Jose da Silva Lopes RIP - Paul Krugman

Sad news: Jose da Silva Lopes, a Portuguese economist and government official who played a crucial role shepherding his country into the community of democratic Europe, has just died.

I met Silva Lopes in 1976, when I was part of a group of MIT grad students who spent the summer working at the Bank of Portugal, of which he was governor at the time. I’ve written about that experience; let me just add that working with Silva Lopes — who must have been somewhat horrified at trying to deal with us uncouth students at the same time that he was trying to cope with the chaos of a still unstable political system, but showed unfailing good humor and intelligence — was one of the real highlights of the whole business.

Actually, an anecdote: we were working in rented space outside the Bank proper, and there was a Soviet trade mission just upstairs. We joked to him that the Russians might be bugging us; he responded, “I don’t care what the Russians find out, it’s the press I’m worried about!”

Another: his remark about the state of foreign exchange reserves — “When I have six months’ reserves, I will have no reserves” — was a key inspiration for my early work on currency crises.

And yet another: at the time, Portugal, as a low-wage nation within Europe, exported a lot of apparel. Silva Lopes: “We are not a banana republic, we are a pajama republic.”

In the years that followed, he added further chapters to his illustrious career — more than I knew, I’m ashamed to say — leading tax reform and more. I was honored and delighted to see him again two years ago, and have him deliver remarks when I received honorary degrees in Lisbon. If you read his remarks, you’ll see that he was as sharp — and good humored — as ever.

The world has lost a great, good, and incredibly likable man.