Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke is former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He left the central bank after serving two terms from 2006-2013. His replacement, Janet Yellen, was confirmed by the Senate in January 2014. Bernanke, a former professor of economics at Princeton University, said he planned to write and speak about economic issues after leaving the Fed.[1] He also became a Distinguished Fellow in Residence at the Brookings Institution.[2] [3] In April of 2015 it was reported that Bernanke had signed on to become a senior adviser to Citadel, one of Wall Street’s biggest hedge funds.[4] He was also named a senior advisor to Pimco.[5] The CME Group's Center for Innovation named Bernanke the recipient of its Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award in 2014.[6] In March of 2015 he unveiled a new blog, which can be found here In October of 2022 Bernanke, along with the economists Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for research on banks and “how society deals with financial crises.” Bernanke wrote a paper in 1983 explaining that bank failures can generate a financial crisis rather than simply being a result of the crisis.[7] The Fed Years[edit]Ben Bernanke's chairmanship came at one of the most challenging periods in its history - during the financial crisis in 2008 and its aftermath. Using aggressive and often unorthodox measures such as quantitative easing and a sustained period of ultra-low interest rates, he helped steer the U.S. away from the crisis. Critics would argue, though, that he and his Fed colleagues failed to see the crisis and, in fact, may have fed the bubbles that eventually collapsed the economy.[8] Bernanke was sworn in on Feb. 1, 2006 as chairman and a member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. Bernanke also served as chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed's principal monetary policymaking body. On Aug. 25, 2009, President Barack Obama renominated Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.[9] Bernanke won confirmation for a second term on Jan. 28, 2010 by a 70-30 vote, the closest ever for the post of Fed chairman. He had faced criticism from lawmakers for bailing out Wall Street while other Americans suffered in the recession.[10] In December of 2009, Bernanke was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year."[11] In response to questions during a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing in late summer of 2010, Bernanke said he regretted not saying in congressional testimony shortly after the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008 that the central bank had no way to save the firm. The testimony at the time "has supported this myth that we did have a way of saving Lehman," Bernanke said.[12] Before his appointment as chairman, Bernanke served as chairman for the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from June 2005 to January 2006. Prior to his appointment to the Council, Bernanke served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Professor Bernanke[edit]Bernanke was the chair of the economics department and Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton (1996-2002). He also served as a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton starting in the mid 1980s. He's published articles on economic issues including monetary policy and macroeconomics, and is the author of several scholarly books and two textbooks. Bernanke has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sloan Fellowship, and he's a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bernanke served as the director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and as a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee. Bernanke's work with civic and professional groups includes having served two terms as a member of the Montgomery Township (N.J.) Board of Education.[13] Bernanke was born on Dec. 13, 1953, in Augusta, Georgia. Bernanke and his wife, Anna, have two children.[14] Education[edit]He received a B.A. in economics in 1975 from Harvard University (summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. in economics in 1979 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). References[edit]
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