William Poole (Federal Reserve Bank president)

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Dr. William Poole (born June 19, 1937) was the the eleventh chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He took office on March 23, 1998 and began serving his full term on March 1, 2001. In 2007, he served as a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, bringing his District's perspective to policy discussions in Washington. Poole stepped down from the fed on March 31, 2008.

[edit] Biography

Dr. Poole was born on June 19, 1937, in Wilmington, Delaware. He received an A.B. degree in 1959 from Swarthmore College and an M.B.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1966, both from the University of Chicago. Swarthmore honored him with a Doctor of Laws degree in 1989.

Dr. Poole began his career at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 1964 and worked as a senior economist there from 1969 to 1974. In 1974, he joined the faculty at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, twice served as chairman of the economics department, and for five years directed the university's Center for the Study of Financial Markets and Institutions. He was the Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics there when he joined the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Throughout his career, Dr. Poole has served as a visiting scholar and an adviser at numerous institutions. From 1970 to 1990 he was a member of, and became senior adviser to, the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity, and from 1982 to 1985, he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and a member of the Academic Advisory Panels of the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Boston. From 1985 until his appointment to the St. Louis Bank, Dr. Poole was an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee. From 1989 to 1995, he served on the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Advisors. In addition, he has been an adviser and consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and a visiting economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Dr. Poole wrote Money and the Economy: A Monetarist View, published in 1978, as well as numerous scholarly papers in professional journals, and he was co-author of Principles of Economics, published in 1991.

Dr. Poole is a director of United Way of Greater St. Louis and member of the Webster University Board of Trustees. He was a member of the Chancellor's Council of the University of Missouri-St. Louis 1999-2003.