5 Ways The New Fed Chairman Will Be Different

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The Fed has two main responsibilities: fighting inflation and fostering orderly growth. The two are sometimes at odds, and every Fed chairman must choose which way to lean. Greenspan, like Paul Volcker before him, is a proven inflation fighter. But Bernanke shows signs of tolerating rising prices. When the economy was threatened with deflation (generally falling prices) a few years ago, "he among all the Fed governors was most vocal about the need to generate inflation," says Alan Wild, a global fixed-income manager for Barings Bank. In November 2002, Bernanke publicly spoke of options, citing Milton Friedman's famous "helicopter drop" of money into the pockets of consumers via tax rebates to stimulate spending, which was radical stuff from a central banker. Some are now worried that Bernanke would overcorrect his reputation, raising rates too far to prove his credibility on the inflation-fighting front.

3. Plain Talk, Not Greenspam

The Bernanke era promises to be toughest on Fed watchers who have made a living interpreting Greenspan. "Ben is crystal clear in both his writings and his speaking," says Frederic Mishkin, a friend and Columbia University economist. In Bernanke's experience, being direct works. As an 11-year-old, he won the South Carolina state spelling bee--but only after contesting a judge's ruling that he had misspelled a word. "He walked off, then came back and said, 'Excuse me, sir, but I spelled that word correctly,'" recalls his mother Edna. Sure enough, a tape recording proved him right. Bernanke's push for clarity influenced Greenspan to speed up the release of the minutes of Fed meetings.

Contrast that with the tortured, Delphic utterances that have become legend with Greenspan. His wife, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, has joked that he proposed twice before she understood what he was saying. After tongue-twisting comments by Greenspan to the Economic Club in New York City in 1995, headlines reflected the confusion he had sown. GREENSPAN HINTS FED MAY CUT INTEREST RATES, read the Washington Post. DOUBTS VOICED BY GREENSPAN ON A RATE CUT, said the New York Times. But the Maestro was clear about one thing: "Since becoming a central banker I have learned to mumble with great incoherence," he said in 1987. "If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said."

4. In Style, a Family Man

Greenspan, a dapper dresser, dated Barbara Walters before marrying Mitchell. He has been known to hit two or more functions in a night, comfortably mingling with politicians, journalists and celebrities. Nathaniel Brandon, a Beverly Hills, Calif., psychologist who with Greenspan had been in author Ayn Rand's inner circle, told TIME several years ago that while Rand liked and respected Greenspan, she also referred to him as a "social climber."