Ben Bernanke nominated for Fed chairman
The Greenspan era at the Federal Reserve ended today as the US president, George Bush, named Ben Bernanke to lead the US central bank.
Mr Bernanke served three years as a Fed governor before joining the administration in June as chairman of the president's council of economic advisers, in effect the White House's top economist. Before that, he taught economics at Princeton University.
Market reaction was generally favourable and Mr Bush will hope that Mr Bernanke's nomination will prove less of a hot political potato than that of Harriet Miers to the supreme court.
Bernanke should be approved without much conflict. He was a front runner for the job, is obviously qualified and has Wall Street's approval. He is pretty close to Greenspan in style, so there probably won't be any big changes.
At this point I generally support this nomination, but I expect to learn a lot more about Bernanke over the next few weeks.
Jay
