Alan Blinder

Alan Stuart Blinder (1st syllable rhymes with "blind") (born October 14, 1945) is an American economist. He serves at Princeton University as the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in the Economics Department and as vice-chairman of The Observatory Group. He founded Princeton's Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies in 1990. Since 1978 he has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also a co-founder and a vice chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network, LLC. Blinder is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc, and is "considered one of the great economic minds of his generation."He served on President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers (July 27, 1993 – June 26, 1994), and as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from June 27, 1994, to January 31, 1996. Blinder's recent academic work has focused particularly on monetary policy and central banking, as well as the "offshoring" of jobs, and his writing for lay audiences has been published primarily but not exclusively in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, where he now writes a regular monthly op-ed column. Regarding the 2008 near-meltdown of major financial institutions, Blinder drew ten lessons for fellow economists, including: "It can happen here," "Fraud and near-fraud can rise to attain macroeconomic significance," "Excessive complexity is not just anti-competitive, it's dangerous," and "Go-for-broke incentives will induce traders to go for broke."