William Poole is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Senior Advisor to Merk Investments and, as of fall 2008, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of Delaware.
Prior to joining Cato, Poole was the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He directed the activities of the bank's head office in St. Louis, as well as its three branches in Little Rock, Ark., Louisville, Ky., and Memphis, Tenn. In addition, he represented the Bank on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Federal Reserve's chief monetary policymaking body.
Before that, Poole was Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University. He served on the Brown faculty from 1974 to 1998 and the faculty of The Johns Hopkins University from 1963 to 1969. Between these two university positions, he was senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington. He was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the first Reagan administration, from 1982 to 1985.
Poole has engaged in a wide range of professional activities, including publishing numerous papers in professional journals. He has published two books, Money and the Economy: A Monetarist View, in 1978, and Principles of Economics, in 1991. During his 10 years at the St. Louis Fed, he gave over 150 speeches on a variety of topics. In 1980-81, he was a visiting economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia and in 1991, Bank Mees and Hope Visiting Professor of Economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. At various times, he served on advisory boards of the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York, and the Congressional Budget Office.
Poole attended Swarthmore College, receiving an AB degree in 1959. He received MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago in 1963 and 1966, respectively. Swarthmore honored him with a Doctor of Laws degree in 1989.
Media Contact: 202-789-5200
To Book a Speaking Engagement: 202-789-5226
"Responding to Financial Crises: What Role for the Fed?," Cato Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, Spring/Summer 2007.
"A Monetary History from a Policymaker's Perspective," Cato Journal, vol. 23, no. 3, Winter 2004.
"Is Inflation Too Low?," Cato Journal, vol. 18, no. 3, Winter 1999.
"Treasury Has No Authority to Coerce the Banks," The Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2008
"Improving the Rescue Plan," Orange County Register, October 2, 2008
"Too Big to Fail, or to Survive," The New York Times, July 27, 2008
"Market Bailouts and the "Fed Put"," November 30, 2007 [Policy Forum]
"24th Annual Monetary Conference: Federal Reserve Policy in the Face of Crises," November 16, 2006 [Conference]
"The Fed's Monetary Policy Rule," October 14, 2005 [Policy Forum]
"A More Opaque Fed?" featuring William Poole, November 19, 2008 [Flash Audio, 07:29]
William Poole discusses the bailout on Federal News Radio October 15, 2008 [Flash Audio, 11:28]
"Searching for Plan B" featuring William Poole, October 8, 2008 [Flash Audio, 07:12]
"Financial Crisis: We Need a Plan B" featuring William Poole, October 6, 2008 [Flash Audio, 06:03]
William Poole participates in a "Credit and Loan Industry Practices" panel on CSPAN October 6, 2008 [Flash Video, 15:54]