William White (economist)

Last updated

William R. White
Born1943 (age 80–81)
Kenora, Ontario, Canada
Years active1969-2018
Organizations
Academic career
Alma mater

William R. White (born 1943) is a Canadian economist who was the chairman of the Economic and Development Review Committee at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2009 to 2018. He is famous for flagging the wild behaviour in the debt markets before the global storm hit in 2008 (the Great Recession). [1] In 2009, Dirk Bezemer, a Professor of Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that White was one of the earliest to have predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

Contents

Biography

Born in Kenora, Ontario, Canada, he was educated at the University of Windsor and the University of Manchester. In 1969, he began his career as an economist at the Bank of England, the central bank of the United Kingdom. In 1972 he joined the Bank of Canada, the central bank of Canada, where he spent 22 years. His first six years at the Bank of Canada were with the Department of Banking and Financial Analysis, first as an economist and finally as Deputy Chief. In 1978, White became Deputy Chief of the Research Department and was made Chief of the Department in 1979. He was appointed Adviser to the Governor in 1984 and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada in September 1988. [2]

In 1994, he joined the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Swiss-based bank of central banks, as manager in the Monetary and Economic Department. From May 1995 to June 2008, he served as its Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department. He retired from the BIS on 30 June 2008. [3]

He predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis before the subprime mortgage crisis. [4] In 2009, Dirk Bezemer, a Professor of Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that White was one of the earliest to have predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis. [5] He was one of the critics of Alan Greenspan's theory of the role of Monetary Policy as early as 1996. He challenged the former Federal Reserve chairman's view that central bankers cannot effectively slow the causes of asset bubbles. On 28 August 2003, White made his argument directly to Greenspan, at the Kansas City Fed's annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. White recommended to "raise interest rates when credit expands too fast and force banks to build up cash cushions in fat times to use in lean years." [6] Greenspan was unconvinced that this would work and said: "There has never been an instance, of which I'm aware, that leaning against the wind was successfully done." [7]

In October 2009 he was appointed chairman of the Economic and Development Review Committee at the OECD in Paris. This committee carries on regular evaluations of the policies of both member countries and aspiring members of the OECD. In his capacity as chairman, he also contributed to meetings of WP1 and the Economic Policy Committee of the OECD. He retired from that position in March 2018. He was also a member of the Issing Commission, advising the German chancellor on G-20 issues. White has published articles on topics related to monetary and financial stability as well as the process of international cooperation in these areas. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Greenspan</span> American economist and financial advisor

Alan Greenspan is an American economist who served as the 13th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. He worked as a private adviser and provided consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mervyn King, Baron King of Lothbury</span> British economist (born 1948)

Mervyn Allister King, Baron King of Lothbury is a British economist and public servant who served as the Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013. He is a School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He is also the Chairman of the Philharmonia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Blinder</span> American economist (born 1945)

Alan Stuart Blinder is an American economics professor at Princeton University and is listed among the most influential economists in the world. He is a leading macro-economist, politically liberal, and a champion of Keynesian economics and policies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen S. Roach</span> American economist

Stephen Samuel Roach is an American economist. He serves as senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and a senior lecturer at the Yale School of Management. He was formerly chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, and chief economist at Morgan Stanley, the New York City-based investment bank.

Basel II is the second of the Basel Accords, which are recommendations on banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. It is now extended and partially superseded by Basel III.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Bernanke</span> American economist (born 1953)

Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist who served as the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014. After leaving the Federal Reserve, he was appointed a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the 2007–2008 financial crisis, for which he was named the 2009 Time Person of the Year. Before becoming Federal Reserve chairman, Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the Department of Economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave. Bernanke was awarded the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, jointly with Douglas Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig, "for research on banks and financial crises", more specifically for his analysis of the Great Depression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raghuram Rajan</span> Indian economist and former governor of Reserve Bank of India

Raghuram Govind Rajan is an Indian economist and the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Between 2003 and 2006 he was Chief Economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund. From September 2013 through September 2016 he was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. In 2015, during his tenure at the RBI, he became the Vice-Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dean Baker</span> American economist (born 1958)

Dean Baker is an American macroeconomist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) with Mark Weisbrot. Baker has been credited as one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–08 United States housing bubble.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avinash Persaud</span>

Avinash D. Persaud is emeritus Professor of Gresham College in the UK. He was the Chairman of Intelligence Capital Ltd., a company specializing in analyzing, managing and creating financial liquidity in investment projects and portfolios. He was also the non-Executive Chairman of the London-based Elara Capital, an investment bank. Persaud was a Non-resident Senior Fellow of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, Executive Fellow of London Business School and Senior Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Research Institute and Head of its Barbados office.

Malcolm D. Knight is a Canadian economist, policymaker and banker. He is currently Visiting Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation. From 2008 to 2012, Knight was Vice Chairman of Deutsche Bank Group where he was responsible for developing and coordinating the bank's global approach to issues in financial regulation, supervision, and financial stability. He served as general manager of the Bank for International Settlements from 2003 to 2008 and as Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada (1999-2003), after holding senior positions at the International Monetary Fund (1975-1999).

Jakob Brøchner Madsen is an economist, professor and former financial analyst and deputy chief economist. He was one of few economists who predicted the IT bubble in 2001 and the housing bubble in 2006 and the global financial crisis. In 2006 he and Jens Kjaer Sørensen wrote: "The bursting of this housing bubble will have a severe impact on the world economy and may even result in a recession."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Recession</span> Global economic decline from 2007 to 2009

The Great Recession was a period of market decline in economies around the world that occurred in the late 2000s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression. One result was a serious disruption of normal international relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Harrison (author)</span> British author

Fred Harrison is a British author, economist, economic commentator, and corporate policy advisor, notable for his stances on land reform and belief that an overreliance on land, property, and mortgages weakens economic structures and makes companies vulnerable to economic collapse. Dirk Bezemer, a professor of economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that Harrison was one of the earliest to have predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In 2005 Harrison commented: "The next property market tipping point is due at end of 2007 or early 2008 ... The only way prices can be brought back to affordable levels is a slump or recession.”

A global saving glut is a situation in which desired saving exceeds desired investment. By 2005 Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, expressed concern about the "significant increase in the global supply of saving" and its implications for monetary policies, particularly in the United States. Although Bernanke's analyses focused on events in 2003 to 2007 that led to the 2007–2009 financial crisis, regarding GSG countries and the United States, excessive saving by the non-financial corporate sector (NFCS) is an ongoing phenomenon, affecting many countries. Bernanke's global saving glut (GSG) hypothesis argued that increased capital inflows to the United States from GSG countries were an important reason that U.S. longer-term interest rates from 2003 to 2007 were lower than expected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wynne Godley</span> British economist

Wynne Godley was an economist famous for his pessimism about the British economy and his criticism of the British government. In 2007, he and Marc Lavoie wrote a book about the "Stock-Flow Consistent" model, an analysis that predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Dirk Bezemer argues that Godley was notable for predicting the nature of the Great Recession of the late 2000s well in advance, and for doing so on the basis of a formal model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2007–2008 financial crisis</span> Worldwide economic crisis

The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or the global financial crisis (GFC), was the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression. Predatory lending in the form of subprime mortgages targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, a continuous buildup of toxic assets within banks, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm", which led to the Great Recession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klaas Knot</span> Dutch economist (born 1967)

Klaas Henderikus Willem Knot is a Dutch economist and central banker who is the current President of the Dutch central bank De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). In this capacity he serves as a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB), as well as of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Knot also holds a position as Professor in Monetary Stability at the University of Amsterdam and honorary professor at the University of Groningen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pier Carlo Padoan</span> Italian economist (born 1950)

Pier Carlo Padoan is an Italian economist who served as Minister of Economy and Finance of Italy from 2014 to 2018.

Már Guðmundsson is an Icelandic economist and policy maker. He was the Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland from 2009 to 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dirk Bezemer</span> Dutch economist

Dirk Bezemer is a Dutch economist who is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He studied at Wageningen University and University of Amsterdam & Tinbergen Institute. His topics of expertise include the financial sector, credit creation, credit cycles, monetary policy, and the cause of economic crises. Bezemer provides commentary at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and De Groene Amsterdammer. In a September 2009 opinion piece in the Financial Times he wrote that a dozen economists whom he listed had seen the 2007–2008 financial crisis coming for years, but were ignored.

References

  1. ↑ Bartz, Tim; Hesse, Martin (7 September 2018). "Schlimmer als Lehmann Brothers: Topökonom warnt vor nächster Finanzkrise" – via Spiegel Online.
  2. ↑ "William White"
  3. ↑ "Interview with William R. White | Yale School of Management". Som.yale.edu. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  4. ↑ Balzli, Beat; Schiessl, Michaela (8 July 2009). "The Man Nobody Wanted to Hear: Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  5. ↑ Quoted in Bezemer, Dirk (16 June 2009). ""No One Saw This Coming": Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models" (PDF). uni-muenchen.de. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 April 2015. Abstracted at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15892/.
  6. ↑ White v. Greenspan Archived 2020-01-11 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ John Mauldin. "Secular Versus Cyclical: Notes from the 2015 Strategic Investment Conference". Forbes.com. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  8. ↑ "Mr. White discusses promoting international financial stability: the role of the BIS"
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.