By Eamon Javers

Most people have annual performance reviews to determine whether they get to keep their jobs.

Ben Bernanke has the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

There is no better way to understand President Barack Obama’s decision to reappoint Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve on Tuesday morning than to look at the Dow – which was below 8,000 when the president took the oath of office in January, and closed above 9,500 on Monday

"Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom; with bold action and outside-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic freefall," Obama said Tuesday, taking a break from his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.

With Bernanke by his side, the president heaped praise on the Fed chief. "As an expert on the causes of the Great Depression, I’m sure Ben never imagined that he would be part of a team responsible for preventing another," the president said. "But because of his background, his temperament, his courage, and his creativity, that’s exactly what he has helped to achieve."

Bernanke himself seemed relieved as he stepped up to the podium after Obama finished speaking. Bernanke thanked the staff of the Federal reserve as well as his wife Anna and two children.

"We have been bold or deliberate as circumstances demanded, but our objective remains constant: to restore a more stable financial and economic environment in which opportunity can again flourish, and in which Americans’ hard work and creativity can receive their proper rewards," Bernanke said in brief remarks, and he promised – if confirmed by the Senate – that he would "work to the utmost of my abilities."

The months-long rally that Wall Street has seen since the darkest days of late February and March will likely be viewed by historians as the result of muscular intervention in the markets by the federal government, and Bernanke was joined at the hip with Obama’s team in that effort.

In effect, his reappointment means that the Obama administration is doubling down on the Fed, validating Bernanke’s aggressive approach to cutting interest rates and pumping money into the economy – and signaling that Obama wants to stay the course in hopes of turning some recent positive signs in the economy into a full-fledged recovery.

Likewise, a decision by the president to install someone else at the top of the Fed when Bernanke’s term expires on Jan. 31 would have been seen as a course change in the policies that have underscored Obama’s approach to the global financial crisis of 2008. And any replacement would have met with howls of protest on Wall Street, where Bernanke is viewed as the man who saved the world economy.

"The president wanted the team that has been working to rescue this economy together," a White House official told POLITICO Monday evening. "This continuity is crucial."

Bernanke had broad support on Wall Street, and industry groups had begun a quiet whisper campaign to bolster his prospects of re-nomination, making sure to mention their high regard for Bernanke in White House meetings called on other subjects.

Bernanke was basking in good press in the hours leading up to his reappointment.

His comments on Friday that prospects for economic recovery appeared good were enough to fuel a stock market boomlet, prompting headlines like this one from the Associated Press on Monday: "Bernanke continues to give world stocks a lift."

Still, the timing of the White House announcement was unexpected, and caught much of Wall Street off guard, given that Obama is on vacation and Congress is out of session. But one financial insider speculated that the administration deliberately released the news Monday evening in order to mute criticism among the Fed’s many critics in Congress, who are scattered across the country vacationing and meeting with constituents this week.

And it’s true that Bernanke’s term has not been without controversy. On Tuesday, Obama said, "Almost none of the decisions he or any of us made have been easy. The actions we have taken to stabilize our financial system, repair our credit markets, restructure our auto industry, and pass a recovery package have all been steps of necessity, not choice."

"They have faced plenty of critics, some of whom argued that we should stay the course or do nothing at all. But taken together, this ‘bold, persistent experimentation’ has brought our economy back from the brink," he said. Under Bush last year, Bernanke faced questions over the Fed’s failure to anticipate and prevent the global financial wipe-out in the first place.

More recently, the Fed has come under increasingly vocal criticism on Capitol Hill for its seemingly unilateral decisions to bail out particular companies – including some at the heart of the global meltdown, like AIG, Citigroup and Bear Stearns. Earlier this summer, Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said he and others did not have "a lot of confidence in the Fed at this point."

Also, at least one chapter on Bernanke’s policies is still to be written — whether the Fed can manage to nurse the economy back to health without an outbreak of inflation, given the trillions of dollars in capital that have gushed into the system during the rescue phase.

But after news of Obama’s decision broke on Monday evening, effusive praise for Bernanke began to roll in from the trade groups thatrepresent Wall Street in the nation’s capital.

"He is held in high regard by many in the financial services sector and the president made a shrewd choice in re-appointing him," said Rob Nichols, President and COO of the Financial Services Forum. "Our nation is fortunate to have his continuing leadership."

"We are supportive of the decision to nominate the Chairman to a second term," said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable. "He has demonstrated leadership during this crisis and the economy will benefit from his experience and intimate knowledge of the financial markets."

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Obama adviser Larry Summers all recommended to the president that Bernanke be retained to ensure this continuity. Summers, who was once viewed as a possible candidate for the Fed job, is staying on as the president’s top economic adviser.

Summers’s tempestuous personality and Bernanke’s strong performance in office made it increasingly unlikely in recent months that Obama would make a switch.

Also mentioned in Washington recently as possible candidates were two female candidates, Janet Yellen, the Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Christina Romer, who chairs Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Bernanke came to the job in 2006, appointed by President George W. Bush to succeed Alan Greenspan. A student of the Depression, Bernanke had become convinced that the Federal Reserve itself had caused that epic collapse in 1931 when it failed to respond forcefully enough to the collapse of several global banks, and allowed the recession that followed the stock market crash of 1929 to erupt into a full blown depression.

"I was not going to be the Federal Reserve Chairman who presided over the second Great Depression," Bernanke told a PBS audience this summer. "I had to hold my nose and stop those firms from failing. I am as disgusted about it as you are."

Born on December 13, 1953, Bernanke was raised in South Carolina and went on to Harvard, where he majored in economics. He received a PhD in economics from MIT in 1979 and then became a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He later chaired the economics department at Princeton until his appointment to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in 2002.

Bernanke himself has not been shy in mounting what some saw as a very public bid for re-nomination. Earlier this summer, he gave a lengthy interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes – an almost unheard of proposition for a Fed Chairman. Greenspan typically made sure that his comments to reporters were safely off the record and that his public pronouncements were inscrutable.

But Bernanke was filmed walking around his home town of Dillon, S.C., and talking about his humble roots with reporter Scott Pelley. And Bernanke held a town hall-style meeting in Kansas City, Mo., moderated by PBS anchor Jim Lehrer.

There, he took questions from citizens who were angered and confused by the economic collapse and the Fed’s response to it. He appeared almost like a political candidate in a campaign debate, using his thumb and forefinger to emphasize his points, and even having a Clinton-style I-feel-your-pain moment with a questioner angry about the federal bailouts for the big banks that caused the collapse. It reflected a much more high-profile approach to the job than the nation has seen before.

Obama, too, has moved to give the Fed a bigger role, releasing a regulatory reform proposal earlier in the year that granted huge new powers to regulate the overall economy to the unelected body.

Obama’s decision to reappoint Bernanke to a second term makes it more likely that he will become the same kind of long tenured chairman that his predecessor was. Greenspan served from 1987 to 2006, prompting some critics to complain that the Fed chairmanship had become an almost imperial role. Obama, however, seems quite comfortable having his own Greenspan in place for the years ahead.

Carol E. Lee and Amie Parnes contributed to this report.