Henry C. Wallich

Henry C. Wallich became a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on March 8, 1974. He served until his resignation on December 15, 1986.

Wallich was born in Berlin, Germany in 1914. He was educated at Munich University in Germany, at Oxford University in England (1932–35), and at Harvard University, where he earned a doctorate in economics in 1944.

Wallich was in the export business in Argentina and Chile and was a securities analyst in New York City from 1933 to 1940. His association with the Federal Reserve System began in 1941, when he joined the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. From 1946 to 1951, he was chief of the Reserve Bank’s Foreign Research Division. He left to take a position as professor of economics at Yale University (1951–70), where he was later named Seymour H. Knox Professor of Economics (1970–74). He took leave from Yale on two occasions: first when he served from 1958 to 1959 as an assistant to Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson and then from 1959 to 1961 as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Wallich served as a senior consultant to the Treasury from 1969 until his appointment to the Board of Governors. He also served on the Advisory Board of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1972–73), as US representative of the United Nations Experts Panel on Economic Consequences of the Arms Race (1971–72), and as a member of the Research Advisory Board of the Committee for Economic Development.

During his time at the Board of Governors, Wallich was known as a leading authority in international finance. Then-Chairman Paul Volcker called him “an inflation fighter, deeply committed to the need for currency and financial stability.”

In 1981 and 1982, Wallich was a member of the Gold Commission established by Congress. He was a former director of a number of business firms and wrote as an editorialist or columnist for the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine. Wallich's published works include five books:  Monetary Policy and Practice (1982); The Cost of Freedom (1960); Mainsprings of the German Revival (1955); Public Finances of a Developing Country (1951); and Monetary Problems of an Export Economy (1950).

Wallich was a member of the American Economic Association, the American Finance Association, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Wallich died in 1988.

Written by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. See disclaimer.