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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bernanke’s side job is return to campus

Fed chairman plans university lectures

Martin Crutsinger Associated Press

WASHINGTON – As college courses go, the name – “Reflections on the Federal Reserve and Its Place in Today’s Economy” – sounds perfectly ordinary.

Then there’s the name of the lecturer. Not exactly ordinary: Ben Bernanke, the sitting chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Four times starting today, Bernanke will take a break from his day job to revisit the academic life he led – and, by all accounts, enjoyed – before coming to Washington a decade ago. He’ll stand before a class of George Washington University undergraduates and deliver a series of lectures on the Fed.

For a Fed chief who has set new standards for public accessibility, the GW lecture series marks another first: None of Bernanke’s predecessors ever helped teach college students while serving as chairman.

GW assembled the class of 30 from 80 applicants who wrote a one-page essay on what they hoped to learn from arguably the second-most-powerful U.S. government official after the president.

The first will focus on central banking in the United States dating to the panics of the 19th century and early 20th century, which led to the Fed’s creation in 1913. The second lecture, on Thursday, involves the central bank’s actions after World War II.

In the final two, on March 27 and 29, Bernanke will review the roots of the 2008 financial crisis and the Fed’s response to the crisis and the recession that followed.

For Bernanke, the GW lectures serve a dual function:

They give him a chance to reprise the role of professor he played for more than two decades, first at Stanford and then at Princeton, where he eventually chaired the economics department.

And they give him a way to expand his mission of demystifying the Fed. As part of that campaign, Bernanke became the first Fed chief to hold regular news conferences and conduct town-hall meetings.

Bernanke, a popular professor at Princeton, has occasionally renewed his ties to academia during his six years as Fed chairman. He spoke to students at Morehouse College in Atlanta in 2009 and held town hall meetings with college students in Rhode Island and Jacksonville, Fla., in the fall of 2010.