Leon Keyserling

Leon Keyserling
Keyserling (third from left), 1949
Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
In office November 2, 1949 – January 20, 1953 Acting: November 2, 1949 – May 10, 1950
President	Harry Truman
Preceded by	Edwin Nourse
Succeeded by	Arthur Burns
Personal details
Born	(1908-01-11)January 11, 1908 Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
Died	August 9, 1987(1987-08-09) (aged 79) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Mary Dublin
Education	Columbia University (BA) Harvard University (JD)

Leon Hirsch Keyserling (January 11, 1908 – August 9, 1987) was an American economist and lawyer. During his career he helped draft major pieces of Fair Deal legislation and advised President Harry S. Truman as head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Keyserling was born in 1908 in Charleston, South Carolina. He earned an A.B. from Columbia University in 1928, his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1931, and returned to Columbia as a graduate student in the Department of Economics from 1931 to 1933, where he also taught for a short time. While there Keyserling studied under Rexford Tugwell, but never finished his dissertation.

Keyserling married Mary Dublin Keyserling, also an economist.

In 1933 Keyserling became an attorney for the newly constituted Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a New Deal agency that distributed subsidies to reduce crop area. From 1933 to 1946 he was a consultant economist to the Senate on a variety of social, economic, industrial, and financial issues, during which time he also served as a legislative assistant to Democratic New York Senator Robert F. Wagner (1933–37) and several positions, including general counsel, to the US Housing Authority, Federal Public Housing Authority, and National Housing Agency (1937–46). It was during his time with Wagner that Keyserling participating in drafting various New Deal initiatives, including the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Social Security Act, and the National Labor Relations Act.