Bernanke, Ben Shalom (1953-…), an American economist, served as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 to 2014. The Federal Reserve System, commonly called the Fed, is an independent federal agency that directs the United States banking system and helps control the nation’s interest rates and money supply. President George W. Bush appointed Bernanke to succeed Alan Greenspan, who retired after serving as Fed chairman for 18 years. In 2010, President Barack Obama reappointed Bernanke for a second four-year term.
Shortly after Bernanke became chairman of the Fed, the United States experienced a financial crisis that came to be known as the Great Recession. The recession lasted about 18 months, from December 2007 to June 2009, and was the longest period of economic decline since the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a worldwide economic slump that began in 1929 and lasted for several years. Bernanke had studied the Great Depression extensively. Faced with a similar collapse, he quickly expanded the powers of the Fed, cut interest rates to historic lows, and injected billions of dollars into the economy through new loan programs. Many economists believe his actions were crucial in preventing another Great Depression in the United States. Critics claimed that Bernanke and Greenspan failed to properly regulate the financial sector before the collapse.
In 2022, Bernanke shared the Nobel Prize in economic sciences with two other economists—Douglas W. Diamond of the University of Chicago and Philip H. Dybvig of Washington University in St. Louis. The three economists were awarded the prize for their research on banks and financial crises.
Bernanke was born in Augusta, Georgia, on Dec. 13, 1953. He graduated from Harvard University in 1975. In 1979, he received a Ph.D. degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1979 to 1985, Bernanke taught economics at Stanford University. He served as a professor of economics at Princeton University from 1985 to 2002. Bernanke also taught at MIT and at New York University. He became a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors in 2002 and served until 2005. From June 2005 to January 2006, he was chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Bernanke is the author of several books about economics and economic history.
