As was mentioned by Stephen, I am indeed half Aussie. My father, Leslie Fisher, was a Queenslander. In 1910, at the age of five years and two months, he was arrested for begging on the streets in Maryborough and sentenced in the court there to seven years in the Westbrook Reformatory.[1]

According to an article earlier this year in Toowoomba’s daily, The Chronicle, Westbrook was “the most feared reformatory in Australia.” The guards there meted out “vicious beatings.”[2] Thankfully, my father’s sentence was commuted after one month; “the little boy … is of tender years and not a fit subject,” wrote the Police Magistrate. My father was released to an orphanage, then shuttled among a series of harsh foster homes before making his way back to the streets and a remarkable career that took him from Toowoomba to Brisbane to South Africa, Mexico, China and the United States and, ultimately, to … the great republic of Texas!

My dad lived to the ripe old age of 90. He was a tough old bird. And Aussie to the bone. For most of his life, he smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and drank a great deal of Scotch. He admitted to this one evening and a friend said, “Hold on. My father was a smoker and also drank a lot of Scotch. But he died at 60. What gives?” To which my father replied, “Well, he just didn’t do it long enough.”[3]

The Westbrook prison is no more; indeed, the property on which it stood was sold in May of this year. But the courthouse in Maryborough where my father was sentenced still stands. On Wednesday, I will visit it to remind myself of where I come from. And to thank my lucky stars that I am the son of a gutsy Australian who managed in one generation to secure his family’s rise from homeless to Harvard, from begging for food to riches, from being a ward of the state to becoming a principal in the policymaking of the most important central bank in the world.

However, three years after the failure of Lehmann Brothers, there remain significant impediments to avoiding the need for government intervention to protect large financial intermediaries.  Everyone knows that some large European financial institutions have of late encountered problems. So it is critical that we focus on strengthening the financial architecture, so that the struggles of one institution or a group of them no longer poses risks to the broader global economy. 

In my view, we should not—in pursuit of market order—impose excessive regulatory constraints that undermine the innovation and competitiveness that are, in the long run, the foundation of thriving financial markets and institutions.

Finally, in my view, we should not become identified with "investment protectionism." Trade protectionism is widely understood and debated. Investment protectionism refers to differentiated treatment of capital providers based on national identity and citizenship as well as denial of certain investment opportunities to nonresidents or noncitizens. There are some legitimate national security concerns in certain industries, such as defense, but such concerns can be easily exaggerated.

Richard Fisher urged Germany to ``seize the mantle of leadership'' in the European Union from France and set the pace in making the region's economy more flexible.
     ``It seems to me that the bureaucratization of Europe by France has hindered progress,'' Fisher told an audience in Berlin, stressing he was speaking in a personal capacity. ``There is a need for German leadership.''

As reported by Bloomberg News