Last week the Brookings Institution announced the establishment of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, which will focus on the roles and interplay between fiscal and monetary policy. The new Center will be housed within the Economic Studies program at Brookings.
Wall Street Journal columnist David Wessel has been tapped to serve as the Center's founding director. Mr. Wessel will receive the title of Senior Fellow.
The creation of the Center was made possible by a donation from Brookings Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees Glenn Hutchins, whose $10 million grant from The Hutchins Family Foundation will underwrite the Center's operational activities during the first five years of the Center. The $10 million will also provide "ongoing endowment support," according to a press release.
Mr. Hutchins is serving as Chair of the Brookings' Second Century Campaign to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the think tank in 2016. As part of that campaign, Brookings' goal is to raise $600 million by then.
Here is what Bloomberg had to say about the new Center. Here is what The Wall Street Journal had to say. The WSJ notes that Wessel will leave the Journal is January to join Brookings, although he will continue to contribute to the newspaper regularly. Here is a collection of Tweets of what various reporters are saying about the annoucement.
The Brookings Institution was recently ranked as the best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.
