Israel’s Fischer Said to Be Top Choice for Fed Vice Chairman

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

Former Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer is President Barack Obama’s leading candidate to become vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, people familiar with the selection process said.

Fischer, 70, would replace Janet Yellen as the Fed’s No. 2 official, according to the people, who asked for anonymity because the decision isn’t final. There are no plans by the White House to announce the choice this week, one of the people said.

Another person familiar with the process said that Obama has already offered the job to Fischer, who accepted it. The person said the decision was made jointly by the president and Yellen, who is awaiting Senate confirmation to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as Fed chairman.

“I would expect Yellen and Fischer to work closely together and form a very potent team,” said Mark Gertler, a New York University economist who has coauthored research with Bernanke. “He has the ideal mix of qualities you would like in a central banker: wise, experienced and cool under pressure. His academic work was thoughtful and mainstream, where I’d expect him to be as a central banker.”

Dual Citizenship

Fischer, who holds both U.S. and Israeli citizenship and now lives in New York, stepped down as governor of the Bank of Israel on June 30, midway through his second five-year term. He was credited with helping his nation weather the global economic crisis better than most developed countries.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-11/israel-s-fischer-said-to-be-top-candidate-for-fed-vice-chairman.html

[Jesus Malverde]

1. He's well qualified

Stanley "Stan" Fischer (Hebrew: סטנלי פישר‎ (born October 15, 1943) is an Zambian-American-Israeli economist. He was the governor of the Bank of Israel in 2005-2013. He previously served as chief economist at the World Bank.

Biography
Fischer was born into a Jewish family in Mazabuka, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). When he was 13, his family moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he became active in the Habonim Zionist youth movement. His family later moved to the United States. In 1960, he visited Israel as part of a winter program for youth leaders, and studied Hebrew at kibbutz Ma'agan Michael. He had originally planned to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but went to the United Kingdom to study after receiving a scholarship from the London School of Economics, and obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in economics from 1962–1966. Fischer then moved to the United States to study at MIT, and earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1969 with thesis titled Essays on assets and contingent commodities. In the early 1970s, Fischer worked as an associate professor at the University of Chicago. He became an American citizen in 1976.

Fischer is married to Rhoda Fischer (née Keet), who had met during his days in Habonim. The couple have three children. When they moved to Israel, Rhoda became honorary president of Aleh Negev, a rehabilitation village for the disabled.

Academic Career
Fischer served as a professor at the MIT Department of Economics from 1977 to 1988, where he authored three popular economics textbooks, Macroeconomics (with Rüdiger Dornbusch and Richard Startz), Lectures on Macroeconomics (with Olivier Blanchard), and the introductory Economics, with David Begg and Rüdiger Dornbusch. He was also Ben Bernanke's and Greg Mankiw's Ph.D. thesis advisor. In 2012, Fischer served as Humanitas Visiting Professor in Economic Thought at the University of Oxford.

Banking career
From January 1988 to August 1990 he was Vice President, Development Economics and Chief Economist at the World Bank. He then became the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from September 1994 until the end of August 2001. By the end of 2001, Fischer had joined the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. After leaving the IMF, he served as Vice Chairman of Citigroup, President of Citigroup International, and Head of the Public Sector Client Group. Fischer worked at Citigroup from February, 2002 to April, 2005.

Central Banks - Bank of Israel
Fischer was appointed Governor of the Bank of Israel in January 2005 by the Israeli cabinet, after being recommended by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He took the position on May 1, 2005, replacing David Klein, who ended his term on January 16, 2005. Fischer became an Israeli citizen but did not have to renounce his American citizenship, despite previous concerns that such a step was a prerequisite for the appointment.

He had been involved in the past with the Bank of Israel, having served as an American government adviser to Israel's economic stabilization program in 1985. On May 2, 2010, Fischer was sworn in for a second term.

Under his management, in 2010, the Bank of Israel was ranked first among central banks for its efficient functioning, according to IMD's World Competitiveness Yearbook.

Fischer has earned plaudits across the board for his handling of the Israeli economy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. In September 2009, the Bank of Israel was the first bank in the developed world to raise its interest rates.

In 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 Fischer received an "A" rating on the Central Banker Report Card published by Global Finance magazine.

In June 2011, Fischer applied for the post of IMF managing director to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but was barred as the IMF stipulates that a new managing director must be no older than 65, and he was 67 at the time. There is some discussion that his nationality may have influenced this decision.

On January 29, 2013, Fischer announced he would be stepping down as governor of the Bank of Israel on June 30 midway through his second term.

Recognition
Fischer received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew University in 2006. In October 2010, Fischer was declared Central Bank Governor of the Year by Euromoney magazine. Fischer received the award at a reception at the Willard Intercontinental hotel in Washington, D.C. during a World Bank and International Monetary Fund conference.

He is a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Fischer

He seems well qualified. I am a little concerned about his recent connections to citibank. Those guys cannot be trusted.

[geek tragedy]

2. sounds like a good choice, but the conspiracy loons are going to have a crazygasm over this nt

[MADem]

3. I think you're right about that.

On the "factor in mitigation" side, his age will limit his time at the fed. He's unlikely to pull a Greenspan and become an eminence gris.