Wednesday, April 28, 2010

25 Days

The TA - 25 is the Tel Aviv 25 index, a list of 25 stocks traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Its been consistently rising for several months now. It is notable that Israel's economy, in spite of how closely linked the sheqel is to the dollar, has weathered the global financial crisis beautifully. If I had to pin that on the guy, it'd be Stanley Fischer.

Stan Fischer was born in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1943, and got some fancy econ degrees at a little place called LSE (the London School of Economics) is the top university in the world for its field), and got his PhD from MIT, where he taught for several years and wrote two textbooks. His connection to America? Let's put it this way, when Ben Bernanke, our Fed chairman, was worrying sick over meeting deadlines for his thesis advisor, that advisor putting the fear of God into Bernanke was none other than Stanley Fischer. He also strongly influenced the prominent conservative economist Greg Mankiw.

He served for two years as Vice President of the World Bank and their Chief Economist. He was also the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (if these names mean nothing to you, let me put it this way: this guy's got a resume that'd make most Nobel Prize winning economists jealous).

So what does this genius do now? He is Governor of the Bank of Israel. America's Federal Reserve Chairman's college thesis advisor is Israel's national bank governor! Amusing, no? And, it seems, the master has performed as admirably in old age as he did when teaching his student. As mentioned, the TA-25, along with the rest of the Israeli stock market, continues to grow. Businesses are booming; new startups are being bought up by American companies all the time (as you can read about in Dan Senor's new bestseller, Start-Up Nation, an excellent book detailing the miracle that is the Israeli economy).

Fischer joins a venerable list of brilliant field leaders (much like the chemist Chaim Weizmann) who have opted to use their prodigious talents for the good of the Jewish people in their own state. He speaks perfect Hebrew, of course.

The Parade is AROUND the corner and at our highly anticipated falafel contest, which will take place on Friday, May 21st, we will set a Guinness Book Record for the largest falafel in the world... How cool!

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