Is Having Someone So Close To The International Banking Community A Good Or Bad Idea For Vice Chairman Of The Fed? We Think It Is Negative.

WSJ: Obama Set to Nominate Israel's Fischer as Fed Vice Chairman

Thursday, 12 Dec 2013 07:11 AM

By Dan Weil

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President Barack Obama is on the verge of nominating former Bank of Israel Chief Stanley Fischer as Federal Reserve vice chairman, a person knowledgeable about the issue told The Wall Street Journal.

Fischer would take over for Janet Yellen, who is expected to be confirmed as Fed chair by the Senate as soon as next week. She would take over from current Chairman Ben Bernanke when his term ends Dec. 31.

Fischer is highly respected throughout the global central banking community.


As a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s and '80s, he taught Bernanke, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, and Lawrence Summers, the former head of Obama's National Economic Council.

Fischer would represent a powerful No. 2 behind Yellen. He served as governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 until June 2013.

He was the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s, helping to orchestrate efforts to combat crises in Russia, Asia and Latin America

Fischer is a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. Since stepping down from the Bank of Israel he has lived in New York.

As for Yellen, former White House budget director David Stockman is singularly unimpressed with the easing program she has helped to build.

"I think it's been a disaster," he told Bloomberg. "It's doing nothing for the mainstream economy. It's generating serial bubbles. We're in the greatest one yet."


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