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Photo of J. Dewey Daane

J. Dewey Daane

  • Governor, Board of Governors, 1963–1974
  • Born: July 6, 1918
  • Died: January 3, 2017

J. Dewey Daane joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on November 29, 1963. He served until March 8, 1974.

Daane was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received his bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 1939. He later received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University, as well as the university's first doctorate in public administration in 1949.

From 1950 to 1951, Daane served as consultant to an International Monetary Fund Fiscal Mission to the Republic of Paraguay. He later joined the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and was successively statistician, monetary economist, assistant vice president, and ultimately vice president in charge of research activities. In May 1960, he became vice president and economic adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Daane was granted a leave of absence by the Minneapolis Fed in July 1960 to serve as assistant to the secretary of the Treasury for debt management, the principal advisor on managing the federal debt. Soon after, he was appointed deputy undersecretary of the Treasury for monetary affairs. In 1963, President John Kennedy appointed Daane to the Board of Governors.

During his time on the Board of Governors, Daane regularly attended meetings of the central bank governors of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland as well as meetings of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. He was regarded as the international economics expert on the Board of Governors during his tenure and represented the United States, along with Paul Volcker, as one of the two US deputies to the Ministers and Governors of the Group of Ten in their frequent meetings related to international monetary crises. He also worked with Volcker and Treasury Undersecretary Robert Roosaas a US deputy of the Committee of Twenty on Reform of the International Monetary System and Related Issues.

After Daane left the Board of Governors in 1974, he began his career in the private sector as the Frank K. Houston Professor of Banking at Vanderbilt’s Business School. He also served as a senior official at Commerce Union Bank and its successor, Sovran Bank, in Nashville. Daane held a number of senior positions at that bank, including vice chairman of the board of directors. He also continued as an advisor to the Congressional Budget Office, worked as a public director of the Chicago Board of Trade (1979–82), and served as a public director of the National Futures Association (1987–2002). He also was a director of the Whittaker Corporation, a large multinational company based in Los Angeles (1974–89).

Daane coauthored The Art of Monetary Policy with David C. Colander, Robert C. Holland, and others.

Daane held a chaired professorship at Vanderbilt, where he was also emeritus senior advisor of the Financial Markets Research Center.

Daane died in 2017.


Written by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. See disclaimer.