When the Chairman of the Federal Reserve speaks, the world’s business leaders listen. For the past 18 years they have hung on to every word of Alan Greenspan but this Tuesday the economic voice of America passes to a new man – the widely known and admired Ben S Bernanke, a 52 year old macroeconomist who joined the White House as chief economist last year.
Ben Bernanke is clever, very clever. An exceptional student throughout his life, he won the South Carolina state spelling bee when he was in the sixth grade and earned the highest score of any South Caroline student when applied to college. He received his degree in economic history (summa cum laude) in 1975 from Harvard University and received his doctorate in economics four years later from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in more recent years was chairman of the Department of Economics at Princeton University.
According to John J. Xenakis, the journalist and analyst of world history, Bernanke is completely different from Greenspan.
Sayd Xenakis: “Nowhere is the difference so apparent as when you contrast Bernanke’s ‘What me worry’ attitude toward economic bubbles with Greenspan’s genuine agony over the fact that his gut is tellinghim that we’re headed for a major financial crisis”