Ben Shalom Bernanke^[1] is an American economist and current Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve. He was previously Chairman of the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), and member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. On October 24, 2005, President George W. Bush appointed Bernanke to succeed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke was sworn in on February 1, 2006 after the Senate's confirmation by a voice vote on January 31, 2006. Circulation in macroeconomics Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, and behavior of a national economy as a whole. ... Circulation in macroeconomics Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, and behavior of a national economy as a whole. ... The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve is the head of the central bank of the United States and one of the more important decision-makers in American economic policies. ... Federal courts Supreme Court Circuit Courts of Appeal District Courts Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures (List) State Courts Local Government Other countries Atlas  US Government Portal      For other uses, see President of the United States (disambiguation). ... The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a group of economists set up to advise the President of the United States. ... The Fed redirects here. ... is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the forty-third and current President of the United States of America, originally inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ... Squalltoonix (born March 6, 1926 in New York City) is an American economist and was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. ... is the 32nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Type Upper House President of the Senate Richard B. Cheney, R since January 20, 2001 President pro tempore Robert C. Byrd, D since January 4, 2007 Members 100 Political groups Democratic Party Republican Party Last elections November 7, 2006 Meeting place Senate Chamber United States Capitol Washington, DC United States... A voice vote in a legislative body refers to a vote taken on a topic where the participants respond to a question with yea (yes), nay (no), or present (abstain). ... is the 31st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Early life

Bernanke was born December 13, 1953, in Augusta, Georgia, but grew up in Dillon, South Carolina. He is the eldest of three children, having a younger brother and sister. His younger brother, Seth, is currently a lawyer in Charlotte, NC, and his younger sister, Sharon, is a prior student and longtime administrator at Berklee School of Music in Boston. His father Philip was a pharmacist and part-time theater manager, and his mother Edna was originally a schoolteacher. They were one of the few Jewish families in the area, attending a local synagogue called Ohav Shalom; as a child, Bernanke learned Hebrew from his maternal grandfather Harold Friedman, who was a professional Torah reader and Hebrew teacher.^[2] His father and uncle co-owned and managed a drugstore that they had bought from his paternal grandfather, Jonas Bernanke, who had immigrated to the United States from Austria after World War I and moved to Dillon from New York in the 1940s.^[3] is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Augusta is a city in the state of Georgia in the United States of America. ... Dillon is a city in Dillon County, South Carolina, United States. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... The synagogue Scolanova Trani in Italy. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... Template:Jews and Jewdaism Template:The Holy Book Named TorRah The Torah () is the most valuable Holy Doctrine within Judaism,(and for muslims) revered as the first relenting Word of Ulllah, traditionally thought to have been revealed to Blessed Moosah, An Apostle of Ulllah. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... This article is about the state. ...

He was educated at East Elementary, J.V. Martin Junior High, and Dillon High School, where he was a high-achieving pupil. He taught himself calculus, edited the school newspaper, was class valedictorian and achieved the highest SAT score in the state that year — 1590 out of 1600.^[4] He was also the All-State saxophonist, playing in the school's marching band.^[5] For other uses, see Calculus (disambiguation). ... In the United States and Canada, the title of valedictorian (an anglicized derivation from the Latin vale dicere, to say farewell) is given to the top graduate of the graduating class (the Australia/New Zealand equivalent being dux, although some Australian universities use the American term) of an educational institution. ... For other uses, see SAT (disambiguation). ... A saxophonist is a musician who plays the saxophone. ...

Bernanke during the summers attended Camp Ramah New England. Camp Ramah (Hebrew: מחנה רמה) is a network of Jewish summer camps operating in the United States, Canada, and Israel. ...

Career

He spent his undergraduate years at Harvard and graduated with a B.A. in economics in 1975. Throughout college, he worked as a waiter to support himself during the summer at South of the Border, a roadside attraction in his hometown of Dillon.^[6] He received a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. His thesis was named "Long-term commitments, dynamic optimization, and the business cycle" and his thesis adviser was Stanley Fischer.^[7] He 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. Mr. Bernanke was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002 to 2005. On February 1, 2006, he was appointed as a member of the Board for a fourteen-year term and to a four-year term as Chairman.^[8] Face-to-face trading interactions on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. ... South of the Borders large neon welcome sign. ... Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph. ... “MIT” redirects here. ... Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer (Hebrew: סטנלי פישר) is an economist and the current Governor of the Bank of Israel. ... Stanford GSB The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford Business School or Stanford GSB) is one of the professional schools of Stanford University, in Stanford, California. ... New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university in New York City. ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: [1]) varies. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... The Federal Reserve System is headquartered in the Eccles Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. The Federal Reserve System (also the Federal Reserve; informally The Fed) is the central bank of the United States. ...

Economic views

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 best economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc. Mascot: Beaver Affiliations: University of London Russell Group EUA ACU CEMS APSIA Universities UK U8 Golden Triangle G5 Group Website: http://www. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Monetary policy. ... Circulation in macroeconomics Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, and behavior of a national economy as a whole. ... Microeconomics (or price theory) is a branch of economics that studies how individuals, households, and firms make decisions to allocate limited resources,[1] typically in markets where goods or services are being bought and sold. ... The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to studying the science and empirics of economics, especially the American economy. ... The American Economic Review (AER) is a quarterly journal of economics published by the American Economic Association. ... Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 54 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. ...

Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has written extensively. On Milton Friedman's ninetieth birthday, November 8, 2002, he stated: "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."^[9][10][11] For other uses, see The Great Depression (disambiguation). ... Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. ... Anna Schwartz is an economist who has changed our understanding of how the world works. ...

In 2002, when the word "deflation" began appearing in the business news, Bernanke gave a speech about deflation.^[12] 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 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."^[13] Deflation (economics) Deflation (data compression) Deflation is the removal of loose soil by eolian (wind) processes This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Fiat money or fiat currency, is money that is current or legal tender as satisfaction for money debts by government fiat, that is by law. ... Means of production (abbreviated MoP; German: Produktionsmittel), are the combination of the means of labor and the subject of labor used by workers to make products. ... Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. ... In monetary economics, a liquidity trap occurs when the economy is stagnant, the nominal interest rate is close or equal to zero, and the monetary authority is unable to stimulate the economy with traditional monetary policy tools. ...

He is believed to be less ideologically rigid than Alan Greenspan and has been reluctant to weigh in on political issues. 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. Indeed, in his undergraduate economics textbooks he somewhat distances himself from the overt economic libertarianism of Greenspan.^{[citation needed]} A tax cut is a reduction in the rate of tax charged by a government, for example on personal or corporate income. ... This article is about the political philosophy based on private property rights. ...

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.^[14] Maria Bartiromo disclosed on CNBC their private conversation on Fed policy (in which Bernanke said investors had misinterpreted his comments as indicating that he was "dovish" on inflation), and he was criticized for making public statements about Fed direction.^[15] Presidential Candidate and Texas Representative Ron Paul, a member of the House Banking Committee - who takes the view that the Federal Reserve System should be abolished and the economy should revert to 'Hard Assets'^[16] - has criticized Bernanke for "continually lowering interest rates," which he avers to have caused drastic inflation and growth of the money supply, leading to what Paul refers to as the "inflation tax."^[17] However, many professional economists argued that failure to have lowered the Fed's target rate would have contributed far more significantly to recession, and urged Bernanke (and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee) to lower the rate beyond what it had done. For example, Lawrence H. Summers, the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Economics at Harvard and former Treasury Secretary, 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." ^[18] Maria Bartiromo is a business news anchor, reporter, and interviewer for CNBC television co-hosting the Closing Bell program from 3 to 5pm weekdays ET and is the host and managing editor for the nationally syndicated Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo program. ... This article is about CNBC U.S., the business news channel in the U.S.. For other uses, see CNBC (disambiguation). ... Ronald Ernest Ron Paul (b. ... Meeting of the House Financial Services Committee The United States House Committee on Financial Services (or House Banking Committee) oversees the entire financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries. ... In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in a countrys real gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year. ... The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), a component of the Federal Reserve System, is charged under U.S. law with overseeing open market operations in the United States, and is the principal tool of US national monetary policy. ... Larry Summers Lawrence Henry Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American economist, politician, and academic. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ...

David Leonhardt of the New York Times wrote, on January 30, 2008, that "Mr. 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. He was dead-on right about that — and the situation would be even worse now if he had listened to his critics then." ^[19] Bernanke has since made several interest rate cuts in an effort to stabilize a shaky U.S. economy.

On March 16, 2008, JP Morgan Chase announced its intention to acquire Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns Inc. The proposed purchase is controversial, due to the unprecedented involvement of Bernanke's Federal Reserve System. JP Morgan Chase agreed to pay 236 million dollars, but shortly after the deal was announced, the Federal Reserve System confirmed that in a complex package of debt securitization agreements, they were underwriting the deal for around 30 billion dollars. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. ... The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. ...

Awards and fellowships

• Fellow, Econometric Society (1997)

Current Fellows // In alphabetical order, year of election in parenthesis. ...

Bibliography

• Ben S. Bernanke (1983). "Nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in the propagation of the Great Depression". Am Econ Rev 73 (3): 257–76. 
• Ben Bernanke, Alan Blinder (1992). "The federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission". Econ Rev 82 (4): 901–921. 
• Andrew B. Abel, Ben S. Bernanke (2001). Macroeconomics. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-44133-0. 
• Ben Bernanke (2005). Essays on the Great Depression. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11820-5. 
• Ben Bernanke, Thomas Laubach, Frederic Mishkin, Adam Posen (2005). Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08689-3. 
• Ben S. Bernanke, Robert H. Frank (2007). Principles of Macro Economics. McGraw Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-319397-7. 

See also

• Greenspan put

The Greenspan put was a description of the perceived attempt of then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, of ensuring liquidity in capital markets by lowering interest rates if necessary. ...

Footnotes

is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Washington Post is the largest newspaper in Washington, D.C.. It is also one of the citys oldest papers, having been founded in 1877. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 232nd day of the year (233rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 74th day of the year (75th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 102nd day of the year (103rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 20th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... ABC News logo ABC News Special Report ident, circa 2006 ABC News is a division of American television and radio network ABC, owned by The Walt Disney Company. ... is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

• 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, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20Ben-Bernanke-t.html?scp=2&sq=bernanke

Not to be confused with The Straits Times, the Singaporean newspaper. ... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

External links

• Bernanke Biography at whitehouse.gov
• Bernanke Takes the Reins - Yale Economic Review
• "A Crash Course for Central Bankers" by Ben Bernanke in Foreign Policy
• Ben Bernanke Parody Blog
• "Downside Danger" by Ben Bernanke in Foreign Policy
• Bernanke's Princeton homepage
• Bernanke's "printing press" speech
• Address by Bernanke titled "Skills, Ownership, and Economic Security" with summary, video, and transcript.
• Bernanke steps into Greenspan's big shoes - The Economist Global Agenda
• At the Fed, an Unknown Became a Safe Choice - The New York Times
• The Ben Bernanke Grand Experiment
• Describes his early years
• Bernanke Papers and Sources
• IDEAS/RePEc