Ben Bernanke lives in a three-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot, attached town house near the Capitol. It has an appraised value of roughly $850,000, not far from the $839,000 he paid for it in 2004. A public record search shows he owes $672,000 on the home, after refinancing his mortgage twice.

One refinancing was in late 2009. The other was in late September, shortly after the Fed announced a new program, known as "Operation Twist," which aimed to drive down long-term interest rates.

After a decade in Washington, Mr. Bernanke doesn't seem to have been swept up by the nation's capital.

He doesn't read books about the financial crisis. When asked in September if he had seen a recent HBO movie about it, he said he hadn't: "I saw the original."