Bernanke's personal finances far less rocky than public ones

[ckramer]

Source: NZH

Engulfed by economic and financial turbulence, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has taken extraordinary steps to ease America's problems. His own finances are more straightforward.

The chairman's financial disclosure form, released yesterday, showed his holdings last year were in no-fills investments, including United States Treasury securities, Canadian Treasury bonds, mutual funds and annuities.

Bernanke, 54, took over the central bank in February 2006, succeeding longtime chairman Alan Greenspan, who also played it safe when it came to his own investments while at the Fed.

Over the past year, Bernanke has been in crisis-management mode, trying to prevent housing, credit and financial debacles from sinking the economy. The Fed has aggressively sliced interest rates to shore up activity and taken several other actions, some unprecedented, to prop up the system.

An economist who spent most of his career in academia, including teaching at Princeton, Bernanke also is receiving royalties on two textbooks he wrote. The documents showed royalty income was listed at between US$50,001 ($65,780) and US$100,000 for each textbook, the largest single slices of income other than his Fed salary.

Bernanke's salary last year was US$186,600. This year it rises to US$191,300.



Read more: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10522927

[ckramer]

1. He's a poor man comparing to Henry Paulson n/m

[cliss]

2. RIGHT you are.

I was just about to bring up Henry Paulsen, but you beat me to it.

Fox guarding the hen house?
Henry Paulsen made a cool $1 billion dollars off of the subprime mortgage market. That's $1 BILLION dollars.

How I love to see him sweat now.:smoke:

[WriteDown]

6. What are you talking about??

This is my field so I've got to ask.

Paulson didn't make a billion dollars. This information is easily verifiable since Goldman is a publicly traded company. Not to mention Goldman took a very small position (relatively speaking) in the sub-prime sector. Their 10K is complex, but as far as the fair value of their mortgage & other asset-backed loans goes, it only makes up 11% of its financial instruments (http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/investors/financials/current/10k/2007-form-10-k.pdf).

Here's the pay stat from Forbes - his total comp in 2007 was $16 million, which no where near $1B. However, his stock holding is substantial, but still not $1B.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/12/VY36.html

[high density]

3. 2.5% raise

That's worse than mine.

[ckramer]

4. That means his boss thought he didn't do a good job

LOL. 2.5% raise.

[The Croquist]

5. It's good to see that he's fiscally responsible in his private life.

I'd be even more worried about the economy if he had a sub-prime mortgage with a three year balloon.