Sat 8 Sep 2007
Ned Gramlich ‘61 died last week.
Edward M. Gramlich, a former governor of the Federal Reserve who warned of a looming crisis in home mortgages and who ran a federal board created to aid the airlines after the September 2001 attacks, died yesterday in Washington. He was 68.
Mr. Gramlich’s death, from acute myeloid leukemia, was announced by the Urban Institute, a Washington research organization where Mr. Gramlich was a senior fellow.
He was named to the Federal Reserve by President Bill Clinton in 1997 and served until 2005.
“His contributions to the Federal Reserve were broad and significant,” Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said in a statement yesterday.
As chairman of the federal Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, he urged legislators to better protect consumers against predatory lenders and to toughen regulation of mortgage lenders and banks.
His efforts met resistance within the Fed and on Capitol Hill, and he said later that he could have pushed for reform sooner.
In June, the Urban Institute published his book, “Subprime Mortgages: America’s Latest Boom and Bust,” which offered solutions for the mortgage crisis.
Read the whole obituary, along with ones from the Washington Post and the LA Times.
After resigning from the Fed in 2005, Dr. Gramlich became interim provost at the University of Michigan and then a senior fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, where he focused his work on community development, affordable housing and entitlement issues. The institute’s president, Robert D. Reischauer, once said of him: “Ned is to the policy community what an Olympic gold medal decathlete is to the world of sports.”
The College has, I believe, awarded Bicentennial Medals posthumously. We should award one to Gramlich. He was the most powerful Eph policymaker of his generation.
Condolences to all.
September 8th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Instead of just “I believe,” name one.
September 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
“The College has, I believe, awarded Bicentennial Medals posthumously. We should award one to Gramlich. He was the most powerful Eph policymaker of his generation.”
Man, I don’t know. There have been some very powerfull eph policy makers out there. I guess it depends on what you mean. The Fed is powerfull, but there are Eph polticians that have done a ton of work on public policy … lawyers as well. A lot of powerfull people have gone to Williams Colege, that is for sure. I’d say that this statement is a reach.
Too bad he is gone. Sounds like a very interesting man. One who was willing to call a spade a spade.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
I think Ned Gramlich is an example of a relatively common class of Williams graduate: a person who informally wields a great deal of power within a certain area or profession but never gets headlines in Time, Newsweek, or The New York Times. Other examples would be Arthur Levitt (former Chairman of the SEC), Richard Helms (former head of the CIA), Toby Cosgrove (head of the Cleveland Clinic), Bud Bailyn (Professor Emeritus at Harvard), Leonard K. Eaton (Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan), and many, many others.
When you mention these names to anyone in their chosen profession, they know who you’re talking about and often talk about them in glowing terms, as if only they know how good these Williams grads are. Terms they often use when describing them include “smart, thinks outside the box, tells it like it is, sense of humor, well-rounded, gets things done and lets others take the credit.” Their colleagues respect them, not only for their knowledge and capabilities, but for a certain grace of style. They get stuff done without being bombastic about it. They aren’t Larry Summers, for example.
This may be me over-romanticizing things, but I’ve always thought that a teenager secure enough to got to a really good college in the middle of nowhere that is not recognized by the general public (certainly not like Harvard or Yale) has a good chance of becoming a smart adult who gets stuff down without jumping up and down and saying, “Look at me.”
September 9th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
WSJ had a half-a-page obituary on Gramlich this weekend. Oddly, they did not mention that he went to Williams (they just said he got a PhD from Yale).