Stanley Fischer, economic and central banking titan, dies at 81

Axios

02-06-2025

Stanley Fischer's resume as a top policymaker was remarkable. But it was his intellectual leadership and mentorship that made him a unique force in the last four decades of global economic policy.
The big picture: Fischer, a titan of economics and central banking who died this weekend at age 81, mentored generations of top economists and policymakers in his decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He trained them on a school of economic thought that was intellectually rigorous — but hardly confined to abstract theory. Fischer's approach offered practical answers for policymakers navigating a recession or crisis.
His mentees included eventual Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, current Bank of Japan governor Kazuo Ueda — just the start of a who's who list of modern economic policy.
Fischer served in major leadership roles himself. He was the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund (1994-2001) and the Federal Reserve (2014-2017), as well as governor of the Bank of Israel (2005-2013).
Flashback: Fischer guided the IMF through the East Asian crises of the late 1990s, seeking to balance rescues of indebted nations with demands that they reform their domestic economies as a condition of aid.
While those reforms' results were painful at the time, affected countries — including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea — boomed in the ensuing decade.
As head of Israel's central bank, he guided the nation through the Global Financial Crisis, which it weathered better than most countries.