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In RealTime posts, PIIE senior staff and colleagues discuss the fast-moving economic news, financial developments, and public policy choices confronting the United States and the world.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently said that Chinese currency manipulation “is blocking what might be a more normal recovery process.” In fact, the problem goes beyond China to include many other emerging economies and even a few advanced economies. Altogether, governments in these economies are spending about $1.5 trillion per year on currency manipulation. [...]
I had the privilege to work with Mike for close to nine exciting and fulfilling years. Mike made the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) relevant and respected, both inside and outside the Fund. Above all, he gave meaning to the Economic Counselor role by fulfilling his duties with incisive analyses and policy [...]
I have been a close friend of Michael Mussa for over twenty years. When Mike joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Economic Counselor and Director of Research in 1991, I was his deputy. When I left the Fund in 1994, he and I stayed in frequent contact, including socially. And when Mike left the [...]
The euro area crisis and debate over fiscal reform have led many observers to pray for salvation by a modern, European version of Alexander Hamilton. By this they generally mean someone capable of leading a movement for a robust fiscal union and implementing this vision (see for example McKinnon 2011). Europe has instead, they lament, [...]
I had the chance to meet Mike Mussa personally when I was working at the International Monetary Fund as senior advisor to the Executive Director from Italy in the mid-nineties. His periodic presentations on the world monetary and exchange rate outlook at the board meetings were the most thrilling and intellectually exciting event on the [...]
I had known Mike from professional meetings for a long time, but I really only got to know him well when we both joined the Peterson Institute(or IIE as it was then). As the Institute moved into the new building, Mike and I were two members of the “aging macro group” that lined the back [...]
Events remain unsettled in the euro area in 2012 in spite of some recent progress toward stabilizing the fiscal and financial outlook. To begin with, negotiations between the Greek government and private creditors represented by the Institute for International Finance (IIF) have been suspended as they enter the final critical phase, with each side considering [...]
I was privileged to know Mike Mussa for almost 25 years. We met when he joined the Council of Economic Advisers in the mid-1980s. I first began to encounter him regularly up close and personal during the early 1990s when, as the economic counselor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he participated in meetings of [...]
Michael Mussa cared immensely for the International Monetary Fund and fought hard to ensure its independence from individual shareholders’ interests. He combined clear thinking, eloquence, and ready wit with amazing effectiveness. To me and many of his staff who worked closely with him, he was the kindest man who made us laugh constantly and who [...]
I first met Mike Mussa in 1976 when we were both at the London School of Economics—he was visiting from Chicago for a year. His brilliance and sense of humor were clearly evident then, and only became sharper over the course of time. Later, in 1991, he became my boss in the Research Department at [...]