NOVANEWS
Fischer served as Israel’s top banker for eight years; Obama: Stanley Fischer is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading economic policy minds.
Haaretz
U.S. President Barack Obama nominated former Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve on Friday.
Fischer’s nomination had been expected for weeks. An internationally recognized economist, he had been considered a dark horse candidate to replace Chairman Ben Bernanke at one point.
Fischer would succeed Janet Yellen, who was confirmed by the Senate on Monday to lead the Fed after Bernanke’s term expires at the end of this month.
“Stanley Fischer brings decades of leadership and expertise from various roles, including serving at the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of Israel,” Obama said in a statement.
“He is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading and most experienced economic policy minds and I’m grateful he has agreed to take on this new role and I am confident that he and Janet Yellen will make a great team,” Obama said.
Fischer served as Israel’s top banker for eight years, earning broad trust from citizens. He guided the country through the global financial crisis of 2008 and maintained relative stability during that time. Israel weathered the crisis relatively unscathed.
Prior to coming to Israel, Fischer was chief economist at the World Bank an official at the International Monetary Fund. He has a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, where he also served on the faculty as a professor and advised Bernanke on his Ph.D. thesis.
Fischer has been lauded throughout the globe for his work, and was rated among the top six central bankers last year by the magazine Global Finance and best central bank of 2010 by Euromoney. He was also instrumental in promoting Israel’s successful bid for acceptance into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In June 2011, Fischer applied for the post of International Monetary Fund managing director to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but was barred from competing for the role because of his age.
Fischer, 69, was born in North Rhodesia, now Zambia, and educated at the London School of Economics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
