Robert Roosa

Robert Vincent Roosa (June 21, 1918 – December 23, 1993) 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.

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.

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.

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