Thus The Wall Street Journal today about a number of central bankers in the limelight. Five faces connected by arrows came with the article, which I skipped. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, is in the middle. Under his face there is the MIT connection: PhD 1979. In the upper right corner there is Stanley Fischer, the Bank of Israel Governor. He taught at MIT from 1973 to 1994. In the upper left corner is Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor. He taught at MIT as a visiting professor in 1983 and 1984. In the lower right corner is Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. His MIT connection is similar to Bernanke’s: PhD 1977. Fischer was both Draghi and Bernanke’s thesis adviser. And in the lower left corner there is Jeremy Stein, a Federal Reserve Governor, who got his MIT PhD in 1986. Many more central bankers with top MIT degrees are mentioned in the article. Now, I was a doctoral student at MIT from 1972 to 1975, when I got my PhD. I taught there part time from 1979 to 1983, and full time from 1983 to 1990. In short, I must have bumped into the above MIT “engineers” many times over these years. For better or worse, though, I was not introduced to any of them. Although I was dealing with economics throughout, I was in planning and architecture rather than economics. As for the MIT connection, I am happy for the Institute, whose administration will delight in the “engineers” crowding the article, but I cringe at the thought that I could have become a central banker myself. Perish the thought!