Ben Bernanke today pledged to run the U.S. Federal Reserve independent of political influences.

Bernanke, U.S. President Bush’s choice to head the Federal Reserve after Alan Greenspan retires, made his commitment in a statement to the Senate Banking Committee, which is holding a hearing on his nomination.

“I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences and will be guided solely by the Federal Reserve’s mandate from Congress and by the public interest,” Bernanke told U.S. lawmakers.

Bernanke is currently chief economic advisor at the U.S. White House.

With respect to monetary policy, he pledged to maintain “continuity” with Greenspan’s policies, saying it is a “top priority.”

Bernanke also said he would move slowly and seek to build a consensus on the notion of inflation targeting in order to create a more transparent policy process.

He suggested “one possible step toward greater transparency would be for the FOMC to state explicitly the numerical inflation rate or range of inflation rates it considers to be consistent with the goal of long-term price stability, a practice currently employed by many of the world’s central banks. I have supported this idea in my academic writings and in speeches as a Board member.”

Bernanke, if confirmed as expected, will take the reigns at the Fed at the end of January.

A former Princeton professor and Fed governor who now serves as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Bernanke is expected to win the panel’s endorsement and get a positive vote in the full Senate.