Stanley Fischer

I was studying economics and I became very interested in central banking.

And I specifically wanted to go to Israel because I was so impressed with how the Israeli central bank under Stanley Fischer's leadership had weathered the global financial storm.

I wanted to learn from the best.

So I lived in Jerusalem, worked at the Bank of Israel, And it was the most profound experience for me, both from a professional standpoint as my first foray into central banking, but also from a personal standpoint, living in Jerusalem and walking those ancient and holy streets, which when you think about it, the old city is also very holy for Catholics like myself with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

So I I yep these are these are hard choices and then the federal reserve has to decide well do we raise rates again in december do we raise rates again in march i think they might pause after december

what's the pixie dust come on simon johnson finally won a nobel prize his book 13 bankers was brilliant on the crash a short monograph holland woodford mit I mean, is it the legacy of Solo in 1956 or Stanley Fischer? What's the pixie dust on the Cambridge River at MIT?

Look, I mean, my colleagues and I don't agree, and that's a good thing about being at MIT.

There's such a diversity of views.

It has so many creators that it's not even clear who deserves the prize.

Greg Mankiw, David Romer, Stanley Fisher, George Akerlof, Janet Yellen, Olivier Blanchard, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Jordi Gali, Mark Grittler, John Taylor, Guillermo Calvo, and a bunch of others contributed pieces to the edifice.

Most of these contributions were ideas about why prices are slow to adjust to macroeconomic fluctuations.

Basically, if you have something that decreases aggregate demand, say the Fed raises interest rates like in 1980, or there's a banking panic after a housing bubble bursts like in 2008, there's a question of why companies don't just cut prices and maintain the same level of output.

I know Bob best.

Bob has been a friend of mine ever since I was a baby economist.

Um, Bob has been just an absolute star, and he's a favorite of young economists, and he has been every year of his career.

He approaches life with just a tremendous tenacity.

So you read a paper of Mike's and you think you've got it, and then you've got to go back and read it another few more times.

The interesting thing about Mike is he has had such a tremendous influence in raising the next generation of monetary policy thinkers.

So he's the intellectual father of Gaut-- my friend Gauti Eggertsson or Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe and Martin Uribe, uh, Marco, uh, Mark Giannoni, um, and so on.

And everywhere you go, you meet former, uh, my, my good mate, Chris Preston, uh, in Australia.

I'm Catholic myself, but I actually lived in Jerusalem.

I worked at the Bank of Israel with Stanley Fisher, who became a mentor of mine.

So that fight is deeply personal to me.

And I understand what anti-Semitism is.

What's unclear in the Warsh Fed is whether there's going to be, and who it would be, is gonna be the intellectual pulling guard for the Fed chair.

It had been Stan Fischer, for example, um, I, I guess under Yellen, uh, maybe I have that wrong, maybe under Bernanke, um, and, and other folks.

Chris Waller had been doing a little bit for Powell.

Um, but we don't know yet.