President Obama appointed Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Federal Reserve in 2009.To fight the recession, Bernanke took unprecedented steps to cut interest rates in a bid to boost economic growth, which came slowly.Now, as his term ends, an online Irish betting site "Paddy Power" is taking wagers on who might replace Bernanke.One contender is the Fed’s current vice chairman, Janet Yellen, a former economics professor at Berkeley who headed the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and was an economic adviser to the White House.Bets are also being placed on former U.S. Treasury Secretary, one-time presidential economic adviser and former president of Harvard University, Larry Summers.Critics say Summers is too abrasive to win consensus among top fed officials.But LaSalle University finance professor Walter Schubert says Summers' toughness might help get economic and budget decisions out of the bickering Congress."Well, the best argument for Larry Summers, I think, is his personality.He’s driven, he wants to have an impact and I think he would put a lot of pressure on Congress. I think he’d be excellent at pressuring Congress to move in the proper direction," said Schubert.Abby McCloskey researches economic issues at the American Enterprise Institute and says Yellen’s long experience at the fed would reassure investors.“She is predictable. The markets know what she thinks. When she gets in there, no surprises, no wild cards.We have enough wild cards in the rest of the economy,” says McCloskey.
