Prof. Stanley Fischer has died aged 81. One of the world’s most outstanding economic figures, Fischer served as Governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013. To take on the role he immigrated to Israel and took on Israeli citizenship.
As head of Israel’s central bank he helped Israel emerge relatively unscathed from the 2008 global financial crisis with a sharp cut in the interest rate, quantitative easement and large purchases of foreign currency, which helped protect Israeli exports.
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“Globes” chose Fischer as the Israeli economy’s man of the year in 2010. In 2014 he returned to the US and was appointed by President Barack Obama as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, where he served until 2017. In recent years he also served for a short period on the board of directors of Bank Hapoalim.
Fischer was born in 1943 in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, which became Zambia when it gained its independence. He received degrees in Economics from the London School of Economics before completing his Ph.D. as MIT in 1969, under the mentorship of Nobel Prize winners Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow. A professor at MIT, he also served as a guest researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He served as an advisor to the Israeli government in the 1980s in helping to cope with and cut three-digit annual inflation. In 1994 Fischer was appointed deputy head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and after that as deputy chairman of Citibank.
Fischer is survived by three children and nine grandchildren.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on June 1, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.
