Bernanke's The Man

From CNNMoney.com:

President Bush's nominee to succeed Greenspan is expected to be chief economic adviser.

Ben Bernanke is expected to be named to succeed Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - President Bush was expected to announce Monday that he has picked top economic adviser Ben Bernanke to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a person close to the administration said Monday.

An announcement was set for 1 p.m. EDT.

Bush told reporters there would be "an announcement soon" on his choice to replace Greenspan, whose 18-year tenure at the Fed runs out on Jan. 31, Reuters news agency reported.

Bernanke is chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. He served on the Fed's board of governors for nearly three years before moving to the White House in June.

His move to the White House was watched with interest on Wall Street because of the belief that he was on the fast track to replace Greenspan.

Bernanke was considered one of the policy trend setters while at the central bank, espousing the virtues of an inflation target to guide monetary policy.

In addition to Bernanke, other candidates mentioned include Glenn Hubbard, a past adviser to Bush, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein and Fed governor Donald Kohn.

Before Bernanke moved to the White House job, many had thought Bush would nominate Feldstein, a former CEA head under President Ronald Reagan and one of the nation's leading academic economists.

But as Bernanke's odds increased, Feldstein's seemed to diminish.

Bernanke was born on December 13, 1953, in Augusta, Georgia. He received a B.A. in economics in 1975 from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in economics in 1979 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bernanke and his wife, Anna, have two children.