Well, to be fair, a former academic. The American magazine Foreign Policy has just declared the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, to be number 1 in the list of the top 100 global thinkers. So here we have someone from a very definitely academic background who is certainly not neglected (with reference to my last post). Not only not neglected, his every sneeze has the potential to make or break currencies, taxes or interest rates.
Bernanke was appointed head of the ‘Fed’ in February 2006 by then President George W. Bush, and his term was renewed this year by Barack Obama. Prior to that he had been Professor of Economics at Princeton University, and his special field had been the economics of the Great Depression – clearly an expertise that was to be become unexpectedly practical. In his role in the Fed he has not been without his detractors, but the majority view has been that he has shown exceptional skill as well as appropriate daring in the extraordinary global economic conditions we have been experiencing.
So if you are one of those academics fretting about being ignored by the public and policy-makers, take heart: Bernanke shows that you can still make it right to the top.
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