory of the Great Depression was Milton Friedman's view that it had been largely caused by the Federal Reserve's having reduced the money supply. In a speech on Milton Friedman's ninetieth birthday (November 8, 2002), Bernanke said, "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna [Schwartz, Friedman's coauthor]: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."^[44] Bernanke has cited Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in his decision to lower interest rates to zero.^[45] Anna Schwartz however is highly critical of Bernanke and wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times advising Obama against his reappointment to Chair of Federal Reserve. Bernanke focused less on the role of the Federal Reserve, and more on the role of private banks and financial institutions.^[46] Bernanke found that the financial disruptions of 1930–33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process; and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand, identifying an effect he called the financial accelerator. When faced with a mild downturn, banks are likely to significantly cut back lending and other risky ventures. This further hurts the economy, creating a vicious cycle and potentially turning a mild recession into a major depression.^[47] Economist Brad DeLong, who had previously advocated his own theory for the Great Depression, notes that the current financial crisis has increased the pertinence of Bernanke's theory.^[48]

In 2002, following coverage of concerns about deflation in the business news, Bernanke gave a speech about the topic.^[49] In that speech, he mentioned that the government in a fiat money system owns the physical means of creating money. Control of the means of production for money implies that the government can always avoid deflation by simply issuing more money. He said "The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost." (He referred to a statement made by Milton Friedman about using a "helicopter drop" of money into the economy to fight deflation.) Bernanke's critics have since referred to him as "Helicopter Ben" or to his "helicopter printing press." In a footnote to his speech, Bernanke noted that "people know that inflation erodes the real value of the government's debt and, therefore, that it is in the interest of the government to create some inflation."^[49] For example, while Greenspan publicly supported President Clinton's deficit reduction plan and the Bush tax cuts, Bernanke, when questioned about taxation policy, said that it was none of his business, his exclusive remit being monetary policy, and said that fiscal policy and wider society related issues were what politicians were for and got elected for. But Bernanke has been identified by the Wall Street Journal and a close colleague as a "libertarian-Republican" in the mold of Alan Greenspan.^[45]

In 2005 Bernanke coined the term saving glut, the idea, which does not take into account time preference, that a worldwide oversupply of savings finances the current account deficits of the United States and keeps interest rates low.^[50]

As the recession began to deepen in 2007, many economists urged Bernanke (and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee) to lower the federal funds rate below what it had done. For example, Larry Summers, later named Director of the White House's National Economic Council under President Obama, wrote in the Financial Times on November 26, 2007—in a column in which he argued that recession was likely—that "... maintaining demand must be the over-arching macro-economic priority. That means the Federal Reserve System has to get ahead of the curve and recognize—as the market already has—that levels of the Federal Funds rate that were neutral when the financial system was working normally are quite contractionary today."^[51]

David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote, on January 30, 2008, that "Dr. Bernanke's forecasts have been too sunny over the last six months. [On] the other hand, his forecast was a lot better than Wall Street's in mid-2006. Back then, he resisted calls for further interest rate increases because he thought the economy might be weakening."^[52]

Statements on deficit reduction and reform of Social Security / Medicare[link]

Bernanke favors reducing the U.S. budget deficit, particularly by reforming the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs. During a speech delivered on April 7, 2010, he warned that the U.S. must soon develop a "credible" plan to address the pending funding crisis faced by "entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare" or "in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth."^[53][54] Bernanke said that formulation of such a plan would help the economy now, even if actual implementation of the plan might have to wait until the economic outlook improves.^[55] His remarks were probably intended for the federal government's executive and legislative branches,^[56] since entitlement reform is a fiscal exercise that will be accomplished by the Congress and the President^[57][58] rather than a monetary task falling within the implementation powers of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke also pointed out that deficit reduction will necessarily consist of either raising taxes, cutting entitlement payments and other government spending, or some combination of both.^[59]

Awards and honors[link]

• Fellow of the Econometric Society (1997)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001)^[60]
• Distinguished Leadership in Government Award, Columbia Business School (2008)^[61]
• In 2009, the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) Commission approved a resolution on February 21 to name Exit 190 along Interstate Highway 95 in Dillon County the Ben Bernanke Interchange.^[62]
• In 2009, he was named the TIME magazine person of the year.^[63]

In media[link]

Bernanke is portrayed by actor Paul Giamatti in the HBO film Too Big to Fail.

Bibliography[link]

• Bernanke, Ben S. (June 1983). "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression". American Economic Review 73 (3): 257–276. JSTOR 1808111. 
• Bernanke, Ben S.; Blinder, Alan S. (September 1992). "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission". American Economic Review 82 (4): 901–921. JSTOR 2117350. 
• Bernanke, Ben S.; Gertler, Mark; Watson, Mark (May 27, 1997). "Systematic Monetary Policy and the Effects of Oil Price Shocks". C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics. http://ideas.repec.org/p/cvs/starer/97-25.html. 
• Bernanke, Ben S.; Laubach, Thomas; Mishkin, Frederic S.; Posen, Adam S. (2001). Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08689-3. 
• Bernanke, Ben S. (2004). Essays on the Great Depression. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11820-5. 
  (Description, TOC, and preview of ch. 1, "The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression")
• Abel, Andrew B.; Bernanke, Ben S.; Croushore, Dean (2007). Macroeconomics (6th ed.). Addison–Wesley. ISBN 978-0-321-41554-7. 
• Frank, Robert H.; Bernanke, Ben S. (2007). Principles of Macroeconomics. McGraw–Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-336265-6. 

See also[link]

• Bilderberg Group 2007 meeting
• Columbia Business School#Follies Every Breath Bernanke Takes
• 'Greenspan put'
• 2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Andrews, Edmund L. (Nov. 5, 2005). "All for a more open Fed". New Straits Times, p. 21.
• Lowenstein, Roger (Jan. 20, 2008). "The Education of Ben Bernanke." New York Times Magazine,

Further reading[link]

• Stewart, James B., "Eight Days: the battle to save the American financial system", The New Yorker magazine, September 21, 2009. Pages 58–81. Summarizing Sept 15–23, 2008 with interviews by James Stewart of Paulson, Bernanke, Geitner

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ben Bernanke

• Monitoring the Impact of Bernanke's 1st Press Conference on a Professional Market Terminal, video
• Ben Bernanke at WhoRunsGov at The Washington Post
• Ben Bernanke at the Internet Movie Database
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Ben Bernanke collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Works by or about Ben Bernanke in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Bernanke Papers and Sources at UNJobs
• IDEAS/RePEc
• "A Crash Course for Central Bankers" by Ben Bernanke, Foreign Policy, September 1, 2000
• Bernanke's "printing press" speech, November 21, 2002
• "Downside Danger" by Ben Bernanke, Foreign Policy, November 1, 2003
• "Skills, Ownership, and Economic Security", Ben Bernanke, July 12, 2005, address with summary, video, and transcript
• Lectures by Ben Bernanke to an economics class at George Washington University March, 2012
  • "Chairman Ben Bernanke Lecture Series Part 1" Recorded live on March 20, 2012 10:35am MST
  • "Chairman Ben Bernanke Lecture Series Part 3" Recorded live on March 27, 2012 10:38am MST

v t e Chairmen of the Federal Reserve Hamlin Harding Crissinger Young Meyer Black Eccles McCabe Martin Burns Miller Volcker Greenspan Bernanke

v t e The Federal Reserve System of the United States Federal Reserve Governors Ben Bernanke (chairman) Janet Yellen (vice-chairman) Elizabeth A. Duke Daniel Tarullo Sarah Bloom Raskin Jeremy C. Stein Jerome H. Powell Federal Reserve Presidents Eric S. Rosengren (Boston) William C. Dudley (New York) Charles Plosser (Philadelphia) Sandra Pianalto (Cleveland) Jeffrey M. Lacker (Richmond) Dennis P. Lockhart (Atlanta) Charles L. Evans (Chicago) James B. Bullard (St. Louis) Narayana Kocherlakota (Minneapolis) Esther George (Kansas City) Richard W. Fisher (Dallas) John C. Williams (San Francisco)