42 Facts About Bernanke

Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist who served as the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014.

Bernanke was awarded the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, jointly with Douglas Diamond and Philip H Dybvig, "for research on banks and financial crises".

Bernanke then served as chairman of President George W Bush's Council of Economic Advisers before President Bush nominated him to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the United States Federal Reserve.

Bernanke wrote about his time as chairman of the Federal Reserve in his 2015 book, The Courage to Act, in which he revealed that the world's economy came close to collapse in 2007 and 2008.

Bernanke asserts that it was only the novel efforts of the Fed that prevented an economic catastrophe greater than the Great Depression.

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Bernanke's father Philip was a pharmacist and part-time theater manager.

Bernanke's brother, Seth, is a lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bernanke's sister, Sharon, is a longtime administrator at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Bernanke's mother gave up her job as a schoolteacher when her son was born and worked at the family drugstore.

Bernanke scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and was a National Merit Scholar.

Bernanke was a contestant in the 1965 National Spelling Bee.

Bernanke's was a student at Wellesley College, and he was in graduate school at MIT.

Bernanke is an ardent fan of the Washington Nationals baseball team, and frequently attends games at Nationals Park.

When Bernanke left Stanford to accept a position at Princeton, he and his family moved to Montgomery Township, New Jersey, in 1985, where Bernanke's children attended the local public schools.

Bernanke served for six years as a member of the board of education of the Montgomery Township School District.

In 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bernanke was a victim of identity theft, a spreading crime the Federal Reserve has for years issued warnings about.

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.

Bernanke chaired that department from 1996 until September 2002, when he went on public service leave.

Bernanke served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002 to 2005.

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 largely viewed as a test run to ascertain if Bernanke could be Bush's pick to succeed Greenspan as Fed chairman the next year.

Bernanke served as chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policy making body.

Bernanke's reported that Bernanke said investors had misinterpreted his comments as indicating that he was "dovish" on inflation.

Bernanke was succeeded as chair of the Federal Reserve by Janet Yellen, the first woman to hold the position.

Bernanke has been subjected to criticism concerning the late-2000s financial crisis.

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Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky said on CNBC that he had seen documents which show that Bernanke overruled recommendations from his staff in bailing out AIG.

Bernanke has given several lectures at the London School of Economics on monetary theory and policy.

Bernanke has written two textbooks: an intermediate-level macroeconomics textbook coauthored with Andrew Abel and an introductory textbook, covering both microeconomics and macroeconomics, coauthored with Robert H Frank.

Bernanke was the Director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the editor of the American Economic Review.

Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has published numerous academic journal articles.

Bernanke has cited Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in his decision to lower interest rates to zero.

Anna Schwartz was highly critical of Bernanke and wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times advising Obama against his reappointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Bernanke focused less on the role of the Federal Reserve and more on the role of private banks and financial institutions.

Bernanke referred to a statement made by Milton Friedman about using a "helicopter drop" of money into the economy to fight deflation.

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.

In 2005 Bernanke coined the term saving glut, the idea that relatively high level of worldwide savings was holding down interest rates and financing the current account deficits of the United States.

Bernanke expressed his hope that economic growth was building momentum and stated that he was confident that the central bank would be able to withdraw its support smoothly.

Since February 2014, Bernanke has been employed as a Distinguished Fellow in Residence with the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution.

Bernanke published in 2022 his latest book titled 21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19, where he assesses the successes as well as failures of the Federal Reserve since its inception.

Bernanke favors reducing the U S budget deficit, particularly by reforming the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs.

Bernanke's remarks were most likely intended for the federal government's executive and legislative branches, since entitlement reform is a fiscal exercise that will be accomplished by the Congress and the President rather than a monetary task falling within the implementation powers of the Federal Reserve.

Bernanke pointed out that deficit reduction will necessarily consist of either raising taxes, cutting entitlement payments and other government spending, or some combination of both.