As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maneuvers to put together an expansive governing coalition by handing out ministries and portfolios to a diverse group of political partners, he has a lot of mouths to feed. Not only will there be several party heads looking for placement in the next government, but Netanyahu also has at least one high-profile politician to whom he may owe a commensurate rank in Avigdor Lieberman, and one he probably hoped to have a place for in recently retired Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Yet in Israel, where I spent the last week, there is another name that comes up that commands more respect and curiosity than all the others: Stanley Fischer.
Fischer announced in January that he would be leaving his job as the head of Israel’s central bank earlier than expected. The Israeli press is normally a tough crowd, but Fischer has earned rare and almost universal praise from the Israeli fourth estate for successfully guiding the Israeli economy through the global downturn while many Western and OECD economies continued to struggle. He is often regarded as the adult in the room and was one of the most influential economics professors in U.S. history during his time at MIT. And now, if you listen to the chatter, he can be anything he wants: chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve or even president of Israel (let alone foreign minister, a post he appears to actually covet but which, for political reasons, would ironically be more difficult to attain than the others).
