Ben Bernanke - Academic and Government Career (1979-2006)

Academic and Government Career (1979-2006)

Bernanke taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1979 until 1985, was a visiting professor at New York University and went on to become a tenured professor at Princeton University in the Department of Economics. He chaired that department from 1996 until September 2002, when he went on public service leave. He resigned his position at Princeton July 1, 2005. Recently, in 2012, Bernanke temporarily went back to teach a class at the George Washington University.

Bernanke served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002 to 2005. In one of his first speeches as a Governor, entitled "Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn't Happen Here", he outlined what has been referred to as the Bernanke Doctrine.

As a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on February 20, 2004, Bernanke gave a speech in which he postulated that we are in a new era called the Great Moderation, where modern macroeconomic policy has decreased the volatility of the business cycle to the point that it should no longer be a central issue in economics.

In June 2005, Bernanke was named Chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and resigned as Fed Governor. The appointment was widely viewed as a test run to ascertain if Bernanke could be Bush's pick to succeed Greenspan as Fed chairman the next year. He held the post until January 2006.