LITTLE SILVER — Living in a sandbag-fortified trailer, working in the palace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and traveling in a vehicle with bulletproof glass sounds like the stuff of soldiers.
But it is the story of Little Silver lawyer Michael Silva, who for three months worked as an adviser to the Central Bank of Iraq.
Silva, 43, is an employee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who volunteered to work in Baghdad in October to assist in the effort to rebuild and reorganize the banking and economic structure of that country.
Silva received the secretary’s Honor Award from the Department of the Treasury and the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award from the Department of Defense for his work in Iraq.
http://independent.gmnews.com/News/2...e/034p2_lg.jpgMichael Silva stands on Saddam Hussein’s parade route, where Iraqi troops used to march through what Saddam called the Victory Arch.
Although Silva’s work in Iraq was strictly in a civilian capacity, his time spent in the military made him an ideal candidate for his role in Iraq.
After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1983, Silva spent six years in the Navy as an F-14 Tomcat weapons officer before attending Columbia Law School, New York, graduating in 1992.
Because of his service in the Navy and his experience in international economic affairs, Silva was asked if he would volunteer for this mission last year with the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
"The Federal Reserve doesn’t require people to go to war zones," he said.
In 1992, he went to work at the Federal Reserve Bank, the nation’s central bank established by Congress to regulate the nation’s monetary and financial systems.
Because of Silva’s experience, he was hired to work with foreign central bank customers.
According to Silva, many foreign central banks prefer to keep their financial reserves in dollars.
"We have over a trillion dollars in foreign assets at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York," he explained.
Silva likens his job to that of an international financial "plumber."
"If you have a problem at your house with your bathtub, you call a blue-collar plumber," he said. "You want to move billions of dollars, you get me."
Silva was recruited to help set up an account for Iraq’s oil proceeds at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
"All of Iraq’s oil proceeds came to the Federal Reserve Bank," Silva said. "That’s where we maintained a special account that was mandated by the United Nations, and that account was called the Development Fund for Iraq."
Silva explained that because Iraq is a cash economy, there is literally no way to transfer money electronically. Instead, the Federal Reserve Bank transports billions of dollars in cash to Iraq.
The cash is transported in large, unmarked tractor-trailers with a helicopter escort overhead. The cash is taken to Andrews Air Force Base and loaded onto a military aircraft and flown to Iraq.
"I think our largest shipment was over $2 billion in cash," Silva said. "That took several tractor-trailers."
Silva was also transported to Iraq on a military aircraft, which is the only way to fly into the country.
"It’s very complicated to get into Baghdad, and the palace is an extremely chaotic place to work," Silva said.
His responsibilities there, as part of a 25-person banking team from the United States and Great Britain, focused on helping to reorganize the structure of the Central Bank of Iraq.The reorganization aimed to bring a more modern banking system to the Central Bank, the state banks and the private sector banks.
"First we issued a new currency without Saddam’s face on it," Silva said. "People would bring in their old Saddam currency, and we would give them new currency."
Silva and his team also helped to set up currency auctions, in which Iraqis could sell their dinars, the currency of Iraq, and receive U.S. dollars in exchange.
An Iraqi who became nervous about the state of the country’s economy could easily exchange the dinar for the stable dollar
Before the invasion, the exchange rate was 1,900 dinars per $1 in U.S. currency. As a result of the work by Silva and his team, the dinar appreciated about 30 percent to 1,300 dinars per one U.S. dollar, he said.
Silva and his team worked toward establishing a free-market economy in Iraq, which had previously been a centrally controlled economy.
"In Iraq, the price of gas had always been set at 2 cents a gallon," Silva said. "The price of food was controlled. The price of electricity was controlled."
Silva acknowledged that he witnessed a certain amount of violence, although he was in the "Green Zone," which was supposed to be a relatively safe place in Baghdad.
He was in the country when Saddam Hussein was taken into U.S. custody and said that he has never been so proud of America.
After Ambassador L. Paul Bremmer III, Silva’s boss at the palace, announced that Saddam had been captured, the group was told they would be spending the night in the palace for their safety. Silva ran into some Iraqi workers in the compound.
"They were very scared and nervous because they’d been in the compound, and they didn’t know what was going on," recalled Silva. "They just heard all this shooting. They were being supervised by a Jordanian. I told the supervisor, ‘Tell them we’ve captured Saddam.’ But he didn’t speak English, so I thought for a moment and I looked at the workers and I said ‘Saddam.’ "
Silva crossed his wrists — to denote being put into handcuffs — to indicate that Saddam had been arrested.
"For a second they were just silent, and then they just exploded," Silva remembered. "Yelling, clapping, several were crying, and they were slapping me on the back, saying, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ Well, I didn’t do it."
Silva has high hopes for Iraq and its economy.
"The Iraqis are very educated, and they are very entrepreneurial, very hard working," he said. "They’re tough because they’ve lived under 25 years of brutal dictatorship.
"You’ve got capital, you’ve got education, you’ve got a work ethic," he continued.
He said two things have to happen for Iraq to make the transition to a democratic state.
"They have to establish security, and the Iraqi religious and ethnic factions need to learn to compromise," he said. "Security and compromise — you get those two things together, and Iraq’s going to be another Japan, another South Korea, another Germany.
"You really have to establish security and stop the dying on the streets before you can worry about central banking, before you can start gathering economic data and trying to control inflation, and clear checks and distribute money," Silva said. "It becomes a little silly when you’re trying to talk over the mortars and the rockets going off."
Silva described the work he did as the hardest he ever has had to do.
"We typically worked about 20 hours a day, going on three or four hours of sleep a day," he said. "There was just so much to do and so few people to do it.
"Everything was so hard to do because there are no phones, no computers; you can only move around with bodyguards and armor," Silva said. "It was very exciting. It was very stressful. It was occasionally scary. The last month or so I was really looking forward to coming home.
"I travel around a lot," Silva said. "And I always come home with the same thing to say: God bless the United States."