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Lauchlin Currie
Lauchlin Bernard Currie (8 October 1902 – 23 December 1993) was a Canadian economist best known for being President Franklin Roosevelt's chief economic advisor during World War II.
After Roosevelt's death, he led the first World Bank survey mission to Colombia and eventually settled there for the rest of his life, becoming an economic advisor to the Colombian government. This permanent relocation was not entirely voluntarily, as the U.S. had refused to renew his passport in 1954. This refusal was ostensibly because he was married to a non-US citizen and residing abroad, but was possibly influenced by the fact Currie had been named as a Soviet spy by two Soviet defectors and in nine partially decrypted Venona cables sent by Soviet agents. He was never charged with a crime related to espionage or security violations; debate remains[citation needed] whether he knowingly collaborated with agents of the Soviet Union.
Currie was born on 8 October 1902 in West Dublin, Nova Scotia, to Lauchlin Bernard Currie, an operator of a fleet of merchant ships, and Alice Eisenhauer Currie, a schoolteacher. After his father died in 1906, his family moved to nearby Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, where he was educated in the local schools.
Currie had begun to demonstrate studious habits (like reading late into the night) by the time his family moved to Massachusetts, but he drove automobiles "with his foot on the floor board" for relaxation. He also attended school in California, where he had relatives.
From 1920 to 1922, Currie attended St. Francis Xavier University before transferring to the London School of Economics to study under Edwin Cannan, Hugh Dalton, Arthur Lyon Bowley, and Harold Laski. After graduating with a BSc in 1925, he enrolled at Harvard University to study under Allyn Abbott Young, who ironically left in 1927 for the LSE (then died from influenza in 1929). Young remained an influence, however, and Currie's final paper—on Youngian endogenous growth theory—was posthumously published in 1997. Currie graduated with a PhD in 1931, and his dissertation on banking theory was supervised by John H. Williams.
Currie remained at Harvard until 1934 as a teaching assistant to John H. Williams, Ralph George Hawtrey, and Joseph Schumpeter, and one of his students was Paul Sweezy.
In a January 1932 memorandum on anti-Depression policy, Currie and fellow instructors Harry Dexter White and Paul Theodore Ellsworth urged large fiscal deficits coupled with open market operations to expand bank reserves, as well as the lifting of tariffs and the relief of interallied debts.
In 1934, Currie constructed the first money supply and income velocity series for the United States. He blamed the government's "commercial loan theory" of banking for monetary tightening in mid-1929, when the economy was already declining, and then for its passivity during the next four years in the face of mass liquidations and bank failures. Instead, he advocated control of the money supply to stabilize income and expenditures. He cited his colleague and covert Soviet agent Abraham George Silverman for his "many helpful suggestions and criticisms" in the formation of this line of thinking.
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Lauchlin Currie
Lauchlin Bernard Currie (8 October 1902 – 23 December 1993) was a Canadian economist best known for being President Franklin Roosevelt's chief economic advisor during World War II.
After Roosevelt's death, he led the first World Bank survey mission to Colombia and eventually settled there for the rest of his life, becoming an economic advisor to the Colombian government. This permanent relocation was not entirely voluntarily, as the U.S. had refused to renew his passport in 1954. This refusal was ostensibly because he was married to a non-US citizen and residing abroad, but was possibly influenced by the fact Currie had been named as a Soviet spy by two Soviet defectors and in nine partially decrypted Venona cables sent by Soviet agents. He was never charged with a crime related to espionage or security violations; debate remains[citation needed] whether he knowingly collaborated with agents of the Soviet Union.
Currie was born on 8 October 1902 in West Dublin, Nova Scotia, to Lauchlin Bernard Currie, an operator of a fleet of merchant ships, and Alice Eisenhauer Currie, a schoolteacher. After his father died in 1906, his family moved to nearby Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, where he was educated in the local schools.
Currie had begun to demonstrate studious habits (like reading late into the night) by the time his family moved to Massachusetts, but he drove automobiles "with his foot on the floor board" for relaxation. He also attended school in California, where he had relatives.
From 1920 to 1922, Currie attended St. Francis Xavier University before transferring to the London School of Economics to study under Edwin Cannan, Hugh Dalton, Arthur Lyon Bowley, and Harold Laski. After graduating with a BSc in 1925, he enrolled at Harvard University to study under Allyn Abbott Young, who ironically left in 1927 for the LSE (then died from influenza in 1929). Young remained an influence, however, and Currie's final paper—on Youngian endogenous growth theory—was posthumously published in 1997. Currie graduated with a PhD in 1931, and his dissertation on banking theory was supervised by John H. Williams.
Currie remained at Harvard until 1934 as a teaching assistant to John H. Williams, Ralph George Hawtrey, and Joseph Schumpeter, and one of his students was Paul Sweezy.
In a January 1932 memorandum on anti-Depression policy, Currie and fellow instructors Harry Dexter White and Paul Theodore Ellsworth urged large fiscal deficits coupled with open market operations to expand bank reserves, as well as the lifting of tariffs and the relief of interallied debts.
In 1934, Currie constructed the first money supply and income velocity series for the United States. He blamed the government's "commercial loan theory" of banking for monetary tightening in mid-1929, when the economy was already declining, and then for its passivity during the next four years in the face of mass liquidations and bank failures. Instead, he advocated control of the money supply to stabilize income and expenditures. He cited his colleague and covert Soviet agent Abraham George Silverman for his "many helpful suggestions and criticisms" in the formation of this line of thinking.
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