Ben Bernanke

Ben S. Bernanke began a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board on Feb. 1, 2010. Bernanke also serves as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the System’s principal monetary policymaking body. He originally took office as Chairman on Feb. 1, 2006, when he also began a 14-year term as a member of the Board. His second term as Chairman ends Jan. 31, 2014, and his term as a Board member ends Jan. 31, 2020. Before his appointment as Board Chairman, Bernanke was chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from June 2005 to January 2006. Bernanke has already served the Federal Reserve System in several roles. He was a member of the Federal Reserve Board from 2002 to 2005; 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). 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. He had been a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton since 1985. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University (summa cum laude) and a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.