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Tenure Comes to an End for Bernanke, the Augusta-Born Fed Chairman

Monday, January 27th, 2014

Augusta-born Ben Bernanke ends his tenure as chairman of the nation’s central bank on Friday, leaving a legacy mixed with praise for his handling of the economic crisis and criticism that he saw it coming and could have been more proactive to prevent the worst of it.

Fans of Bernanke say he was the right man at the right time, specifically that one of the leading experts of the Great Depression was in a position to act to prevent it from happening again and limit the economic downturn to just a recession. 
 
Critics say Bernanke and others at the Federal Reserve saw the housing bubble and could have acted differently when the housing crisis began affecting the country’s financial system in 2008 and even wonder if the Fed’s post-recession policies will ultimately have negative unintended consequences.
 
Bernanke was born in Augusta in 1953, lived in Aiken County for a short time and spent most of his childhood in the border town of Dillon, S.C., about 50 minutes from Fayetteville, N.C. Bernanke’s eight-year term as chairman ends Friday, and he will pass the reigns of the nation’s central banking system to Janet Yellen.
 
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