Bernanke pursued new stimulus last year to create jobs, defying critics who said his record accommodation would spark inflation. Now, with U.S. growth accelerating and the euro area on the brink of a second recession in three years, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi are showing they also are willing to spur their economies while inflation exceeds their goals.

“The Fed’s been a success at preventing a catastrophe” from reoccurring after the credit crisis, said Mark Gertler, a professor at New York University who has co-authored research with Bernanke.

The U.S. economy is forecast to grow at a 2.3 percent rate in 2012, according to the median estimate of 70 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. That’s almost eight times faster than the 0.3 percent expansion the ECB predicts for the euro region.

After completing $600 billion of bond purchases last June — which unleashed the harshest political backlash in three decades — Bernanke took additional easing steps in August and September, even though the personal-consumption-expenditures price index rose 2.9 percent in each of those months, the fastest in about three years.

Some economists who showed skepticism about Bernanke’s record stimulus measures now acknowledge they seem to be working. Steven Bell, chief economist at hedge fund GLC Ltd. in London, raised questions about the efficacy of Bernanke’s policies in 2008 in a report entitled “Ben’s Big Gamble.”

Though Bernanke was “laughed at” then for aggressively cutting rates, the policies have helped, Bell said.