Speaker biographies

Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at AEI whose research focuses on global currencies, major emerging market economies, and the role of the multilateral lending institutions. He writes extensively on topics such as economic policy, fund arrangements, monetary reform, import restrictions, and exchange rates. Before joining AEI, he was a managing director and chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. Previously, he was deputy director in the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund.

John H. Makin is a visiting scholar at AEI. He is also a principal at Caxton Associates. Mr. Makin has served as an adviser to numerous U.S. government agencies, the Federal Reserve System, and the Bank of Japan. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York. Mr. Makin joined AEI in 1984 after a distinguished career in academic research. He is the author of numerous books and articles on financial, monetary, and fiscal policy. He writes AEI’s monthly Economic Outlook.

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, accounting standards, and issues raised by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. 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, the International Union for Housing Finance, and chairman of the board of the Great Books Foundation.

Nouriel Roubini is an internationally known expert in the field of international macroeconomics. He is a professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the cofounder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics LLC, an innovative economic and geostrategic information service that was named one of the best economics websites by BusinessWeek, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. Mr. Roubini has served as a senior adviser to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Treasury Department, has published numerous policy papers and books on international macroeconomic issues, and is regularly cited as an authority in the media. He has also been a faculty member at Yale University.

R. Christopher Whalen is the cofounder and managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, where he is responsible for sales, business development, and editorial activities. He has worked as an investment banker, research analyst, and journalist for more than two decades and has covered a variety of industry sectors, including technology and financial institutions. In addition to editing the newsletter The Institutional Risk Analyst, Mr. Whalen contributes regularly to publications such as Barron’s, The International Economy and American Banker. He is a member of Professional Risk Managers International Association (PRMIA) and volunteers as a regional director of PRMIA’s Washington DC chapter and chairs its speakers committee.

Thomas Zimmerman is a managing director in the securitized products strategy group at UBS Investment Bank, where he manages the firm’s asset-backed security (ABS) and mortgage credit research. Prior to joining UBS, Mr. Zimmerman spent eight years at Prudential Securities, first as a senior vice president in the mortgage research group and later as head of the ABS research department. Before that, he managed the MBS (mortgage-backed security)/ABS research group at Chemical Bank. Mr. Zimmerman started his research career as a vice president in the mortgage research department at Salomon Brothers. His research has appeared in numerous fixed-income publications and industry reference works, including the Handbook of Fixed Income Securities (McGraw-Hill, 2001) and the Handbook of Mortgage-Backed Securities (McGraw-Hill, 2001). He is a member of the UBS research team that ranked first in the latest Institutional Investor survey of fixed-income analysts.