Henry Wallich

Henry Christopher Wallich (/ˈwɑːlɪk/; June 10, 1914 – September 15, 1988) was a German American economist and central banker. He was a professor of economics at Yale University and a member of the Council of Economic Advisors during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration. He was best known as an economic columnist for Newsweek magazine, from 1965 until he joined The Federal Reserve.^[1] For a period he wrote one week in three, with Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson.^[2]

Early life

Wallich was born in Berlin, German Empire. He began 10 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1941, becoming chief of its foreign research division. He earned a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) from Harvard University in 1944, and became an American citizen in the same year.

Work

Wallich interests included the developing country economies in the third world. He became a consultant to officials of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba in the pre-Castro era. He served on the advisory board of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1972-73 and was the United States representative on the United Nations Experts Panel on the Economic Consequences of the Arms Race. Before joining the Federal Reserve Board, he was a director of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company, the United Illuminating Company, the Lionel Edie Capital Fund and the First New Haven National Bank, and other institutions.

He was appointed by President Richard Nixon as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System, in 1974 as one of the Fed's seven Governors.^[3] and served until 1986, resigning from poor health.^[4] Mr. Wallich's proposal espoused in 1971 with Sidney Weintraub, a liberal economist, for a tax-based incomes policy, or TIP. The plan, to control inflation, required an income-tax surcharge to be levied on companies raising their average wage level above specified inflation-related guide-lines. The Wallich-Weintraub plan never became law. He was the board's main emissary to the Bank for International Settlements, the institution in Basel, Switzerland, that serves the world's central banks.^[5]

Wallich was known for his strong targeting of inflation, once writing, "Like burglary, inflation is an extralegal form of redistribution, Unfortunately, many economists share with politicians the habit of always regarding inflation as the lesser of any alternative evils."^[5]

Wallich was born in Berlin on June 10, 1914, to Paul and Hildegard Rehrmann Wallich. His father and paternal grandfather were both bankers. The younger Wallich had a brother, Walter, and a sister, Christel. In 1950 he married Mable Inness Brown, an economist from Floral Park, L.I. They met while both were working at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. After failing health and an operation on a brain tumour in 1985; he died in 1988 at George Washington University Hospital, he was 74 years old. He was survived by his wife, Mable, mother Hildegard, and children, Christine Wallich, Anna Wallich and Paul Wallich.^[5]

Works

• The Mainsprings of the German Revival (1955)
• The Cost of Freedom, Conservatives and Modern Capitalism, The Case For A Free Economy (1960)

References

• International Monetary Cooperation: Essays in Honor of Henry C. Wallich (1987)

Notes

External links

• Statements and Speeches of Henry Christopher Wallich