A gracious host passes away

In June of 2005, I got to spend an afternoon with Edward M. Gramlich, the eminent policy analyst who died of leukemia on Wednesday at the age of 68.

Gramlich was a governor on the Federal Reserve Board from November 1997 to August 2005. He hosted a group of students from the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Georgetown University in the board room at the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C., two months before he left the Fed; I was among the students. Hanging on my wall at my office is a picture of the group – Gramlich front and center, me in the back.

We talked about housing, which was his specialty. He warned of the impact of the subprime lending craze before other members of the Fed Board saw it as a problem.

Gramlich was an economics professor at the University of Michigan, where he returned after leaving the Fed.