Robert Vincent Roosa was an American economist and banker. He served as Treasury Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs during the Kennedy administration. He believed the U.S. dollar should be the world's leading currency and reference point because the United States was the leading political and economic power.
Early years
Born in Marquette, Michigan, he studied at the University of Michigan, receiving his A.B. in 1939. He received a Rhodes Scholarship but due to the outbreak of war in Europe did not attend Oxford. Instead, he remained at Michigan, taking M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 1940 and 1942 respectively. Between 1939 and 1943, he taught economics at Michigan, Harvard, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During World War II he served in London as assistant to Charles P. Kindleberger in the Enemy Objectives Unit, identifying potentially valuable enemy targets.
Postwar years
From 1946 he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, ultimately reaching the position of vice president in the bank's research department. He then joined the Treasury, under John F. Kennedy, as Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs, where he helped to address the balance of payments problem facing America at that time. One of his solutions was the creation of bonds that would attract and allow foreign holders of dollars to turn them into long-term assets as an alternative to buying U.S. gold. Known as Roosa bonds, they were bought with dollars, but denominated and repaid in Swiss francs. Roosa believed that the international monetary system should be based on a reference and that the reference should be the U.S. dollar. He continued under the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson until 1964. Roosa joined the Wall Street firm of Brown Brothers Harriman as a partner, in 1965. He was a director at the Council on Foreign Relations between 1966 and 1981, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. He also became a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty in 1979. He was also a member of the Trilateral Commission. From 1975 to 1986, he was chairman of the Brookings Institution. Roosa retired from Brown Brothers in 1991.
Personal
Roosa was married to Ruth Roosa, who died in October 1993. They had two daughters. Roosa died in Port Chester, New York in December 1993, aged 75.
