September 24, 2022 — The dollar is sky-high. Since May 2021, it has risen 19 % against Europe’s euro, even reaching 1-to-1 parity in recent weeks. The dollar has appreciated 20 % against Britain’s pound. And it is up 28 % against Japan’s yen, provoking the Bank of Japan to sell dollars on September 22, essentially the first foreign exchange intervention by a G-7 country since 2011 and the first in the direction of supporting a currency’s value against the dollar since the euro in 2000.
April 24, 2021 — A generation of great international economists is passing from the scene. Richard Cooper died on December 23. An American, he was teaching his classes at Harvard until the very end. Robert Mundell, passed away on April 4. Originally Canadian, he was a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. And John Williamson, on April 11. Originally British, he had been the first scholar hired by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
December 24, 2020 — Richard N. Cooper (Dick), who passed away Wednesday evening at the age of 86, was always young for his age. Jim Tobin once told me a story from when Dick was a senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (1961-63). He used to bring his bicycle into his office at the Old Executive Office Building. As I remember the story, President Kennedy remarked that apparently a high school student worked at the CEA!
As recently as a year ago, Dick was still riding his bicycle around Cambridge. I would join his wonderful (and young!) family on weekend bike rides along the Charles River.