New spokesman for the New York Fed

Peter has had a ringside seat at many of the great financial events of the past generation. He joined in 1976 after gaining journalistic experience at the New York Herald Tribune among other newspapers, and experience of commercial banking at Chase Manhattan. His first boss was Paul Volcker, then president of the New York Fed. So when it came to explaining the sea-change in monetary policy announced by Volcker (who in the meantime had become chairman of the board of governors in Washington) in October 1979 Peter knew the background and knew what Volcker wanted to achieve - to get a grip on the inflationary pressures that were destroying confidence in the US dollar. That was one of the decisive moments of 20th century monetary history - though few realized it at the time.

Then came a spell of very high interest rates and recession, the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the Drexel and Solomon Brothers bond trading scandals of 1990-91, the LTCM affair in 1998 and the Asian crisis that started that year. All brought criticisms of the actions of the Federal Reserve and raised risks for the Fed's reputation. Trying to get the public and media to understand that the Fed had not "bailed out" Long-term Capital Management, but that it had merely convened a meeting at which a private sector solution could take place, was among the toughest tasks he has faced.

But as important as crisis management has been the underlying change in communications policy. Peter played a key role in the transformation of the Fed from a guardian of the "secrets of the temple" to a policy of thoroughgoing transparency, when the Fed defined what it means for a central bank to be transparent. The challenge is to be as open as possible when neither he nor any other official can talk about the future - which is the only thing most people outside the central bank are interested in. But the inherent tension between these objective requires continual management and judgment on a day-to-day basis.

This is a challenge that his successor, Calvin A. Mitchell, will face when he takes over as spokesman from October 1. Calvin, who at 46 is just a couple of years older than his boss, New York Fed president Tim Geithner, will clearly be a key member of Geithner's new senior management team. As was Bakstansky, he will be on the bank's management committee, which is made up of the president, the chief administrative officer, the eight executive vice-presidents and the bank's spokesman.

Calvin already has considerable experience in financial markets as chief operating officer at Anchor Point Asset Management, a hedge fund and as senior vice president at Instinet Corporation, a global electronic agency broker. He has served in communications roles not only in the private sector but at an impressive array of elite departments: the United States mission to the United Nations, the White House, the National Security Council among others. So while he is entering to the world of central banking, as was Peter Bakstansky when he became spokesman, he clearly knows his way around Washington as well as modern financial markets.