(JNS.org) President Barack Obama appointed former Bank of Israel head Stanley Fischer as the vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Fischer, 70, will serve as second-in-command at America’s central bank under recently appointed chairwoman Janet Yellen. As governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005-2013, Fischer was widely credited with helping to successfully steer Israel through the global recession.

“Fischer is one of the great macroeconomists of our generation,” Steven Plaut, an economics professor at the University of Haifa, told JNS.org. “Under his stewardship, Israel managed to keep steady and evade most of the pitfalls of the financial crisis that broke out worldwide starting in 2007. Monetary management for the U.S. of course is a very different set of problems, but Fischer is one of the better-qualified people on the planet to tackle it.”