Friday is Ben Bernanke's last day as chairman of the Federal Reserve. It's certainly been an eventful eight years and, when you include his tenure as Fed vice chair (2002-2005), Ben Bernanke is clearly one of the most consequential central bankers of all-time. But was he a good one? A great one? Or a miserable failure?

Related: Ben Bernanke's legacy on Main Street: "Who?!"

In anticipation of Bernanke's departure, we asked a selection of Daily Ticker guests to give their thoughts on Bernanke's legacy. Here's a sample:

"He is one of the greatest heroes of government in the modern era," says Dan Alpert, managing partner at Westwood Capital and author of The Age of Oversupply. "If you actually looked at the financial crises as a World War II kind of moment, this was a guy when there were no adults in the room who was actually willing to step up [and] keep his head about him. He did the right thing at the time."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Michelle Meyer, largely agrees with that assessment, which is the prevailing wisdom among most mainstream policymakers, economists and academics.  "I think that Fed chairman Bernanke did a miraculous job...in an environment where uncertainty was high [and] the downside risks were large," she says. "He managed in my opinion to stem off what would have been a very severe crisis in the financial markets and the economy."

On the other hand, Charles Biderman, CEO of TrimTabs Investment Research, describes Bernanke as "the biggest bubble blower in the history of all markets" and criticizes the outgoing Fed chief for "years of money printing" that resulted in, at best, a desultory economic 'recovery' for everyone not in the top 1%.

A more nuanced view comes from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

"We really won't have a full accounting of his tenure for a number of years down the road," he says, suggesting the success or failure of the Fed's 'exit strategy' will ultimately define Bernanke's legacy. "But if you asked me for a grade right now for his eight-year tenure I'd say it's a very solid 'A'. I think he performed marvelously during the crisis...and we should be thankful that he was leading the Fed. He's very important to how well this turned out."

Related: Fed tapering will lead to LOWER, not higher, rates: Dan Alpert

Of course, you can never prove a counterfactual but the people who criticize Ben Bernanke seem to have amnesia about how terrifying the 2008 crisis was and how close the financial system came to collapsing, triggering a downturn akin to the Great Depression.

To reiterate (or repurpose), what I wrote here, while there's plenty to complain about Bernanke's methods, it's hard to argue with the results: