March 23, 2004
Speaker Biographies
Hans-Joachim (Achim) Dübel is an independent international consultant based in Berlin. In this function, he provides economic analysis and advice on the legal, regulatory, fiscal, and social aspects of European financial sector development, with a special focus on mortgage finance. His clients include international organizations, governments, trade associations, and the private sector. Mr. Dübel was on the staff of the Financial Sector Development Department of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., as a senior financial economist from 1998 to 2000. In this position, he advised emerging economies on mortgage and capital market policy issues. From 1991 to 1998, he worked for Empirica, an economic think tank based in Bonn and Berlin, and as a senior economist focusing on mortgage finance, housing and urban development policy, regional economic development, and large commercial real estate investment projects. He has been a permanent adviser for the Association of German Mortgage Banks (Pfandbrief issuers) since 1993. In 1995, he undertook the first econometric model based commercial credit risk analysis outside the United States that contributed to the change in regulatory approach in banking towards risk-based capital requirements. In 1997, he published the first internationally comparative analysis of mortgage prepayment risk. In 2003, he coauthored the Mercer, Oliver, and Wyman study on Financial Integration in the EU for the European Mortgage Federation.
Bert Ely is a financial institutions and monetary policy consultant. The principal at Ely & Company, Inc., in Alexandria, Virginia, he has specialized in deposit insurance and banking-structure issues since 1981. In 1986, he was one of the first to publicly predict a taxpayer bailout of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. He monitors conditions in the banking and thrift industries, the politics of the credit-allocation process, and issues concerning monetary policy and the payments system.
Alex J. Pollock has been president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, an $87 billion housing GSE, since 1991. He is the architect of the innovative Mortgage Partnership Finance (MPF) Program, which is offered by nine FHLBs and has grown to over $85 billion in assets and over 700 participating lending institutions since its introduction in 1997. Mr. Pollock is a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance and the Bankers Club of Chicago; a director of Allied Capital Corporation, the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, and the Great Books Foundation; and a trustee of the Illinois Council on Economic Education. Mr. Pollock is the author of numerous articles on banking, financial systems, and management.
Peter J. Wallison joined AEI in 1999 as a resident fellow and as the codirector of AEI's program on financial market deregulation. As a partner of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, he practiced banking, corporate, and financial law in the firm's Washington and New York offices. As the general counsel of the Treasury Department from 1981 to 1985, Mr. Wallison helped develop the Reagan administration's proposals for deregulating the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was counsel to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Back from the Brink, a proposal for a system of private deposit insurance; coauthor of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of the Internet; and the editor of Serving Two Masters Yet out of Control: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Optional Federal Chartering of Insurance Companies, all of which have been published by the AEI Press. More recently, Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press.
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