Fed Bio Boxes

-- Snapshots of the Federal Reserve policymakers who vote this year on the direction of interest rates in the United States.

NAME: Ben Bernanke

AGE-BIRTH DATE: Dec. 13, 1953. Age: 53

EXPERIENCE _ Feb. 1, 2006, to present, chairman of the Federal Reserve; June 2005 to Jan. 31, 2006, chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisers; 2002-2005, member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; 1996-2002, professor and chairman of the Economics Department at Princeton University; 1985-2002, economics professor, Princeton University.

EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in economics, Harvard University, 1975; doctoral degree in economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979.

NAME: Timothy Geithner

AGE-BIRTH DATE: Aug. 18, 1961. Age: 45

EXPERIENCE: From Nov. 20, 2003, to present, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. International Monetary Fund executive from September 2001; senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations; under secretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration 1998-2001; various positions at the Treasury, which he joined in 1988. Kissinger Associates, 1985-1988.

EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in government and Asian studies, Dartmouth College, 1983; master's degree in international economics from The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, 1985.

NAME: Susan Schmidt Bies

AGE-BIRTH DATE: May 5, 1947. Age: 59

EXPERIENCE: Dec. 7, 2001, to present Fed governor; executive vice president for risk management and auditor, First Tennessee National Corp., Memphis, 1995-2001; from 1979 to 1995, she held various other positions with the bank. Associate professor of economics, Rhodes College, Memphis, 1977-1979; assistant professor of economics, Wayne State University, Detroit, 1972-1977; chief regional and banking structure economist, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1970-1972.