In case you weren't aware, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is appointed by the President to a renewable 4-year term. (The chairman is also a member of the board, obviously, and there is a 14-year term for the regular board members.) Ben Bernanke is currently the "Chairman of the Fed" or "Fed Chair," and his current term ends on January 31, 2014. (His term on the board overall ends on January 31, 2020, since he was originally appointed in 2006.) There has been quite a bit of speculation on who the next Fed Chair will be, and a re-appointed Bernanke has generally been listed among the contenders.

On Monday, however, President Obama may have let the world know that Bernanke is out of the running for the position. Obama mentioned that Bernanke stayed in the position "a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to," and he was evasive when asked whether he would reappoint Bernanke if Bernanke wanted the job. Those statements are certainly going to fuel the gossip surrounding Bernanke's potential successor, so stay tuned.

Robert Fogel, Nobel-Prize winning economic historian, passed away last week at the age of 86. The economics community has responded by writing a number of thoughtful pieces about his life and work. (Note that there are three separate links there.)

Fogel had been a professor at the University of Chicago, and his main claims to fame were his research on the economics of slavery and his use of economic theory and fairly rigorous statistical methods (common in economics in general) in the study of history. His work was controversial in large part because it showed that slavery was not, as a lot of people thought, an inefficient system that was doomed to fail. (One could, however, interpret this message as supporting the need for government intervention end the practice.) Fogel received the Nobel Prize in 1993.

Research tells us what a lot of people already assume- namely, that money makes people act like jerks. Economist Dan Ariely probably isn't particularly surprised by this, since he's already shown that the mention of cash moves people from a social norm to a market norm and makes them less likely to help each other out.

Former economic adviser to George W. Bush, Harvard professor, and prolific textbook author Greg Mankiw has an essay forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives entitled "Defending the One Percent." Technically, the essay should probably be titled "Defending the One Percent who Made Their Money by Creating Value to Society," and it is somewhat characterized by value judgments and assumptions mixed with economic arguments, but it's an interesting read for those who want to learn a bit more about how incentives and utilitarianism (or lack thereof) factor into an intelligent discussion on income distribution.

My favorite line from the essay, despite not being used to make a direct point, is the following: "That is, we shouldn't be concerned about the next Steve Jobs striking it rich, but we want to make sure he strikes it rich in a socially productive way."