William Edward Simon (November 27, 1927 – June 3, 2000) was an American businessman and philanthropist who served as the 63rd United States Secretary of the Treasury. He became the Secretary of the Treasury on May 9, 1974, during the Nixon administration. After Nixon resigned, Simon was reappointed by President Gerald Ford and served until 1977 when President Jimmy Carter took office. Outside of government, he was a successful businessman and philanthropist. The William E. Simon Foundation carries on this legacy. He styled himself as a strong advocate of laissez-faire capitalism. He wrote, "There is only one social system that reflects the sovereignty of the individual: the free-market, or capitalist, system".
Early life and career Simon was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on November 27, 1927, the son of Eleanor (née Kearns) and Charles Simon Jr., an insurance executive. He attended Blair Academy and graduated from Newark Academy, where he focused more on sports than scholastic pursuits. After service in the infantry of the United States Army, he received his B.A. in 1952 from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Rho Chapter). In his later life, Simon was a member of the board of trustees from 1972 to 1973.
Career Simon began his career with Union Securities in 1952. He later served as vice president of Weeden & Co. before being named senior partner in charge of the government and municipal bonds at Salomon Brothers, where he was a member of the firm's seven-man executive committee.
Federal government service
At the time of his nomination as Treasury Secretary, Simon was serving as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, a post he held since January 22, 1973. As Deputy Secretary, Simon supervised the Nixon administration's program to restructure and improve U.S. financial institutions. Beginning December 4, 1973, he served as the first administrator of the Federal Energy Office, and simultaneously launched and administered the Federal Energy Administration at the height of the oil embargo. As such he became known as the high-profile "Energy Czar", and represented a revitalization of the "czar" term in U.S. politics. He chaired the President's Oil Policy Committee and was instrumental in revising the mandatory oil import program in April 1973. Simon was a member of the President's Energy Resources Council and continued to have major responsibility for coordinating both domestic and international energy policy. In August 1974, only three months after Simon became U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, President Nixon resigned. President Gerald Ford, Nixon's successor, asked Simon to continue serving as Treasury Secretary, and Ford later appointed him chairman of the Economic Policy Board and chief spokesman for the Ford administration on economic issues. On April 8, 1975, President Ford also named him chairman of the newly created East-West Foreign Trade Board, established under the authority of the Trade Act of 1974. In 1977, Simon received the Alexander Hamilton Award, the Treasury Department's highest honor. In 1976, while serving as Secretary of the Treasury, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt presented Simon with the Collar of the Republic/Order of the Nile. Simon's term as Secretary of the Treasury ended on January 20, 1977. As Treasury Secretary, Simon claimed to support free markets and to spurn government policies that either subsidized or penalized businesses. In Simon's own words:
Throughout the last century the attachment of businessmen to free enterprise has weakened dramatically as they discovered they could demand – and receive – short-range advantages from the state ... I watched with incredulity as businessmen ran to the government in every crisis, whining for handouts or protection from the very competition that has made this system so productive.
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