Ben Bernanke's Childhood Education

Childhood
According to wikipedia.com Ben Bernanke was born in Augusta, Georgia, and then raised in Dillon, South Carolina. His father was a pharmacist and part-time theater manager, and his mother was an elementary schoolteacher. He has two younger siblings. The Bernankes were the one of the few Jewish families in the area. As a child, Bernanke learned Hebrew from his maternal grandfather Harold Friedman, who was a Hebrew teacher. His grandfather Jonas was born in Boryslav, Austria–Hungary (today part of Ukraine), and immigrated to the United States from Przemyśl, Poland. He arrived at Ellis Island in 1921, with his wife Pauline. They moved to Dillon, South Carolina, from New York in the 1940s were they opened a drugstore, which
Bernanke’s father and uncle bought from him in. After having Ben, Bernanke’s mother often worked in the family store, and later on Bernanke also assisted from time to time
Education
Bernanke started his education at East Elementary, and then he went to J.
V. Martin Junior High, and Dillon High School. Bernanke got his undergraduate degree in economics summa cum laude in 1975 from Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979.
Career
From 1979 to 1985 Ben Bernanke taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, but also was a visiting professor at New York University and 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 in 2005.
Dr. Bernanke served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2002 to 2005), and was Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers (June 2005 to January 2006). He also was 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).
Ben S. Bernanke was sworn in on February 1, 2006, as Chairman and a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Bernanke also serves as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policymaking body. He was appointed as a member of the Board to a full 14-year term, which expires January 31, 2020, and to a four-year term as Chairman, which expires January 31, 2010.
Family
In 1978 Dr. Bernanke married Anna Friedmann (B.A. from Wellesley College, M.A. from Stanford University), who now works as a Spanish teacher at the National Cathedral School. Together they have two children, Alyssa (born in 1986) and Joel (born in 1982).
Economic philosophies
Ben Bernanke has given several lectures on monetary theory and policy and has written three textbooks on macroeconomics, and one on microeconomics.
He was the Director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the editor of the American Economic Review. He is among the 50 most published economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.
Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which wrote several publications. Bernanke focused less on the role of the Federal Reserve, and more on the role of private banks and financial institutions. Bernanke found that the financial disruptions of 1930-33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process; and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand, identifying an effect he called the financial accelerator. When faced with a mild downturn, banks are likely to significantly cut back lending and other risky ventures. This further hurts the economy, creating a vicious cycle and potentially turning a mild recession into a major
depression.
In 2002, when the word "deflation" began appearing in the business news.He gave a speech in November of 2002 titled "Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn't Happen Here". He referred to economist Milton Friedman's idea of a "helicopter drop" of money into the economy. Adding liquidity to the marketplace by making more cash available to borrowers and cutting interest rates to foster borrowing helps to stimulate the economy and stem deflationary pressure. In 2005 Bernanke coined the term saving glut, the idea, which does not take into account time preference, that a worldwide oversupply of savings finances the current account deficits of the United States and keeps interest rates low.
His first months as chairman of the Federal Reserve System were marked by difficulties communicating with the media. An advocate of more transparent Fed policy and clearer statements, he had to back away from his initial idea of stating clearer inflation goals as such statements tended to affect the stock market.
Interesting facts about Ben Bernanke
• He won the South Carolina state spelling bee at age 11
• While in high school he taught himself calculus
• He achieved a 1590 (out of 1600) on his SATs, the highest SAT score in South Carolina for that year
• He met his wife a blind date
• Bernanke and his wife own just one car, a Ford Focus