nitinpahuja
Nitin Pahuja
WELL-KNOWN AS :
Current Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve.
KEY INFORMATION:
Bernanke 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.
FAMILY BACKGROUND:
Bernanke was born December 13, 1953 in Augusta, Georgia and grew up in Dillon, South Carolina as the eldest of three children, with a younger brother and sister.
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 Jonas, who was a professional Torah reader and Hebrew teacher.
His father and uncle co-owned and managed a drugstore which they had bought from his grandfather, who had immigrated to the United States from Austria after World War I and moved to Dillon from New York in the 1940s.
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND:
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. He was also the All-State saxophonist, playing in the school's marching band.
In 1972, he enrolled at Harvard College, where he spent his undergraduate years in Winthrop House and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in economics in 1975. He received a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979.
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.
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.
THE STORY SO FAR…
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, Nov. 8, 2002, he stated: "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: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."
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.
His first months as chairman of the Fed 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.
Awards and fellowships
Fellow, Econometric Society (1997)
Current Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve.
KEY INFORMATION:
Bernanke 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.
FAMILY BACKGROUND:
Bernanke was born December 13, 1953 in Augusta, Georgia and grew up in Dillon, South Carolina as the eldest of three children, with a younger brother and sister.
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 Jonas, who was a professional Torah reader and Hebrew teacher.
His father and uncle co-owned and managed a drugstore which they had bought from his grandfather, who had immigrated to the United States from Austria after World War I and moved to Dillon from New York in the 1940s.
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND:
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. He was also the All-State saxophonist, playing in the school's marching band.
In 1972, he enrolled at Harvard College, where he spent his undergraduate years in Winthrop House and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in economics in 1975. He received a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979.
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.
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.
THE STORY SO FAR…
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, Nov. 8, 2002, he stated: "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: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."
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.
His first months as chairman of the Fed 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.
Awards and fellowships
Fellow, Econometric Society (1997)