Ex-RBI governor Raghuram Rajan to next head US Federal Reserve?
Former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, makes for an ideal candidate to head the US Federal Reserve, says international financial magazine Barron's. "If sports teams can recruit the best talent from around the globe, why not central banks?" questions the magazine, pitching Rajan's candidature. The tenure of the current Federal Reserve chief, Janet Yellen, will expire in April 2018.
Rajan is often credited for predicting the 2008 global recession three years before it hit, besides successfully managing inflation, boosting stock prices and stabilizing the Indian rupee. At 40, he became the youngest person to be appointed as the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He served as RBI's chief from 2013 to 2016. Currently, he teaches finance at the University of Chicago.
The Barron's article laments that despite his solid achievements, Rajan's being ignored as a probable candidate to head the American central bank. Calling him "a lonely but prescient voice warning of a financial crisis years before it hit," the article calls it a shame that Rajan should be mentioned as a possible Nobel laureate in economics but not be pitched for the Fed post.
Donald Trump recently said that he had the list of candidates "down to two or three people." Though he called Janet Yellen "very impressive," he's likely to give her a pass, becoming the first president in 40 years to not retain the incumbent Fed chair.
The NDA government didn't take Rajan (who was appointed by the UPA) being at the helm of affairs very well after coming to power in 2014. Unsurprisingly, Rajan was denied a second term. Last year, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy notably wrote to PM Modi asking him to sack Rajan because he was "mentally not fully Indian" and had deliberately "wrecked the Indian economy."
