Federal Reserve Keeps Interest Rates At All Time Low Until 2014

Fed unlikely to raise rates until at least 2014

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it is unlikely to raise interest rates before late 2014, extending a period of record-low rates by more than a year.

The Fed says it is keeping rates low to help lift a weak but modestly growing economy.

The new timeframe hints at details in the Fed's quarterly economic forecast, which will be released later. That will show in what year policy

members expect the first increase in the Fed's benchmark interest rate. The Fed has kept its key interest rate at a record low near zero for three years.

In a statement released after its two-day meeting, the Fed said the economy is growing moderately, despite some slowing in global growth. It held off on any other new steps to boost the economy.

The statement was approved on a 9-1 vote. Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond regional Fed bank, dissented, saying he objected to the new time period.

The extended timeframe is a shift from the Fed's previous plan to keep the rate low at least until mid-2013. The change is intended to reassure consumers and investors that they will be able to borrow cheaply well into the future. And some economists said it could lead to further Fed action to try to invigorate the economy.

The forecast on interest rates will be released along with the Fed's updated projections for economic growth, unemployment and inflation. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will discuss the forecasts and Fed policy at a news conference later Wednesday.

Beyond the adjusted outlook for interest rates, the January statement tracked closely to the Fed's previous comments about economic conditions.

The central bank used the same language in describing Europe's debt problems and the impact on the world economy.

The economy is looking a little better, according to recent private and government data. Companies are hiring more, the stock market is rising, factories are busy and more people are buying cars. Even the home market is showing slight gains after three dismal years

Still, the threat of a recession in Europe is likely to drag on the global economy. And another year of weak wage gains in the United States could force consumers to pull back on spending, which would slow growth.

The Fed has taken previous steps to strengthen the economy, including purchases of $2 trillion in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities to try to cut long-term rates and ease borrowing costs.

The idea behind the Fed's two rounds of bond buying was to drive down rates to embolden consumers and businesses to borrow and spend more. Lower yields on bonds also encourage investors to shift money into stocks, which can boost wealth and spur more spending.

Some Fed officials have resisted further bond buying for fear it would raise the risk of high inflation later. And many doubt it would help much since Treasury yields are already near historic lows. But Bernanke and other members have left the door open to further action if they think the economy needs it.



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Sources: Associated Press, Bloomberg News, CNN, Google Maps

Bernanke: TIME's 2009 Person Of The Year...Ron Paul Reacts

Rep. Paul: Fed chief 'can do no good'. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas – author of “End the Fed” – reacts to TIME's announcement of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as its 2009 Person of the Year.

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Ben Bernanke is TIME’s 2009 Person of the Year


Remember September 2008? The month when the entire U.S. financial system almost collapsed? Ever since that pivotal moment, one person has been in the crosshairs, making decision after decision that has impacted nearly every American alive today.

That person is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Because of his monumental influence on the world’s most important economy, Bernanke has been named TIME magazine’s 2009 Person of the Year.

TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel called the Federal Reserve “the most powerful, least understood government force shaping our lives” as he revealed his magazine’s choice live on TODAY Wednesday morning.

“He was the great scholar of the Depression who saw another depression coming, and did everything he could to stop it,” Stengel said of Bernanke. “He's a controversial figure. He’s a Republican appointed by a Democratic president. It’s a really interesting combination of factors.”

How about Steve Jobs? Barack Obama?
The decision to name Bernanke Person of the Year followed weeks of debate and discussion among TIME editors and staff members. Here are others TIME considered for the distinction:

* TIME’s No. 2 runner-up after Bernanke was Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Stengel told TODAY’s Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira that McChrystal came “very close” to usurping Bernanke’s Person of the Year cover: “He really was the prime mover behind the change in Afghanistan strategy.”

* No. 3: The Chinese worker — an acknowledgement of an increasingly influential group of people in one of the world’s most powerful economies.

* No. 4: Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Speaker of the House.

* No. 5: Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter and Olympic gold medalist.

* Other contenders included Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive of Apple Inc., and President Barack Obama, who was named Person of the Year in 2008. “Obama could be Person of the Year every year, but not this year,” Stengel commented.

In the end, it was Bernanke’s sway over a global financial crisis that touched millions — if not billions — of lives that led to TIME’s decision. “He is influencing how the economy operates,” Stengel explained.

(Interestingly, more than 16,000 TODAYshow.com readers voted on their picks for Person of the Year and made decidedly different decisions. Readers’ top choice was Steve Jobs, who garnered 44 percent of the vote; the second pick was President Obama, who got 20 percent. Bernanke received backing from 3.2 percent of readers who participated.)

Very, very close to a Depression

The Person of the Year designation comes at a time when Bernanke, 56, is reeling from criticism on all sides and defending his record at the Federal Reserve — not to mention his very job. Earlier this month, he had to appear at a Senate hearing about his nomination to a second four-year term. A Senate committee will vote on his nomination on Thursday, one day before TIME’s Person of the Year edition hits newsstands.

When President Obama announced his intention to nominate Bernanke to a second term back in August, he credited the central bank chairman with preventing the nation’s crippling recession from turning into a second Great Depression.

“Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom, with bold action and out-of-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic free fall,” Obama said at the time.

Bernanke’s confirmation appears to be secure, but it’s being debated as mistrust of the Federal Reserve approaches an all-time high. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas — author of a best-selling book called “End the Fed” — is part of a movement on Capitol Hill to rein in the central bank and subject its monetary policy to congressional audits. (Bernanke, who has long argued for the Fed to be more open and transparent, fears such audits could mire the Fed’s setting of interest rates in politics.)

The Fed chairman also has taken plenty of lumps because one of his key steps to stem the financial crisis — using taxpayer money to bail out distressed banks — is wildly unpopular with the general public. The perception is that Bernanke chose to lend a hand to fat cats on Wall Street while ordinary workers had to keep enduring one body blow after another.

Bernanke addresses that issue at length in TIME magazine. Here is an excerpt from the article:

“Bernanke also knows the economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic. There’s a vast difference between 10 percent and 25 percent unemployment, between anemic and negative growth. He wishes Americans understood that he helped save the irresponsible giants of Wall Street only to protect ordinary folks on Main Street.

He knows better than anyone how financial crises spiral into global disasters, how the grass gets crushed when elephants fall. ‘We came very, very close to a depression ... The markets were in anaphylactic shock,’ he told TIME during one of three extended interviews. ‘I’m not happy with where we are, but it’s a lot better than where we could be. ... Of course, there were things we could have done better, but this was a perfect storm.’ ”

I’m frustrated too

In addition to rescuing private companies that were failing, Bernanke slashed a key lending rate to nearly zero, printed new dollars to keep the economy moving, and took other steps to prevent credit markets from drying up completely.

It all amounted to improvising and trying new things quickly — something Bernanke knew a timid and passive Fed had failed to do during the Depression of the 1930s. He actually spent his early career as an economist studying the Depression’s origins, and his writings on the subject have brought him considerable respect in his field.

For years, Bernanke has been known as quiet and thoughtful, brainy and bright. After graduating from high school as valedictorian with a near-perfect SAT score — 1,590 out of 1,600 — he kept racking up academic accolades: an undergraduate degree in economics (summa cum laude) from Harvard; a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; professorships at Stanford, New York University, MIT and Princeton. He served as chairman of Princeton’s Economics Department from 1996 to 2002.

In fact, his career had been so solidly centered in academia that some were stunned when then-President George W. Bush tapped him to replace Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman in 2006. (Bernanke did serve as a Fed governor from 2002 to 2005.)

But in the final analysis, the professor helped guide the country out of recession and toward a tenuous recovery. He knows much pain remains for millions of American workers. The unemployment rate is in the double digits, credit is tighter than it should be, incomes are stagnant and home foreclosures continue to rise.

“I understand why people are frustrated. I’m frustrated too,” Bernanke told TIME. “I’m not one of those people who look at this as some kind of video game. I come from Main Street, from a small town that’s really depressed. This is all very real to me.”


Sources: TIME, MSNBC, Morning Joe Show

Ben Bernanke: 10 Good Reasons To Fire Not Re-Confirm Him

Parsing Bernanke's confirmation hearing. The CNBC news team analyzes the Ben Bernanke's confirmation hearing testimony.

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10 Reasons Bernanke Should Be Fired


Ben Bernanke appeared before the Senate today in a bid to be re-confirmed as Fed chief.

From his muddled message on Transparency to his failure to anticipate the crisis, Nomi Prins has 10 good reasons for the Senate to turn him down.

If Ben Bernanke’s predecessor as Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, could be dubbed the Maestro, Bernanke surely deserves to be called the Magician. His mastery of illusion and deflection is impeccable.

Bernanke, who goes before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday in a bid to be confirmed to a second term, still wants us to believe he “done good” by cleaning up the financial mess that was created on his watch. But here are 10 reasons Bernanke shouldn’t be reconfirmed:

1) His view of what constitutes “transparency” is dubious. About 300 members of Congress have thrown their support behind Ron Paul’s HR1207 Audit the Fed bill, which would further inspect the Fed’s clandestine love affair with the big banks. But Bernanke has told Congress that providing too much detail about what the Fed did for the banks would be “counterproductive.” Thus, the man who wrote in a pre-emptive Washington Post op-ed that “In its making of monetary policy, the Fed is highly transparent” doesn’t feel the same way about its Wall Street Welfare strategy.

2) He’s managed to raise more anti-Fed sentiment than any other Fed leader. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) put a hold on Bernanke’s confirmation Wednesday, meaning it would take 60 senators to override Sanders to confirm Bernanke, instead of a simple majority. The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Christopher Dodd (D-CT), has called for stripping the Federal Reserve of its supervisory powers. “StopBailoutBen” petitions litter the Internet. Many other Washingtonians have called for a reduction in the Fed’s powers, even as others, notably President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, want to pile it on thicker.

3) Bernanke didn’t have a clue or a prevention strategy during the buildup to the second biggest financial crisis in U.S. history. Despite being a noted scholar of the first Great Depression, he missed the rapid increase in foreclosures during 2006 and 2007, the $14 trillion subprime-related toxic asset bubble, $2 trillion buildup of collateralized debt obligations, extreme leverage buildup that laced past mega-profits, labyrinth of off-book bank games, and every credit derivatives issue.

4) He abetted the notion of too big to fail. Bernanke instigated a slew of new bank mergers that have rendered the biggest banks bigger and more complex, and harder to regulate than ever before. In 2004, the five largest U.S. banks held 34 percent of all commercial bank assets; today they hold 48 percent.

5) He invited investment banks to come under the federal subsidy tent. Moniker changes approved by the Fed on Bernanke’s watch mean that former investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became bank holding companies, with access to federal perks, despite taking investment banking-type risk.

6) As far as Main Street, Bernanke’s accuracy is about as bad as Dick Cheney’s with a rifle. In June 2008, he said, “despite a recent spike in the nation’s unemployment rate, the danger that the economy has fallen into a ‘substantial downturn’ appears to have waned.” That was when unemployment was 5.6 percent; it’s now at 10.2 percent.

7) He lied about loosening credit. He vowed that dumping money into Wall Street would help the free flow of credit—which it did for the banks, but not for ordinary Americans—and made eerie promises that “More capital injections and guarantees may become necessary” to keep the credit wheels greased. So what? Last month, he acknowledged that despite the Fed’s unprecedented assistance, “bank lending has contracted sharply this year.”

8) Bernanke said the government shouldn’t “bail out failed investors, as doing so would only encourage excessive risk-taking,” and then went overboard doing it anyway. He also has said that “it is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve—nor would it be appropriate—to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.”

Yet a year later, the Fed’s bailout measures, meant to be an “antidote” to risk-taking gone wrong, were more than excessive. Bernanke effectively turned the Fed into the worst kind of hedge fund, holding unsellable collateral in the hope that it would be worth more someday, or that the banks that posted it are good for paying back the cheap loans they got in return.

Under Bernanke’s direction, the biggest banks got aid from eight separate Federal Reserve facilities created or extended during the fall of 2008. These facilities were worth $4.8 trillion at their height and are now still worth $3.5 trillion. A bulk of them—six of eight—went through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, subsidizing 77 percent of the ABC soup of wealth transfer, or $3.7 trillion at its height. In addition to the facilities, the Fed, in tandem with the New York Fed, made available $3.2 trillion in direct and indirect loans and guarantees, market interventions, and international liquidity swaps to bolster the financial system.

9) He doesn’t understand what risk is. In his pre-emptive Washington Post op-ed, he wrote: “The government’s actions to avoid financial collapse last fall—as distasteful and unfair as some undoubtedly were—were unfortunately necessary to prevent a global economic catastrophe that could have rivaled the Great Depression in length and severity.”

But he seems oblivious to the fact that as a result of those actions, trading profits for the top five banks have risen from a loss of $608 million for 2008 to $119 billion for annualized 2009 (compared to $62 billion for 2007) a year after the seismic bailout operation. That’s not a red flag for him? Not any indication of a growing bubble? This is the guy we’re now supposed to trust?

Plus, he is blissfully unaware of new bubbles, even though he is the chief bank regulator in the country. Last month, the Fed announced that the policy stance of maintaining low interest rates for a long period has a “relatively low” likelihood of encouraging “excessive risk-taking.” So much for learning from history.

Bernanke supporters may want to check back in a few years to determine just how smart a move it was to shovel bucket loads of public and newly minted money into the eager mouths of an unreformed, unrepentant banking system that voraciously swallowed it up to dump into trading operations that ooze increased risk and near miraculous profits. Think things won’t combust again? Good luck with that.

10) He’s taken credit for a job well done, while orchestrating the next crisis. In his op-ed, he wrote: “The Fed played a major part in arresting the crisis, and we should be seeking to preserve, not degrade, the institution’s ability to foster financial stability and to promote economic recovery without inflation.”

Arresting the crisis? How about he held open the doors to the vault, while the bankers stole the public’s money? And he’s missing the full-swing risk-for-profit bubble developing now. When is he going to play a major part in doing something about that—during the next crisis?

A confirmation of Bernanke would affirm that the Fed can do whatever it wants, no matter what the cost, as long as we live under the ethos that making bad decisions is better than making worse ones. So would a Senate confirmation on Thursday.

Proactivity is not Bernanke’s, or the Fed’s, strong suit: under fire and midcrisis is more its style. With that in mind, he is only the perfect choice to lead the Fed if you’re looking for someone who is completely useless at avoiding disaster but really great at spending money (on nothing) and keeping secrets to fix it.


Sources: The Daily Beast, MSNBC, CNBC

Feds Seek To Cap Pay Of Bank Employees...No More Huge Exec Bonuses

(Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) questioning "Captains of the Universe" my bad, Bank CEOs.)





Fed to Seek Limits on Big Banks' Pay Practices

The Federal Reserve is moving to restrict compensation practices at the nation's banks, expanding its regulatory reach to oversee how tens of thousands of bank employees ranging from chief executives to loan officers are paid.

The Fed, acting under its existing powers as a bank regulator, aims to curtail pay practices that can encourage bank employees to take the kinds of irresponsible risks that may have led to the financial crisis. It is not seeking to set caps on the amount any individual employee can be paid, said sources familiar with the plans.

Fed officials and many private analysts have concluded that pay practices emphasizing short-term performance contributed to the near-collapse of the financial system last year.

For example, a trader who receives bonuses based solely on one year's performance might make bets that pay off in the short run but cause vast losses in the long run. A loan officer paid only based on the volume of loans issued might not pay enough attention to the quality of those loans. Under the approach envisioned by the Fed, the two dozen or so largest banks would have to explain these pay practices to their regulator, and adjust them if examiners think they endanger the safety and soundness of the bank, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the policy is not yet final.

Some critics viewed the expected new regulations as a form of mission creep by the central bank, as it is being undertaken without explicit authorization from Congress. It comes as the Fed is facing extreme political pressure, under fire for its efforts to stabilize the financial system and for regulatory failures in the years before the crisis, and as Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is up for Senate confirmation for a second term.

The banking industry has reservations about the scope of the policy.

"I don't think there's any objection to the concept of compensation policies being better aligned with risk," said Ed Yingling, chief executive of the American Bankers Association. "The concern is that it ends up being too wide a net, affecting every bank branch manager in the country when what they're really trying to get at is out-of-line incentives on Wall Street."

Other parts of the government are also addressing pay at financial firms. The Treasury Department is looking to prevent multimillion-dollar bonuses at firms that received government bailouts. And Congress is moving toward legislation aimed at giving shareholders more say over what senior executives are paid.

But regulatory guidance being considered at the Fed in many ways goes further than either effort. It would apply to all the nation's banks, not just those that received bailout money. And it would apply to a wide range of employees beyond executives, including anyone whose actions could threaten the financial stability of a bank.

Still, it was unclear Friday whether the Fed's proposal would result in any major changes in how compensation works in the financial sector. Many banks have already reworked their pay practices to try to prevent the excesses of recent years from recurring. A source familiar with the Fed's plans said that officials are not yet in a position to judge whether the regulations will require major changes.

Fed critics were wary of the proposals. "I'm not convinced they even have the power to do this," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee. "It seems like sweeping, draconian powers."

In particular, Hensarling argued that the Fed was taking on some of the powers of a "systemic risk" regulator, overseeing risks posed by large financial firms, without having been granted such powers by Congress. "It appears that the Fed is unilaterally taking a significant step toward assuming powers Congress hasn't given them," Hensarling said.

The Fed Board of Governors is slated to approve proposed guidance on the new regulatory approach in the coming weeks, after which there would be a public comment period, followed by final approval. But bank regulators are already gathering information about pay practices from the institutions they oversee.

"Bonuses and other compensation arrangements should not provide incentives for employees at any level to behave in ways that imprudently increase risks to the institution, and potentially to the financial system as a whole," said Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo in congressional testimony last month. He added that the Fed expects to issue its guidance on compensation "soon."

The Wall Street Journal reported on the proposed guidance in Friday's editions.

On Friday, a number of banks said the Fed's plan was consistent with signals they had been receiving from Washington regulators and the Obama administration for much of the year, and none expressed outright opposition -- only reservations about the execution of the policy.

"Our view is that it's entirely appropriate to have compensation policies that actively discourage inappropriate risk-taking," said Lucas Van Praag, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs. "Compensation should be directly linked to the performance of the company and senior employees should receive the bulk of any bonus in equity that is subject to deferred vesting."

"Everyone's big concern is whatever they do, they do it for everybody so it's an even playing field," said one executive at a large bank who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Each of the more than two dozen "large complex banking organizations" that the Fed regulates would be required to present information about their pay practices to regulators, who could then demand changes. That includes such major institutions as Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. Thousands of smaller banks regulated by the Fed would not go through that process, but their examiners would be expected to monitor pay practices as part of their overall oversight of safety and soundness.



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Sources: Washington Post, TPM, TIME, Huffington Post, House.gov, Youtube, Google Maps

Ben Bernanke Gets To Keep His Job...President Obama Highly Recommends His Experienced Leadership

MSNBC, Wall Street Journal----


(President Obama reappoints Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Federal Reserve.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Ben Bernanke's Resume:

Age: 55. Born Dec. 13, 1953, in Augusta, Ga.

Education: B.A. in economics, 1975, Harvard University; Ph.D. in economics, 1979, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Experience: Feb. 1, 2006, to present, chairman of the Federal Reserve; June 2005 to Jan. 31, 2006, chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisers; 2002-2005, member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; 1996-2002, professor and chairman of the Economics Department at Princeton University; 1985-2002, economics professor, Princeton University.

Family: Wife, Anna; two children.

Quote: "I was not going to be the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over the second Great Depression," Bernanke in a July 26 town-hall meeting moderated by PBS' Jim Lehrer.


President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he wants to keep Ben Bernanke on as Fed chairman, saying he shepherded America through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom; with bold action and out-of-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic freefall," said Obama, with Bernanke standing by his side. "Almost none of the decisions he or any of us made have been easy."

Obama made the announcement while on vacation on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts after aides said initially that the president intended a news-free week there. Both he and Bernanke sported the open-collar look.

Bernanke, 55, is credited with turning the economy away from its deepest and longest recession since the 1930s. Now he faces the challenge of meeting White House expectations to chart the full economic recovery considered critical to Obama's legacy.

In sticking with a Republican for the nation's top banker, the Democratic president was aiming for stability at a time of continuing, though easing, crisis. The move was designed to reassure the U.S. financial sector as well as foreign central banks that the Obama administration isn't changing course on its largely well-received approaches to the financial meltdown and overall monetary policy.

The announcement also came nearly concurrently with a piece of bad economic news. Obama interrupted his vacation to telegraph his decision just ahead of a White House report that gave more bleak assessments of the nation's deficit picture.

Figures released by the White House budget office on Monday foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three quarters the size of the entire national economy. Also Monday, analysts with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a cumulative $7 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, more in line with the administration's May estimate.

The White House said Obama decided on the last-minute schedule addition to help "put him more in `vacation mode." "There's been a lot of speculation out there, and the president wanted to put it to rest," Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters as the presidential entourage headed from the site of the announcement to a golf course.

Bernanke's early tenure was as complicated as the crisis facing the banks he sought to save.

The Fed chairman's successful, although unconventional, strategy to move the economy away from recession, unlock frozen credit and stabilize spiraling financial markets depended in large part on creating radical and unprecedented lending programs. But he's not without his detractors, and the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Connecticut's Chris Dodd, immediately warned of a thorough hearing before Bernanke would be confirmed for a second four-year term.

With such controversy surrounding some of his decisions, Bernanke's fate had been the subject of speculation for months.

Many on Wall Street and in academic circles had viewed Bernanke as the best choice to tackle continued high unemployment, fight off any threat of inflation and take on the next set of risky, difficult decisions.

Announcing his decision to bypass prominent Democratic economic figures for the job, Obama had nothing but praise for Bernanke.

The president also put in a plug for his own administration's actions to stabilize the financial system, restructure the auto industry and approve $787 billion in stimulus spending.

Appearing in makeshift press workspace on the island, Bernanke said that if confirmed by the Senate, he'd work to provide "a strong foundation for growth and stability" in the economy.

"The Federal Reserve, like other economic policy makers, has been challenged by the unprecedented events of the past few years," Bernanke said. "We have been bold or deliberate as circumstances demanded, but our objective remains constant: to restore a more stable financial and economic environment in which opportunity can again flourish and in which Americans hard work and creativity can receive their proper rewards."

The economy is emerging from recession and is poised for growth. However, it will be slow-going and the unemployment rate, now at 9.4 percent, is likely to top 10 percent this year before it starts going down.

For Obama, there was little political downside in choosing to nominate Bernanke. The move displays bipartisanship and a steady, unchanging hand on the economic tiller. Fully occupied with an attempted health care overhaul, Obama's team could little afford the distraction of changing the head of the Fed.

Bernanke was appointed Fed chairman by President George W. Bush and sworn in Feb. 1, 2006, following Alan Greenspan's 18-year tenure.

Sources: MSNBC, Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast