Career
In 1971, Wolf joined the World Bank's young professionals programme, becoming a senior economist in 1974. By the start of the eighties, Wolf was deeply disillusioned with the Bank's policies undertaken under the direction of Robert McNamara - the Bank had been strongly pushing for increased capital flows to developing countries, which had resulted in many of them suffering debt crises by the early 1980s. Seeing the results of misjudged intervention by global authorities and also influenced from the early 1970s by various works critical of government intervention, such as Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, Wolf shifted his views towards the right and the free market. Wolf left the World Bank in 1981, to become Director of Studies at the Trade Policy Research Centre, in London. He joined the Financial Times in 1987, where he has been associate editor since 1990 and chief economics commentator since 1996. Up until the late 2000s, Wolf was an influential advocate of globalization and the free market.
In addition to his journalism and participation in various international forums, Wolf had also attempted to influence opinion with his books; he has stated his 2004 book Why Globalization Works was intended to be a persuasive work rather than an academic study. By 2008 Wolf had become disillusioned with theories promoting what he came to see as excessive reliance on the private sector. While remaining a pragmatist free of binding commitments to any one ideology, Wolf's views partially shifted away from free market thinking back to the Keynesian ideas he had been taught as a youth. He became one of the more influential drivers of the 2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence, where in late 2008 and early 2009 he used his platform on the Financial Times to advocate a massive fiscal and monetary response to the financial crisis of 2007–2010. According to Julia Loffe writing in 2009 for The New Republic, he was "arguably the most widely trusted pundit" of the crisis. Wolf is a supporter of a land value tax.
In 2012, Martin Wolf stated in remarks for the Financial Times that public goods are building blocks of civilization: security/safety, knowledge/science, a sustainable environment, trust, the Rechtsstaat, economic and financial stability. (De Standaard)
Read more about this topic: Martin Wolf
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)