Speaker biographies Charles W. Calomiris is a visiting scholar at AEI and codirector of AEI’s program on financial market deregulation. He is the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. At AEI, Mr. Calomiris studies banking regulation, corporate finance, and monetary economics. His most recent book is Sustaining India’s Growth Miracle (edited with Jagdish Bhagwati; Columbia University Press, 2008).
Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg. Before joining AEI, Mr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia Business School. He was an economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential election and was the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2000 presidential primaries. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the former Bush and Clinton administrations. Mr. Hassett is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s Dynamic Scoring Advisory Panel. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of six books on economics and economic policy, including Toward Fundamental Tax Reform (AEI Press, 2005). He has published scholarly articles in the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, and many other professional journals. His popular writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. His economic commentaries are regularly aired on radio and television, including recent appearances on the Today Show, CBS’s Morning Show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.
Desmond Lachman joined AEI as a resident fellow after serving as a managing director and chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. He was previously deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Policy and Review Department and was active in staff formulation of IMF policies toward emerging markets. Mr. Lachman researches topics like the U.S. housing market bubble, the dollar crisis, challenges to the Federal Reserve, and IMF and World Bank reform.
John H. Makin is a visiting scholar at AEI. He is also a principal at Caxton Associates. Mr. Makin has been 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, and he writes AEI’s monthly Economic Outlook.
Allan H. Meltzer is a visiting scholar at AEI and the Allan H. Meltzer University Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University. He was an honorary adviser to the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies of the Bank of Japan from 1986 to 2002. He was a member of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board during the Reagan administration. He has been an acting member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and a consultant to the U.S. Treasury and to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In 1999 and 2000, he served as the chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, which was appointed by Congress to review the role of these institutions. The author of several books and numerous papers on economic theory and policy, he is also a founder of the Shadow Open Market Committee. In 2002, he was elected a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association. He received the first annual Irving Kristol Award and delivered the Irving Kristol Lecture at AEI’s annual dinner in February 2003. Volume 2 of Mr. Meltzer’s acclaimed History of the Federal Reserve is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
Vincent R. Reinhart, a resident scholar at AEI, is a former director of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Monetary Affairs who has spent more than two decades working on domestic and international aspects of U.S. monetary policy. He held a number of senior positions in the Divisions of Monetary Affairs and International Finance and spent the last six years of his Federal Reserve career as secretary and economist of the Federal Open Market Committee. Mr. Reinhart has worked on topics as varied as economic bubbles and the conduct of monetary policy, auctions of U.S. Treasury securities, alternative strategies for monetary policy, and the efficient communication of monetary policy decisions.
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 and New York. From June 1981 to January 1985, Mr. Wallison was general counsel of the 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 1986–87, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Between 1972 and 1976, Mr. Wallison served first as special assistant to New York governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller when he was vice president of the United States.
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