Leszek Balcerowicz
Leszek Balcerowicz ( [ lɛʂɛk balt͡sɛrɔvit͡ʂ ] listen? / I ) ( born January 19, 1947 in Lipno ) is a Polish economist and liberal politician. He became known with whom he Ground surrounded mainly due to the eponymous Balcerowicz Plan, the central planned economy Poland radically to the market economy.
Life and work
Leszek Balcerowicz studied foreign trade at the School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw. He joined the Polish United Workers' Party ( PZPR ) and was able to get a scholarship to the United States in the 1970s. He completed his studies thereat with a Master of Business Administration, a special feature for a Poland under prevailing political conditions.
Already in the 1980s he published an elaborated together with friends plan to market-based reform of the Polish People's Republic, which earned him the offer to participate in the Solidarity program. But he did not join Solidarity. With the imposition of martial law in 1981, he lived in Brussels. He returned to Poland and resigned from the PZPR. In the 1980s, Balcerowicz habilitation, he studied in Marburg and held lectures in different countries. In 1989 he was called to England, but decided the post of finance minister of Poland to accept.
From 1989 to 1991 he was then in the first non-communist government under Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Jan Krzysztof Bielecki Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. On 30 December 1989, the necessary for the first part of the Balcerowicz Plan, laws were passed. The Plan is, among other things, supported by a stabilization loan from the International Monetary Fund, was the complete liberalization of prices and the reduction of inflationary wage increase.
1995 to 2000 he held the position of party leader in the social-liberal Unia Wolności. Especially celebrated by the Western countries, he lost domestically in popularity since the economic transformation also caused rising unemployment and cuts in social services.
1997-2000 Balcerowicz had once held the post of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in the government of Jerzy Buzek. The so-called Second Balcerowicz Plan ( the radical formed by tax cuts and a reduction of the budget hole foresaw ) failed due to inadequate political preparation and of the opposition of then-President Aleksander Kwasniewski and the Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność (former coalition partner of the UW).
From 2001 to 2007 Balcerowicz was president of the National Bank of Poland. During his tenure, he was repeatedly attacked by politicians who made the National Bank is responsible for the economic problems. 2004 The Banker called him Europe's best central bank chief, who had managed to make the zloty to a stable currency.
From June 2008 to April 2012 he was Chairman of the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.