Will the mentor replace the student? A Washington Post blogger has fueled rumors that outgoing Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer may replace current Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who is slated to step down in 2014. Bernanke was a student of Fischer's at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. In his blog on Friday, Dylan Matthews wrote a piece headed, "Stanley Fischer saved Israel's economy. Can he save America's-" He wrote that at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, an annual conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, that began on Aug. 31, 2012, Bernanke asked, "Do you know what everyone at this table has in common? They all had Stan Fischer as their thesis adviser." According to Matthews, "No Western country weathered the 2008-09 financial crisis better [than Israel]." Matthews noted that while it would be unprecedented for the Federal Reserve position to go to a non-U.S. native (in fact, former Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur F. Burns was born in Eastern Europe), the central banking community is a global one, an example of such being Britain's decision in November to appoint current Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to be the next governor of the Bank of England.
