Alan Greenspan was born in 1926 and lived in a modest Manhattan neighbourhood, far from the power circles of Washington and Wall Street. Raised by a single mother, he lived a quiet, disciplined life in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. His father, though alive, was more of a monthly visitor than a daily presence.
Those early struggles left a deep mark on him. They taught him self-reliance and restraint, qualities that would one day define his leadership. Who could have guessed that this quiet boy, growing up during the Great Depression, would one day hold the levers of the world’s most powerful economy?
In 1987 President Ronald Reagan appointed him Chairman of the US Federal Reserve. It wasn’t just one administration that trusted him, three more would follow. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all chose to keep him in the job. For 19 years, until 2006, Greenspan sat at the centre of America’s economic command. And he wasn’t just a national figure, his influence stretched across continents.
Under his watch, the US economy faced serious challenges: the 1987 stock market crash, the 1990 recession, the effect of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and the aftermath of 9/11. Yet through every storm, Greenspan remained the steady hand on the wheel.
His 2007 memoir, ‘The Age of Turbulence – Adventures in a New World,’ opened not with economic theories but personal memories – his childhood, his mother, and the quiet strength he drew from those early years. Isn’t it striking how a life shaped in the shadows of hardship can grow to cast such a long shadow of its own?
And even after he stepped down, when the global economy crashed in 2008, people still looked back, wondering if his policies had paved the way for disaster. Was he the one who kept the machine running smoothly? Or the one who helped set the gears in motion for its fall? This is not just the story of a money general. It’s the story of a man whose choices moved markets, shaped presidencies, and changed the course of history.
No one talks about Alan Greenspan anymore. Once hailed as the high priest of global finance, his name has faded into footnotes. But there was a time, not long ago, when he was the man every president called, the one whose whisper could send markets soaring or crashing. The real money general.
The last of Sri Lanka’s money generals
Now zoom out. Leave behind Wall Street’s glass towers and cross the ocean to magnificent South Asia. To Sri Lanka. There, in the corridors of power, another man ruled the wallet. He was no Greenspan, but he didn’t need to be. His command came not from a podium, but from shadows, initially. His name was Dr. P.B. Jayasundara.
Jayasundara wasn’t just a bureaucrat. He was the authority. For years, he ran Sri Lanka’s Treasury with a grip as tight as it was unchallenged. Ministers whispered his name with both respect and fear. Political titans, men who could bring down governments, bent to him, not by admiration but sheer necessity.
At the highest point, crossing Jayasundara meant a career cut short. Crossing him was equal to swimming across the Palk Strait with two days of training in a swimming pool. His enemies disappeared, their ambitions quietly buried. Billionaires watched their tongues. Because if you landed in his bad books, there would be no bailout and no second chance. He ruled men, books, and numbers like a seasoned warlord of finance.
He was behind the money during the presidencies of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. In wartime, Jayasundara kept the economy breathing. After the war, he became the architect of massive infrastructure dreams and generous subsidies that seduced the public.
Roads, ports, handouts – he signed off on it all. It wasn’t just economics. It was statecraft. And in it, he was Machiavellian to the core. He knew power didn’t come from love. It came from fear. His word was the process. His signature, the law. No committee, no cabinet could override him when he was in complete command.
But power is never clean. Jayasundara’s name often surfaced in scandals. Allegations followed him like shadows at dusk, never quite disappearing. Yet, he stayed, because he made himself indispensable. He turned economic policy into a weapon and every politician who used it became tied to him.
He wasn’t popular. He didn’t need to be. He was effective – for the people in power. He acquired strength not by charm but by creating dependency. Power, after all, makes people – and breaks them. In the end, Jayasundara was both hero and villain. A saviour when the money flowed and a hitman when the debt piled up. Was he the last of Sri Lanka’s money generals? Or just another chapter in the island’s long, tangled story of power and survival?
The bridge-builder
Power, like money, rarely sleeps. And on 9 January 2015, Sri Lanka woke to a political earthquake.
The long-reigning Mahinda Rajapaksa – once seen as invincible, the king of a democratic nation – was dethroned. The villager, Maithripala Sirisena, backed by a broad coalition, became President. And the aristocrat Ranil Wickremesinghe, the veteran politician and economic liberal, was handed the keys to the economy as the Prime Minister.
The old guard was swept aside. Jayasundara, the wartime money general, was out. A new era demanded a new man. But Wickremesinghe didn’t have a deep bench to choose from. He needed someone with brains, restraint, and bureaucratic finesse. He found it in a quiet storm: Dr. R.H.S. Samaratunga – ‘Sam’ to his friends.
If Jayasundara was steel, Samaratunga was silk. Where Jayasundara thrived on confrontation and control, Samaratunga operated through calm negotiation and institutional respect. He wasn’t loud, didn’t seek the spotlight, and avoided political brawls. But behind that soft-spoken nature was a razor-sharp economist, a walking archive of Sri Lanka’s fiscal history.
Having entered the Sri Lanka Administrative Service in 1984, he knew the system inside out. He had chaired tariff reforms, led national planning, shaped investment policy, and even handled sensitive portfolios like Environment and Petroleum Industries. This wasn’t just a bureaucrat. This was a bridge-builder, a man shaped by decades of governance, now handed the delicate task of stabilising an economy left dizzy by excess.
The new money general had arrived, but would wisdom and humility be enough in a political world addicted to drama and urgency?
Stepping into burning buildings
Power returned with familiar footsteps. In November 2019, Sri Lanka swore in a new President – Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the younger brother of the once-ousted Mahinda Rajapaksa. The strongman image was back, but with a different face. This time, the comeback wasn’t just political but deeply personal as well. And so was the reshuffling of power.
Dr. Jayasundara returned too, not to the Treasury, but to the most powerful bureaucratic seat in the land: Secretary to the President. The Treasury itself was handed to his protégé, S.R. Attygalle. It felt like the old machine was back in motion. But beneath the surface, the gears were beginning to break.
By January 2022, the cracks had become canyons. By April, Sri Lanka was burning – not just with inflation or shortages but rage. The country descended into economic chaos. There was no fuel, no food, no hope. Protesters filled the streets. Rajapaksa family members, once untouchable, stepped down one by one. Gotabaya had no one left to trust.
Out of desperation, he handed the Finance Ministry to his personal lawyer-turned-politician Ali Sabry. A man with no economic background was forced into the hottest seat in the country. Who would take over the Central Bank? Who would touch the Treasury? No one in their right mind would.
But then came Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe, flown in from Australia to take charge of the Central Bank, and Mahinda Siriwardana, a quiet, relatively unknown official with experience both in the Central Bank and the Treasury. Two bureaucrats stepped into burning buildings while the country’s leadership scrambled for the exits.
Gotabaya fled. The First Lady was at his side and the President of a collapsing state vanished into the night. Wickremesinghe, who served as Prime Minister for just short of two months under Gotabaya, became President through a vote in Parliament as per the Constitution.
Many thought he would be a placeholder. But Wickremesinghe moved fast, retained Weerasinghe and Siriwardana, and brought back a familiar figure in an unfamiliar way – Dr. R.H.S. Samaratunga. Not as secretary, but as the Senior Economic Adviser to the President.
Sam, the man, worked behind the scenes. Weerasinghe was the face of stability, Siriwardana the operator, but Samaratunga – silent, invisible – was the listening post, the bridge to the bureaucracy, the architect no one saw.
As the economy slowly turned a corner, everyone pointed to the Central Bank and the Treasury. Miracle-makers, they said. Few mentioned the man who whispered strategy into the President’s ear. Samaratunga didn’t seek credit. He never had. But every policy paper, every International Monetary Fund (IMF) briefing, every quiet decision bore his fingerprints.
Ensuring continuity in crisis
By 2024, with the economy limping back from the edge, Wickremesinghe launched his presidential campaign. The centrepiece? The IMF deal. Stability. Reform.
“He’s making his campaign a mandate for the IMF,” one of Wickremesinghe’s trusted friends who stood by him through thick and thin told me on 27 August 2024, his voice heavy with worry. It was a bold gamble. But perhaps Wickremesinghe wasn’t just chasing votes – he was asking for political permission. A mandate to do difficult things. To restructure, liberalise, and change a system many feared but knew could not remain the same.
Sri Lanka’s political stage turned again. President Wickremesinghe, the steward of economic recovery, was defeated in a dramatic reversal. The country’s new leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, was sworn in, marking the rise of a former Opposition firebrand to the highest office in the land.
Many expected a purge. After all, during his campaign, Dissanayake’s team had painted Central Bank Governor Dr. Weerasinghe and Treasury Secretary Siriwardana as IMF loyalists, technocrats complicit in harsh reforms. The narratives echoed with slogans calling for their removal. Yet, Dissanayake did something no one saw coming: he kept them both.
It was the first unmistakable sign that the new President understood the weight of the chair he now occupied. The democratic revolution ended and governance began. In politics, perception is power, but survival is skill. Dissanayake, often underestimated, was already proving that he could pivot.
I have written before about his remarkable adaptability – a man who shifts for pragmatism. Critics may call it chameleon politics, but in a volatile democracy, it is the ‘art of the possible.’ And in retaining Siriwardana, he showed more than just flexibility; he showed strategic humility.
What followed surprised even seasoned insiders. Dissanayake didn’t just keep Siriwardana in place – he built a partnership. One rooted not in politics but in trust. When few dared to defend Siriwardana, the President did it himself. Openly. Repeatedly. On platforms where silence was safer, Dissanayake chose acknowledgment. It wasn’t flattery – it was leadership. He knew that continuity in a crisis isn’t a weakness; it’s a necessity.
But time catches even the most resilient. Rumours had swirled since January: Siriwardana would soon step down. February came with whispers, before the Budget and after it, and still he stayed. Until now. The moment has arrived; the end of a chapter.
And fittingly, it wasn’t a leak or a letter; it was the President himself who announced Siriwardana’s retirement, with grace and with rare public praise. In a country where bureaucrats often vanish into footnotes, Dissanayake ensured that one of the quiet architects of economic survival got the recognition he earned.
From perseverance, not privilege
Look closely, and a quiet thread connects the four men who have held the Treasury’s key in this story. Alan Greenspan, from the heart of Manhattan’s lower-middle class. P.B. Jayasundara, from the grit of Kurunegala. R.H.S. Samaratunga, a soft-spoken son of amazing Agalawatta. Mahinda Siriwardana, from Hawa Eliya, a misty village near the floral crown of Nuwara Eliya. No grand legacies. No silver spoons. Just grit, brilliance, and the long climb through the machinery of state.
They didn’t come from elite corridors. Greenspan, for all his global glory, was not a product of Harvard. He was loyal to New York University. Jayasundara sharpened his intellect at the University of Colombo. Samaratunga found his ground in the University of Peradeniya, and Siriwardana rose from the University of Kelaniya. No Colombo 7 addresses. No royal surnames. Their stories weren’t inherited; they were written, one hard-earned page at a time.
Of course, each had flaws. Greenspan’s free-market gospel helped birth the seeds of 2008. Jayasundara’s brilliance often came wrapped in opacity and controversy. Samaratunga was a builder but avoided political brawls. Siriwardana, effective as he was, had too many enemies both in politics and businesses.
Yet together, they reflect a truth that’s often forgotten in power-obsessed capitals: the most enduring public servants are not born from privilege, but from perseverance.
A high-wire act without a safety net
Now, a new question hangs in the air: who will be President Dissanayake’s choice to succeed Siriwardana?
It will not be an easy call. The replacement must be someone who commands the confidence of both the IMF and the people. Someone who understands that politics is not just power but service. If Dissanayake’s past choices are a guide, he will choose pragmatism over technicalities. He will look for a steady hand, a seasoned mind, someone who can whisper truth to power and survive the weight of it.
And maybe, just maybe, it will be another child of a forgotten village and a simple university, another quiet bureaucrat walking the long, silent path towards responsibility. Because in Colombo, as in Manhattan, history has shown that the sharpest minds often rise not from palaces, but from shadows.
Since 1947, Sri Lanka’s political rhythm has swung between two poles – the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. These were the powerhouses, the old firms, the gatekeepers of national destiny.
Each president who rose from these ranks had the luxury of legacy, the safety of institutions they knew intimately, and the comfort of choosing their own money general from within familiar walls. They picked their allies, shaped their economic directions, and managed the political theatre accordingly.
But 2025 is different. President Dissanayake does not come from that lineage. He is the first head of state from outside the traditional duopoly to sit in the highest office and choose a Treasury secretary of his own – his own money general.
And that decision will not just shape budgets or policies. It will define his presidency. In this climate, the wrong appointment won’t just bring bad headlines; it could collapse the balancing act entirely. Inch to the Left, and you lose fiscal balance. Inch to the Right, and the political coalition crumbles. This is not a choice; it’s a high-wire act, without a safety net.
Hovering above all is the IMF agreement – iron-clad and immovable. IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath is in the country. Her presence alone is a message: this is not the time for improvisation. Electricity tariffs have just risen by 15%. The reforms, however painful, are in motion. President Dissanayake is clearly standing by the IMF plan. Why? No money printing press to crank up in desperation. The money is dry and hands are wet. The options are gone.
State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) are being prepared for sale. One day, it is a ‘yes’ and the next day it is a ‘no.’ It’s a seesaw of contradictions. On paper, it looks clean. In reality, it stings. Taxes are already beyond bearable.
Entrepreneurs – small and large – are suffocating under regulation and cost. The public sees no relief and yet no promises of handouts remain. The Central Bank stands firm: no money printing. The Treasury offers no bailout or moratoriums. The State has become a lean machine by necessity, not design.
And outside the borders, the sovereign bondholders wait – watching, calculating, and demanding repayment. Every word from Colombo affects negotiations in New York, New Delhi, Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, and London. There is no room for error and little space to manoeuvre.
This is the context in which Dissanayake must name his money general. It cannot be a symbolic gesture. It cannot be an ideological pick. It must be a figure who understands the fragility of recovery, the ruthlessness of global finance, and the pulse of a restless electorate. The wrong choice could ignite protest. The right one could anchor a fragile hope.
The appointment is coming. And it will say more about this President than any speech, slogan, or promise ever could.
Who will be the new money general?
President Dissanayake is not an accidental leader. He is a product of the trenches – trained in Marxist doctrine, raised in the shadow of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and forged by decades of political isolation and struggle. But what sets him apart is not his ideological roots; it’s how he has outgrown them, without discarding them.
Today, he manages a coalition that stretches from the hard Left to the economic Right, with a nervous liberal Centre clinging to hope in between. It’s a miracle of political architecture. But miracles, as history shows, are hard to sustain.
Even the JVP has changed. The official website has been quietly scrubbed. Lenin and Marx no longer loom over red flag rallies. The literature is cleaner, the language more tempered. The fire still burns, but the fuel is different. This is not the same JVP that once shouted from the margins; it now whispers inside the corridors of power. But ideology doesn’t vanish; it adapts. And with it comes the next defining question: who will be the new money general?
Because the person President Dissanayake selects will not just run the Treasury – they will stand between two competing realities.
On one side: equity, justice, and redistribution. These are not slogans for the JVP, they are its DNA. They demand fairness, protection for the vulnerable, and a people-first economy.
On the other side: the IMF agreement. It is surgical, and it is merciless. Privatisation, profitability, and performance. It is not interested in ideology. It is only interested in numbers. Electricity prices must rise. SOEs must be sold. Fiscal discipline must be enforced. And there is no room for poetic detours.
Caught between these two worlds, the new money general must perform the impossible: uphold the IMF contract in full view of global creditors, while crafting a story at home that doesn’t betray the spirit of social justice that brought Dissanayake to power. They will be judged by bondholders in Washington and voters in Weligama. They will write policy with one hand and hold back protests with the other.
Can one person serve two masters – ideological loyalty and international compliance? The history of Sri Lanka says no. But history also never had a moment quite like this. The President has to choose not just an economist, but a strategist, a stabiliser, and a silent negotiator. A person who can dance on a fiscal glass floor with ideological weights tied to both ankles.
This appointment will not be made in a vacuum. It will be watched by embassies, markets, businesses, and trade unions alike. Because the money general, more than any Cabinet minister, will define whether Dissanayake’s presidency can hold its contradictions without collapsing under them.
To obey one master in today’s Sri Lanka is to betray another. That is the cruel paradox awaiting the next Treasury secretary – President Dissanayake’s yet-unnamed money general. Whoever steps into Siriwardana’s shoes will walk into a minefield wearing worn sandals. There will be no applause, no honeymoon. Just suspicion from both sides.
On one end, there are international stakeholders – IMF officials, sovereign bondholders, and donor governments – watching every move. Their patience is finite, their tolerance razor-thin. One step backwards, and the fragile economic credibility rebuilt since 2022 will collapse. They will reprice Sri Lanka’s risk in seconds. The cost of borrowing will skyrocket, investments will freeze, and aid will tighten.
On the other end are domestic realities – political activists demanding social justice, workers feeling the sting of taxes and tariffs, entrepreneurs buckling under regulation, and a public searching for someone to blame. The new money general will have few allies and even fewer cheerleaders. It’s a job that demands total commitment and offers almost no protection.
The price of public service
Now, here’s the question: if President Dissanayake called today and offered this position, would you take it?
Let’s weigh it plainly. The perks? Less than $ 2,000 a month. Your reputation? On the line every single day. Your work? Judged not just by Parliament or press, but by memes, WhatsApp forwards, and anonymous social media campaigns.
This is a country where bureaucrats are tried not in courts, but in the public square – on gossip pages, on evening news panels, in comments typed in rage. Families are dragged into the storm. Children bear the brunt of whispers they cannot understand. Depression, isolation, fear – these are not the costs printed in official letters, but they are real. They are the hidden price of public service.
To take this job is not to serve a government; it is to awaken a country. You will be asked to push policies you may privately question. You will be told to make sacrifices others are unwilling to share. You will carry burdens that can’t be spoken, only absorbed.
And yet, someone will say yes. Not for money. Not for fame. But perhaps for duty. Perhaps because the country still needs quiet patriots, those who dare to stand in impossible places and still try to hold the line.
So no, this job is not for everyone. And perhaps that is why it matters so much who says yes. Because this time, the money general must be more than competent. They must be courageous – and silent. A lightning rod and a shield. A steady hand in a storm that hasn’t yet passed.
In the hushed circles of Colombo’s political and bureaucratic elite, the consensus is clear; Sri Lanka’s next Treasury secretary should be a seasoned expert, a true child of the Ministry of Finance.
Someone who has walked the corridors, understood the bureaucracy, risen through the ranks, and listened more than spoken. A bridge-builder with no baggage, no scandal, and no enemies, at least none with receipts in the public domain. That is the profile most expect. That is what seems safe.
And I asked everyone, who fits this criteria? Then came a complete silence. To say it plainly, they are expecting a combination of Jayasundara, Samaratunga, and Siriwardana mixed with a Rohana Wijeweera ideology.
In search of more than a bureaucrat
But politics rarely follows scripts.
When President Dissanayake appointed his Secretary to the President, eyebrows rose across the burcaracy. The appointee had neither the seniority nor the technical clout the role traditionally demanded. Yet, nine months on, he has held the post with quiet competence, proving that trust and political chemistry can sometimes outrun technocracy.
That appointment offers a clue. Dissanayake doesn’t only look at technicalities. He looks for alignment – someone who understands the pulse of his vision and the emotional terrain of a movement that still beats with revolutionary blood.
Selecting the new money general will demand more than economic literacy. It will demand loyalty – not blind, but strategic. The person must be trusted not just to follow IMF spreadsheets, but also to translate the cold logic of austerity into language that can wake the JVP’s inner circle from ideology into the hard pragmatism of governance. This is not just about balancing accounts; it’s about balancing belief systems, about persuading revolutionaries to make peace with markets.
The right person must understand President Dissanayake deeply; not just his politics, but his silences. His fears. His instincts. Because in Sri Lanka, the Treasury secretary is more than a bureaucrat. He is the firewall and the fireball. The last word before the storm breaks. And he must be someone the President will defend publicly, shield politically, and trust entirely.
Who knows, maybe the next money general is already inside the 1930-built majestic fortress that houses both the Presidential Secretariat and the Ministry of Finance. Maybe he is in a side room, quietly drafting policies, managing figures, sitting in on meetings with a lukewarm title for the last nine months. Already shaping the story before the credit is assigned.
But when he is named, the country must remember: he does not just serve the President. He serves the public. And he must be given space – not to be popular, but to be principled. Not to please, but to perform.
Because in these fragile times, Sri Lanka does not need a showman. It needs a servant with a steel spine, a silent voice, and a clear heart. The new money general must step forward, not just to manage the economy, but to defend the soul of governance itself.