"Freedom" for Brimmer

Andrew Felton Brimmer, 47, was the Federal Reserve Board's Jackie Robinson. In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Harvard-trained economist as the first black among the board's seven governors. Brimmer used the job to disseminate controversial, exhaustively documented opinions on black banks (they were more a symbol of black achievement, he thought, than a meaningful source of capital for economic development), minimum-wage laws (they worsened black unemployment by hindering the hiring of unskilled ghetto teenagers) and black capitalism (it was doomed to remain marginal unless blacks could develop large businesses that could compete in predominantly white markets). Now, with almost six years of his 14-year term remaining, Brimmer has resigned from the board to return to the "unlimited freedom" of the corporate and academic worlds. He will be come a visiting professor at Harvard's business school and next week will be elected the first black member of Du Pont's board of directors.

Brimmer stresses that his resignation from the Federal Reserve was not the result of "any policy disagreements with my colleagues." He says that he was among the first board governors to push for a tightening of monetary policy to curb rampant inflation; he also supports the slight loosening on the growth of the monetary supply that the board has permitted during the past few weeks. "The long-run view is for some weakening of demand that would require easing of monetary policy, but we should not overreact and move too fast."

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