Born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1953, and raised in Dillon, South Carolina, Ben S. Bernanke has served as the chairman of the Federal Reserve since February 1, 2006. Bernanke also serves as chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve’s principal monetary policymaking body. His term as chairman of the Federal Reserve expires January 31, 2010.  

 

Bernanke received a BA in economics in 1975 from Harvard University (summa cum laude) and a PhD in economics in 1979 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Bernanke was an assistant professor of economics (1979-83) and an associate professor of economics (1983-85) at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. In 1985 he became a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton. His teaching career also included serving as a visiting professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989-90) and at New York University (1993).

 

From 1994 to 1996, Bernanke was the Class of 1926 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He was the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and chair of the Economics Department at the university from 1996 to 2002.

 

Bernanke was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2002 and served until 2005. From June 2005 to January 2006 he was chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

 

Nernanke’s prior assignments with the Federal Reserve included serving as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia (1987-89), Boston (1989-90), and New York (1990-91, 1994-96); and a member of the Academic Advisory Panel at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1990-2002).

 

Bernanke has published many articles on a wide variety of economic issues, including monetary policy and macroeconomics, and he is the author of several scholarly books and two textbooks. 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’s Business Cycle Dating Committee. In July 2001, he was appointed editor of the American Economic Review.

 

Official Bio

Anatomy of a Meltdown: Ben Bernanke and the financial crisis (by John Cassidy, New Yorker)

Ben S. Bernanke Profile (Washington Post)

What's in Bernanke's Wallet?: A psycho-financial analysis of Fed chair nominee Ben Bernanke (by Henry Blodget, Slate)

The Scary Side of Ben Bernanke (by John Tamny, National Review)

Pitching Curves: Outspoken Ben Bernanke is shaking up the Federal Reserve (by Matthew Benjamin, U.S. News & World Report)