Yellen right
Stanley Fischer
Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer  announced last week  he  was resigning for personal reasons before the end of  his  term  opening yet another seat in the central bank's powerful board for President Donald Trump to fill.
The departure of  Fischer   73  represents a big loss of institutional knowledge and gravitas for the Fed at a time when many American institutions are sorely lacking in technocratic expertise.  Fischer  is considered the leader of a generation of prominent academic and professional economics  in part because  he  taught many of them at MIT.
" He  is often referred to as the dean of central bankers  having taught most central bankers including former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank president Mario Draghi " Shawn Baldwin  the chairman of AIA Group  wrote in a LinkedIn post. " Fischer 's departure creates a vacuum not easily filled  adding to the uncertainty in monetary policy."
Larry Summers  the Harvard economist and former Treasury secretary  dubbed  Fischer 's resignation "the end of an era."
Fischer  who was born in Zambia and later studied in London  started his career as an academic but became a policymaker at the World Bank and later the International Monetary Fund  where he rose to the role of first deputy managing director.  Fischer  then spent three years at Citigroup as a vice chairman before moving to Israel in 2005 to become the head of its central bank.  Fischer  returned to the US as Fed vice chairman in 2014.  His  term was not set to end until June 2018.
"The Fed and the international monetary system will be weaker for  his  departure from official responsibility " Summers wrote in a blog post.
" Stan 's has been a singular career "  he  said. "As an MIT professor he coauthored  with  his  close friend Rudi Dornbusch  the macro textbook that defined the basics of the field for a generation. With Olivier Blanchard " the former IMF chief economist  "he wrote the treatise that defined the state of the art for graduate students. His lectures were models of lucid exposition and balanced judgment. My view of monetary economics was shaped by my experience auditing his class in the Fall of 1978."
Not everyone is complimentary about the arc of  Fischer 's career. To some  he represents the kind of establishment economics that led to financial instability and income inequality in many parts of the world.
During his time at the IMF   Fischer  became the face of austerity measures gone wrong. Many of his and the IMF's recommendations for drastic spending cuts during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s have since been widely discredited as having made matters worse.
"I see  Fischer  as to a large extent the embodiment of the conventional wisdom among macroeconomists and central bankers " said Dean Baker  the director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research  a liberal Washington think tank. " He  also  in the pre-crisis days  was very much associated with the deregulation of finance gang  although I think  he  has developed an appreciation of the need for regulation since the crisis."
Indeed   Fischer  has spoken out rather strongly against efforts by Trump and Republicans to unwind most of the key regulations imposed on Wall Street after the crisis with the aim of preventing a repeat performance.
"We seem to have forgotten that we had a financial crisis  which was caused by behavior in the banking and other parts of the financial system  and it did enormous damage to this economy "  Fischer  told CNBC in April  just as the president was signing an executive order aimed at what  he  said was "reviewing" Dodd-Frank.
"Millions of people lost their jobs  millions of people lost their houses "  Fischer  said. "This was not a small-time  regular recession. This was huge  and it affected the rest of the world  and it affected  to some extent  our standing in the world as well. We should not forget that."
Baker says  Fischer  did a good job in Israel  where  he  managed the central bank from 2005 to 2013.
" He  pushed down the value of the shekel  giving the country a large trade surplus  which allowed it to get through the Great Recession with little damage " Baker said.
As for US monetary policy   his  tenure did not include much action on the part of the Fed  but  Fischer  has been erroneously worried about the threat of looming inflation since the start of  his  tenure.
[TGT]announced last week  [TGT]  was resigning for personal reasons before the end of  [TGT]  term  opening yet another seat in the central bank's powerful board for President Donald Trump to fill.
The departure of  [TGT]represents a big loss of institutional knowledge and gravitas for the Fed at a time when many American institutions are sorely lacking in technocratic expertise.  [TGT]is considered the leader of a generation of prominent academic and professional economics  in part because  [TGT]  taught many of them at MIT.
" [TGT]  is often referred to as the dean of central bankers  having taught most central bankers including former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank president Mario Draghi " Shawn Baldwin  the chairman of AIA Group  wrote in a LinkedIn post. " [TGT] 's departure creates a vacuum not easily filled  adding to the uncertainty in monetary policy."
Larry Summers  the Harvard economist and former Treasury secretary  dubbed  [TGT] 's resignation "the end of an era."
[TGT]who was born in Zambia and later studied in London  started [TGT] career as an academic but became a policymaker at the World Bank and later the International Monetary Fund  where [TGT] rose to the role of first deputy managing director.  [TGT]then spent three years at Citigroup as a vice chairman before moving to Israel in 2005 to become the head of its central bank.  [TGT]returned to the US as Fed vice chairman in 2014.  [TGT]  term was not set to end until June 2018.
"The Fed and the international monetary system will be weaker for  [TGT]  departure from official responsibility " Summers wrote in a blog post.
" [TGT] 's has been a singular career "  [TGT]  said. "As an MIT professor [TGT] coauthored  with  his  close friend Rudi Dornbusch  the macro textbook that defined the basics of the field for a generation. With Olivier Blanchard " the former IMF chief economist  "he wrote the treatise that defined the state of the art for graduate students. His lectures were models of lucid exposition and balanced judgment. My view of monetary economics was shaped by my experience auditing his class in the Fall of 1978."
Not everyone is complimentary about the arc of  Fischer 's career. To some  he represents the kind of establishment economics that led to financial instability and income inequality in many parts of the world.
During his time at the IMF   Fischer  became the face of austerity measures gone wrong. Many of his and the IMF's recommendations for drastic spending cuts during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s have since been widely discredited as having made matters worse.
"I see  Fischer  as to a large extent the embodiment of the conventional wisdom among macroeconomists and central bankers " said Dean Baker  the director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research  a liberal Washington think tank. " He  also  in the pre-crisis days  was very much associated with the deregulation of finance gang  although I think  he  has developed an appreciation of the need for regulation since the crisis."
Indeed   Fischer  has spoken out rather strongly against efforts by Trump and Republicans to unwind most of the key regulations imposed on Wall Street after the crisis with the aim of preventing a repeat performance.
"We seem to have forgotten that we had a financial crisis  which was caused by behavior in the banking and other parts of the financial system  and it did enormous damage to this economy "  Fischer  told CNBC in April  just as the president was signing an executive order aimed at what  he  said was "reviewing" Dodd-Frank.
"Millions of people lost their jobs  millions of people lost their houses "  Fischer  said. "This was not a small-time  regular recession. This was huge  and it affected the rest of the world  and it affected  to some extent  our standing in the world as well. We should not forget that."
Baker says  Fischer  did a good job in Israel  where  he  managed the central bank from 2005 to 2013.
" He  pushed down the value of the shekel  giving the country a large trade surplus  which allowed it to get through the Great Recession with little damage " Baker said.
As for US monetary policy   his  tenure did not include much action on the part of the Fed  but  Fischer  has been erroneously worried about the threat of looming inflation since the start of  his  tenure.