EVENTS

Date:	Thursday, March 26, 2009
Time:	10:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

Alan Boyce is the chief executive officer of Absalon, a joint venture between George Soros and the Danish financial system that is assisting in the organization of a standardized mortgage-backed securities market for Mexico. He is also the president of Adecoagro, a food and renewable energy producing company that owns and operates more than 270,000 hectares of highly productive land throughout Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and a consultant for Soros Fund Management, where he works to implement the Danish mortgage system in the United States. Previously, Mr. Boyce was the senior managing director for investment strategy at Countrywide Financial Corporation, where he was responsible for secondary markets, the hedging of mortgage servicing rights, and the balance sheet for Countrywide Bank and Balboa Insurance. Mr. Boyce was the director of special situations at Soros Fund Management from 1999 until early 2007, where he managed a portfolio of assets of the Quantum Funds and had principal operational responsibilities for the bulk of the Fund’s investments in Latin America. Before joining Soros Fund Management, Mr. Boyce served for fourteen years as the managing director in charge of fixed income arbitrage with Bankers Trust. Prior to that, he worked for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.

Bert Ely is a financial institutions and monetary policy consultant at Ely & Co. in Alexandria, Virginia. He has specialized in deposit insurance and banking-structure issues since 1981. In recent years, Mr. Ely has researched and written extensively on government-sponsored enterprise issues; coauthored an AEI monograph describing how to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and developed proposals for fundamentally reforming U.S. housing finance, specifically through the use of covered-bond financing for mortgages and a mortgage-product innovation that eliminates mortgage-refinancing costs. In 1986, Mr. Ely was one of the first to publicly predict a taxpayer bailout of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation.

Olivier Hassler has been a senior housing finance specialist at the World Bank since 2001, where he coordinates the team of housing finance experts within the financial- and private-sector development vice presidency. He has been involved in projects, technical assistance, or analytical work in numerous countries in South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. Previously, Mr. Hassler worked for a French financial institution that specialized in mortgage finance-especially for lower-income households-and municipal finance. He was in charge of funding and capital markets operations and had responsibilities in regulatory issues and real estate portfolio management. 

Alex J. Pollock has been a resident fellow at AEI since 2004, focusing on financial policy issues, including government-sponsored enterprises, retirement finance, housing finance, corporate governance, and accounting standards. He has written extensively on the housing bubble and bust and is the author of the one-page mortgage disclosure proposal. Previously, he spent thirty-five years in banking, including twelve years as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, while also writing numerous articles on financial systems and management. He is a director of Allied Capital Corporation, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, and the International Union for Housing Finance and chairman of the board of the Great Books Foundation.

Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy Studies at AEI, where he codirects the Institute’s program on financial market deregulation. He previously practiced banking, corporate, and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. From June 1981 to January 1985, Mr. Wallison was general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan administration’s proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. He also served as general counsel to the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee and participated in the Treasury Department’s efforts to deal with the debt held by less-developed countries. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Between 1972 and 1976, Mr. Wallison served first as special assistant to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller when he was vice president of the United States.