Paul Blustein, Background

A native of Washington D.C., Paul Blustein attended the University of Wisconsin (B.A., history), before heading to Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with an M.A. in philosophy, politics and economics in 1975.

Paul began his career as a business and economics journalist shortly thereafter, returning to the United States to work as a writer at Forbes magazine. He then moved to The Wall Street Journal, where he became the newspaper’s chief economics correspondent, covering the US Federal Reserve, budget and tax policy.

In 1987, Paul moved to The Washington Post and began to focus his writing on the global economy, eventually becoming the paper’s international economics correspondent in 1995. In this position, he reported from countries all over the world, including Pakistan, Egypt, Argentina, Honduras, Indonesia, China, Qatar, Greece, Mali and Ethiopia. While at the Post, Paul took leaves to serve as a visiting fellow at the Institute for International Economics (in 1999 and 2000) and as a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution (in 2003 and 2004). During this time, Paul published his first two books, The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF and And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out): Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina. In his books, Paul writes about complex economic issues and institutions using narratives and behind-the-scenes reporting, making these subjects accessible and appealing for both expert and non-expert readers.

Paul retired from The Washington Post and moved to Brookings as journalist-in-residence in 2006. Since then, he has published Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System and spent time at the Woodrow Wilson International Center as a public policy scholar. In 2010, Paul was appointed senior visiting fellow at CIGI, where he is working on several research projects, including a book on the role of international institutions in the global financial crisis.

Paul lives in Kamakura, Japan. He is married to Yoshie Sakai and is the father of four children.