Ben Shalom Bernanke ( ; born December 13, 1953) is an American economist at the
Brookings Institution who served two terms as
chairman of the
Federal Reserve, the
central bank of the United States from 2006 to 2014. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the
late-2000s financial crisis. Before becoming Federal Reserve chairman, Bernanke was a tenured professor at
Princeton University and chaired the department of economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave.