AP senior economics reporter Crutsinger is retiring

Martin Crutsinger, who has been covering the Federal Reserve for the Associated Press since 1984, is retiring.

He covered 13 Treasury secretaries and five Federal Reserve chairs.

Crutsinger graduated from the University of Texas in August 1971 with a degree in government. His first journalism job was at the Jacksonville Journal in Florida.

He began working for the AP in Miami in April 1973. He transferred to Tallahassee to cover Florida state government in 1975 and then to Washington in 1978.

Before becoming a economics correspondent, he covered a variety of other stories. His early reporting ranged from the Florida state legislature to the Ted Bundy murders and the Jim Jones-led mass suicides to the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.

He once got banned from the Treasury building for a few months for not leaving his work during a fire drill. There is now a “Crutsinger rule” requiring reporters to agree to leave during fire drills.

Here is an excerpt from a memo at the AP:

For the past 37 years, Marty has been a leading chronicler of economics, with a mix of assignments that comprised the Treasury and the Fed as they defused financial catastrophes; meetings of global finance leaders; and dozens of market-moving economic indicators. Marty’s reporting tenure spanned five Fed leaders from Paul Volcker to Jerome Powell and 13 Treasury secretaries from Donald Regan to Janet Yellen.

When the 2008 financial crisis threatened to topple the entire banking system, Marty labored from the Treasury press room nearly every weekend, ricocheting from the government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to Lehman Brothers’ collapse to the day Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson summoned the executives of America’s biggest banks to press them to accept government aid packages to avoid inciting panic at any one bank and to thereby protect the entire financial system.

Several years ago, the Economics team in Business News worked with Marty to create a video to capture the evolution of Fed leaders Marty had covered since 1984. That two-minute video, narrated by Marty himself and aptly titled “The Crutsinger Chronicles,” is itself a gem of concise reporting.

Perhaps nothing has better symbolized Marty’s value to the AP than his iron-man reliability: Starting more than three decades ago, not once did Marty miss an assignment to cover one of the numerous economic indicators that he handled each month at early-morning sessions at the Labor or Commerce Department. Not once.

For all his qualities as a reporter – dependability, expertise, institutional knowledge – Marty will most be missed as a friend and colleague. Details on a formal goodbye will be forthcoming.

We will be looking to fill the job that Marty will be vacating, stay tuned on that.

For now, please join us in offering him warm wishes for the next phase of his life.