“Whatever political skills I have, have been gained painfully.”


WASHINGTON - Crisis-fighter was not the primary role that Ben S. Bernanke expected when he initially signed on as chairman of the United States’ Federal Reserve Bank in 2006.

His first two years were dotted with missteps. Only after an experimental and headlong rush to quickly fix the financial system did the Fed, and its chief, seem to right their course. .

Friends and acquaintances say that all the effort and creativity needed to wrestle with the crisis took a visible toll on Mr. Bernanke.

“He just looked like he was fatigued,” says L. Douglas Lee, an economic forecaster . “He doesn’t look that way now.”

Mr. Bernanke, accustomed to working every day of the week, says that he is logging fewer hours, but as he describes his labors he seems more motivated by duty than pleasure.

“My training and experience equipped me to serve the public, and I believe that I have a responsibility to provide that service,” he says. “I am not doing this for personal enjoyment.”

Mr. Bernanke grew up in Dillon, South Carolina. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and his parents met at the University of North Carolina. Ben could add and subtract as a toddler. He skipped first grade, memorized baseball statistics and, deploying the Hebrew his grandfather taught him, helped lead services in Dillon’s small synagogue.

Dale W. Jorgenson taught Mr. Bernanke econometrics at Harvard . At his urging, Mr. Bernanke entered the Ph.D. program in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Stanley Fischer, Mr. Bernanke’s adviser at M.I.T., had his student read “The Great Contraction, 1929- 1933. ” The book ignited a passion.

He turned down Harvard for a job at Stanford’s business school, then went on to Princeton. He was chairman of Princeton’s economics department when, in 2002, R. Glenn Hubbard, a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush, asked him to serve as a Fed governor. Seven months later, he was Mr. Bush’s choice to lead the Fed.

“I never thought I would get this job,” says Mr. Bernanke, adding that September 11 spurred his interest in public service.

Mr. Bernanke is reserved, has a dry wit and doesn’t appear to relish the trappings of office.

“Whatever political skills I have, have been gained painfully over many years,” he says.

John Hope Bryant, a financial literacy advocate who has worked with him, says: “Bernanke is normal, which is fairly abnormal in that position.”

In January, as senators attacked Mr. Bernanke’s crisis strategies before his reconfirmation , he didn’t follow along on television or the Web.

“I had two principal objectives in accepting a second term,” he says. “First, I wanted to see through the process of financial regulatory reform, which will have long-lasting impacts on our economy. Second, I felt that I could play a useful role in managing the exit from our extraordinary policies, including our highly accommodative monetary policies.”


By SEWELL CHAN