Edwin M. Truman

Last updated
Edwin M. Truman
Born1941
NationalityAmerican
FieldInternational financial institutions
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Edwin (Ted) M. Truman (born 1941) is an American economist specializing in international financial institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund and sovereign wealth funds. He has been a Senior Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2001. [1] Truman has worked quietly over the years on international financial crises issues. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman described Truman as the "George Smiley of international economics". [2]

Contents

Family background and education

The son of political scientist David Truman, Edwin Truman was awarded a BA from Amherst College in 1963, and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1976. In 1988 Amherst College awarded him an Honorary LL.D. [3]

Career

From 1977 to 1998 Truman directed the Division of International Finance at the Federal Reserve System

From 1983 to 1998 he was a staff economist for the Federal Open Market Committee.

In December 1998, President Bill Clinton, appointed Truman Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for International Affairs.

In 2001, he joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics as a Senior Fellow.

In 2009, he was recruited by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as a temporary advisor to develop policies for the April 2009 G-20 London summit [4]

Currently, he is on the advisory board of OMFIF where he writes various articles regarding the monetary and financial situation.

Policy work

Truman has been a member of many international organizations and working groups. He has been a member of:

Truman is a supporter of the IMF. [5] He has proposed a special, on-time allocation of $250bn in SDRs by donor member countries as a way of dramatically building confidence in co-operative solutions to the global recession and to persuade countries not to manage their exchange rates in order to build up foreign exchange surpluses. [6] He urged the G-20 'to commit to substantial and sustained actions for a period that matches the likely duration of the crisis'. Truman urged that IMF should enforce the coordinated plan, that it should keep a real-time, public scorecard identifying countries which are not doing their part. [4]

Advocacy

Truman has led international advocacy efforts to defend Andreas Georgiou, the former head of the Hellenic Statistical Authority who has been the target of multiple prosecutions and lawsuits. [7]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

International Monetary Fund International financial institution

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world." Formed in 1944, started on 27 December 1945, at the Bretton Woods Conference primarily by the ideas of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, it came into formal existence in 1945 with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international monetary system. It now plays a central role in the management of balance of payments difficulties and international financial crises. Countries contribute funds to a pool through a quota system from which countries experiencing balance of payments problems can borrow money. As of 2016, the fund had XDR 477 billion.

Paul Krugman American economist (born 1953)

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist and public intellectual, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman was the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. The Prize Committee cited Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity, by examining the effects of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.

Full-reserve banking is a system of banking where banks do not lend demand deposits and instead, only lend from time deposits. It differs from fractional-reserve banking, in which banks may lend funds on deposit, while fully reserved banks would be required to keep the full amount of each depositor's funds in cash, ready for immediate withdrawal on demand.

John Harold Williamson was a British-born economist who coined the term Washington Consensus. He served as a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 1981 until his retirement in 2012. During that time, he was the project director for the United Nations High-Level Panel on Financing for Development in 2001. He was also on leave as chief economist for South Asia at the World Bank during 1996–99, adviser to the International Monetary Fund from 1972 to 1974, and an economic consultant to the UK Treasury from 1968 to 1970. He was also an economics professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (1978–81), University of Warwick (1970–77), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of York (1963–68) and Princeton University (1962–63).

Nouriel Roubini American economist

Nouriel Roubini is an Iranian-American economist. He teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business and is chairman of Roubini Macro Associates LLC, an economic consultancy firm.

Impossible trinity Economic impossibility

The impossible trinity is a concept in international economics which states that it is impossible to have all three of the following at the same time:

A currency crisis is a situation in which serious doubt exists as to whether a country's central bank has sufficient foreign exchange reserves to maintain the country's fixed exchange rate. The crisis is often accompanied by a speculative attack in the foreign exchange market. A currency crisis results from chronic balance of payments deficits, and thus is also called a balance of payments crisis. Often such a crisis culminates in a devaluation of the currency.

International economics is concerned with the effects upon economic activity from international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the international institutions that affect them. It seeks to explain the patterns and consequences of transactions and interactions between the inhabitants of different countries, including trade, investment and transaction.

Latin American debt crisis Financial crisis during the 1970s and 1980s

The Latin American debt crisis was a financial crisis that originated in the early 1980s, often known as La Década Perdida, when Latin American countries reached a point where their foreign debt exceeded their earning power, and they were not able to repay it.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), previously known as the Institute for International Economics (IIE), is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by C. Fred Bergsten in 1981 and is currently led by Adam S. Posen. The institute conducts research, provides policy recommendations, and publishes books and articles on a wide range of topics related to the US economy and international economics.

Olivier Blanchard French economist and professor

Olivier Jean Blanchard is a French economist and professor who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He was the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund from September 1, 2008, to September 8, 2015. Blanchard was appointed to the position under the tenure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn; he was succeeded by Maurice Obstfeld. He also is a Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is one of the most cited economists in the world, according to IDEAS/RePEc.

Barry Eichengreen American economist

Barry Julian Eichengreen is an American economist who holds the title of George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. Eichengreen currently serves as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Capital controls are residency-based measures such as transaction taxes, other limits, or outright prohibitions that a nation's government can use to regulate flows from capital markets into and out of the country's capital account. These measures may be economy-wide, sector-specific, or industry specific. They may apply to all flows, or may differentiate by type or duration of the flow.

Maurice Obstfeld

Maurice Moses "Maury" Obstfeld is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and previously Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is Chairman of the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation of the German Federal Government. Additionally, he is part of the German National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Science and Engineering, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Humanities.

Guillermo Calvo Argentine-American economist

Guillermo Antonio Calvo is an Argentine-American economist who is Director of Columbia University's mid-career Program in Economic Policy Management in their School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

Stijn Claessens Dutch economist

Stijn Claessens is a Dutch economist who currently serves as the Head of Financial Stability Policy department of the Bank for International Settlements. He worked for fourteen years at World Bank beginning in 1987 until 2001 where he assumed various positions including that of Lead Economist. Following his tenure at the World Bank he became Professor of International Finance Policy at the University of Amsterdam where he remained for three years and still is on the faculty. Stijn has many distinguished academic publications and his work has been cited in many outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Washington Post and various other publications and he has appeared in several television programs.

Carmen Reinhart American economist

Carmen M. Reinhart is a Cuban-American economist and the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, Founding Contributor of VoxEU, and a member of Council on Foreign Relations. She is also a member of American Economic Association, Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, and the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. She became the subject of general news coverage when mathematical errors were found in a research paper she co-authored.

Adam Posen

Adam Simon Posen is an American economist and President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He became President of the Peterson Institute on January 1, 2013, having first joined PIIE in July 1997. Under his leadership, the Peterson Institute has been named the top think tank in international economics by the Prospect Think Tank Awards and in the UPenn Global Go To Think Tank Index.

International lender of last resort (ILLR) is a facility prepared to act when no other lender is capable or willing to lend in sufficient volume to provide or guarantee liquidity in order to avert a sovereign debt crisis or a systemic crisis. No effective international lender of last resort currently exists.

Enrica Detragiache is the head of the Germany Desk of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the assistant director of the IMF's European division. She formerly taught Economics at Johns Hopkins University, and has published over 71 research papers and articles. Her research covers topics such as labour migration, financial crises, development economics, and corporate finance.

References

  1. "Peterson Institute for International Economics Biography: Edwin M. Truman". Institute for International Economics. 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-07.
  2. Krugman, Paul (2009-03-06). "The Truman Doctrine". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-07.
  3. 8th Symposium: In Search of a Stable Currency System in the 21st Century held December 6, 1999, Tokyo Accessed 4 April 2009
  4. 1 2 Phillips, Michael M. (2009-03-14). "Geithner Hires a Seasoned 'Temp'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  5. "Obama's arrival shifts US view of IMF". AFP (Google). 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  6. "How the Fund can help save the world economy". Financial Times. 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  7. "Social media campaign launched in support of former ELSTAT chief". ekathimerini. September 22, 2020.