Nancy Teeters dead; first woman on Federal Reserve Board was 84

Nancy Teeters, who in 1978 became the first woman on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, then continued to stand out by opposing former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker's anti-inflation campaign, has died. She was 84.

She died on Nov. 17 at an assisted living facility in Stamford, Connecticut, The Washington Post reported, citing her daughter, Ann Teeters Johnson. The cause was complications from strokes.

As a Fed governor from 1978 to 1984, Teeters was a lonely dissenting voice when, in her view, the war on inflation led by Volcker went too far.

She protested as large banks raised their prime rates to 21.5 percent in December 1980 and warned that high interest rates would cause the U.S. economy to contract. "You don't need to go to 20 or 21 percent to restrain the monetary supply," Teeters told The New York Times in January 1981.

Because Fed dissents aren't disclosed to the public until minutes are released, often weeks after a meeting, the impact of Teeters' opposition was limited. Even inside the Fed, her "no" votes became "discounted during the long recession because she was regarded as a 'knee-jerk liberal,' " William Greider wrote in his 1989 book on the central bank, "Secrets of the Temple."

Teeters worked as chief staff economist of the House Budget Committee before President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the Fed. She was "well known and respected as a liberal economist, a disciple of John Maynard Keynes and the Keynesian principles that had guided the Democratic Party's economic policy" since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Greider wrote.

As "a dove among the Fed's hawks," as a Times headline called her in 1978, Teeters urged a "pause" in higher interest rates soon after being sworn in on Sept. 18, 1978. In one of her first acts, she voted against a move by the chairman, G. William Miller, to raise the discount rate 25 basis points to 8 percent.

Since all Fed governors depend on the same senior staff for data and advice, "it took a strong-willed governor to stand alone and repeatedly argue for a competing analysis," Greider wrote. "Nancy Teeters was one." Her dissents became less frequent after 1982, and in 1984, toward the end of her term, she told the Times she had supported the thrust of the Fed's anti-inflation campaign.

Teeters was often the sole objector as well on votes to approve bank acquisitions, citing interstate banking laws that were still on the books and often ignored. "I don't want to see the U.S. banking community become just 10 large banks," she told the trade newspaper American Banker in 1984.

In July 1984, weeks after leaving the Fed, Teeters became director of economics at International Business Machines Corp. She was elected an IBM vice president and chief economist in March 1986, according to a biography on the company's website, and retired in 1990, when she was 60.

Nancy Hays was born on July 29, 1930, in Marion, Indiana. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Oberlin College in 1952 and a master's in economics from the University of Michigan in 1954, according to a biography on Oberlin's website.