In the wake of the recent creation of the post of Principle Economic Advisor to the Minister of Finance, Royal Gazette reporter Patrick Burgess profiles Andrew Brimmer, the American who will work with Finance Minister Eugene Cox.

Government's new economic advisor comes with an extensive resume and a formidable reputation "inside and outside the beltway'' of Washington DC.

Andrew Felton Brimmer's reputation as an economist could have been sealed for all time with his appointment by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966 as the first black member of the Federal Reserve Board, the US's economic guiding hand.

But it was Dr. Brimmer's appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1995 as the first Chairman of the DC Financial Control Board (FCB), and his subsequent resignation in 1998, which has garnered grudging respect for the sharecropper's son.

By the time the 74-year-old resigned, President Clinton had decided to increase the power of the five member FCB at the expense of Mayor Marion Barry.

The FCB was formed to oversee the government of the District of Columbia and guide it back to financial stability after accumulating a debt of $722 million by 1995.

The FCB had the power to hire and fire personnel, approve budgets and contracts, hold hearings and restructure city government.

Among its most important and far reaching decisions were the creation of the posts of chief financial officer and chief management officer and making a budgetary surplus of $185 million in just two years.

Mayor Barry -- not surprisingly -- had nothing but contempt for the FCB and described having to go to the White House for a ceremony announcing the loss of more powers as being like watching over one's death.

The man who would later defeat Mayor Barry, Anthony Williams -- the first chief financial officer -- has nothing but praise for the Board and Dr.

Brimmer.

Dr. Brimmer did not stand the fractious politics of DC very well, citing to President Clinton the "atmosphere'' surrounding his reappointment process.

It is also known he refused to cut deals or compromise with Mayor Barry.

Of his resignation, then candidate Mr. Williams said: "I have tremendous respect for him. I think we ought to be giving the man the key to the city instead of the key to the dungeon.'' One DC area source -- speaking to The Royal Gazette on condition of anonymity -- described Dr. Brimmer: "He presided over the financial arrest of the city with a very strong hand. Whether he did a good job depends on who you ask and whether he hurt their feelings.

"Dr. Brimmer is a very well respected economist,'' the source continued. "He has done a lot of consulting. This is not the first time that he has been hired to look at economic growth and performance of a country.'' Born in Louisiana, Dr. Brimmer served in the US Army just after the end of World War Two before returning to his home state of Washington to get a degree in economics, gaining a masters in 1951.

A Fulbright scholar to India, he completed a doctoral degree at Harvard University in 1957 and served as an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Dr. Brimmer continued teaching and public service at both the University of Pennsylvania and with the Department of Commerce and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He served as a board member of the Federal Reserve System for more than eight years, returning to teach at Harvard Business School in 1974.

With his economic and financial consultancy firm, Brimmer and Company, Inc. he has enjoyed numerous consultancies around the world while also serving as Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, an ivy league school.

He is a sitting or former director of numerous big North American firms, including Bank of America, Borg Warner Automotive, Black Rock Mutual Funds, Gannett, Du Pont, and United Airlines, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in the process.

Still, Dr. Brimmer dedicates a significant portion of his time to chairman of the board of trustees of the historic Tuskegee University in Alabama.

His resume runs to ten pages and lists 22 honorary degrees and dozens of books and articles on banking and monetary policy, international finance and the economic status of black Americans.

Dr. Brimmer cites testimony to Congress, while with the Department of Commerce, that demonstrated the economic burden of racial segregation on interstate commerce as being the work of which he is most proud.

The US Supreme Court later cited that testimony when upholding appeals of the public accommodations sections of the Civil Rights Act.

His election as a Fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1991 was based mostly on his article Central Banking and Systemic Risk in Capital Markets, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 1989.

Dr. Brimmer's most recent works include Economic Cost of Discrimination against Black Americans in Economic Perspectives on Affirmative Action, 1995, and Financial Regulation and the Fragility of the Banking System in the North American Journal of Economics and Finance, 1998.

Finance team: Government's new Principal Economic Policy Advisor to the Minister of Finance is Andrew Brimmer, right. Shown with Mr. Cox, centre, is Finance Ministry permanent secretary Donald Scott.