Arthur Burns

From Grokipedia

Arthur F. Burns in 1955 Arthur F. Burns (April 27, 1904 – June 26, 1987) was an Austrian-born American economist and statistician who immigrated to the United States at age ten and became a leading authority on business cycles. He earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Columbia University and held professorships there and at Rutgers University while directing research at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In public service, Burns chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1956, advising on policies to sustain postwar expansion without severe recession.

Appointed by President Richard Nixon, Burns served two terms as the tenth Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from February 1, 1970, to March 8, 1978, navigating the economy through recession, oil shocks, and the onset of stagflation. During his tenure, inflation averaged over 7 percent annually, which Burns attributed partly to non-monetary factors like wage-price spirals and supply disruptions rather than solely excessive money growth, leading him to favor fiscal and administrative measures alongside monetary restraint. Critics, including later economists, faulted him for accommodating expansionary policies influenced by White House pressures, particularly easing credit before the 1972 election, which exacerbated inflationary expectations. Later, under President Ronald Reagan, he served as U.S. Ambassador to West Germany from 1981 to 1985.

In brief

Arthur Burns was an economist’s economist: cycles, data, the National Bureau’s patient charts. Eisenhower made him a White House adviser; Nixon later gave him the Fed, the job that turns theory into interest rates.

The 1970s were a hard decade to own a central bank. He left for diplomacy in Bonn, a scholar who had already done the two tours Washington asks of its favorite macroeconomists.