RE:Ben Shalom Bernanke
11 things you didn't know about Ben Bernanke
27.10.2005 | 11:25
Michal Ramati
Ben Shalom Bernanke, a 51-year old Jew, is U.S. President George Bush's candidate to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve, from January 2006.
Since June, Bernanke has served as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. Greenspan had also fulfilled that capacity, under president Gerald Ford, before taking over the Fed.
Until four years ago Bernanke, an economist with a mainly academic background, was not widely known. He did his first degree in economics at Harvard but crossed the Charles River for his doctorate, which he did at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1985 to 2002 he served as a professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton.
From 2002 to 2005, he sat on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He was considered to be one of its most direct members.
He generally supports Greenspan's policies but has disagreed regarding publication of inflation targets, which he thinks should be done to help the American central bank explain its decisions. "If it isn't broken, why try to fix it," he quotes an adage: "My response is, OK, but what's 'it'? What are we doing?"
Eleven things you didn't know about Bernanke.
1. He is a Jew who has studied Hebrew and who eschewed the services of a rabbi, conducting his children's bar and bat mitzvahs himself.
2. He and his wife Anna have two children at university age, Alyssa and Joel.
3. He won the South Carolina spelling bee at age 11.
4. He taught himself differential and integral mathematics.
5. He edited the American Economics Review.
6. According to Fed workers, Greenspan was worried about Bernanke's appointment to the central bank in 2002.
7. He is considered the most prominent spokesman at the Fed, after Greenspan.
8. His detractors call him Helicopter Ben, based on concerns that he's not concerned enough about inflation.
9. Bush once rebuked him for arriving garbed in a dark suit and light socks. He showed up to the next meeting armed with light socks that he handed out to everybody. Bush laughed when he came in and saw everybody wearing light socks.
10. He likes sports, especially baseball, but criticizes the way player stats are compiled.
11. Last year he made somewhere between $1.1 million to $5.6 million from pension accounts, mutual funds and government bonds. Greenspan made between $4.3 million to $9.4 million from similar assets.
Dubi
(Information is power, even when seemingly trivial)
