NEW YORK (AP) – Pimco has hired former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as a senior adviser, the bond fund manager said Wednesday.
It’s the latest private venture for Bernanke, who since his departure from the nation’s central bank last year has been on the speaking circuit and was recently hired by a major hedge fund as an adviser as well.
Bernanke will provide economic advice to Pimco’s fund managers and will occasionally interact with the firm’s clients, the Newport Beach, California, company said.
It is routine for former Fed officials to take their economic skills — and Rolodex of contacts — to Wall Street after their tenure ends at the bank. Pimco hired Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman before Bernanke, in 2007 to provide economic advice. Paul Volcker, who led the Fed in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, went to work for an investment firm after he left the Fed as well.
Bernanke served two terms as chairman of the Federal Reserve, from 2006 through 2014, spending most of his term dealing with the 2008 financial crisis and the economic aftermath left in its wake.