Money doctor

In 20th-century history, a money doctor refers to economic and financial experts that helped countries improve their financial and monetary policies, often through the creation or reform of the national central bank. Both the expression and practice of money doctors were most common in the first half of the century, after which their individual contributions were increasingly replaced by the more institutionalized role of the International Monetary Fund. Most money doctors were themselves working on behalf of a government or central bank, or of the Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations during the interwar period; some influential private bankers advising governments were also viewed as money doctors. Prominent money doctors included Americans Charles Arthur Conant and Edwin W. Kemmerer, Argentine Raúl Prebisch, Belgian Robert Triffin, Britons Otto Niemeyer and Walter J. F. Williamson, Frenchman Jean Monnet and Charles Rist, and Japanese Megata Tanetarō.