Frederick L. Deming, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from April 1957 through January 1965, died in late August, just shy of his 91st birthday.
Deming, originally from Calumet in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, spent most of his youth in St. Louis, where he received his bachelor's, master's and doctorate from Washington University. Deming began his Federal Reserve career at the St. Louis bank as assistant manager in the Research Department and left as first vice president in 1957 when he accepted the presidency of the Minneapolis Fed.
In an October 1992 interview, Deming said of his era as Minneapolis Fed president, "This was the golden age of Federal Reserve policy. Monetary policy worked, and it pretty well handled what it was supposed to handle. ... There was criticism of policy, but not an awful lot of criticisms about the mechanics of policy. You didn't have every professor of economics in the United States trying to tell the central bank how to run its business. ... You didn't have a shadow Federal Reserve Open Market Committee. It was a lot more peaceful."
Deming left Minneapolis in 1965 to become Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs for four years and then spent a few years with Lazard Freres, a global investment firm, before returning to Minneapolis as president of National City Bancorporation, a post he held until his retirement in 1982.
At the time of his death, Deming resided in Sanibel, Fla.
See the complete October 1992 interview in which Deming muses about the Federal Reserve System and Ninth Federal Reserve District of his tenure.
