Speaker biographies
September 20, 2005
Jim Grant founded Grant's Interest Rate Observer in 1983. He is the author of four books on finance and financial history: Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend (Simon & Schuster, 1983), Money of the Mind (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992), Minding Mr. Market (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993), and The Trouble with Prosperity (Times Books, 1996). He also authored John Adams: Party of One (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005). Mr. Grant's television appearances include 60 Minutes, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CBS Evening News, and a ten-year stint on Wall Street Week. His journalism has appeared in a variety of periodicals, including the Financial Times, the Harvard Business Review, the New Republic, the American Spectator, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is also a founding general partner of Nippon Partners, a hedge fund that invests in Japan. Mr. Grant formerly served as a Navy gunner's mate. He began his career in journalism in 1972 at the Baltimore Sun and joined the staff of Barron's in 1975 where he originated the “Current Yield” column.
Robert Lacoursière joined Banc of American Securities LLC (BAS) in August 2004 as a senior equity research analyst covering the Specialty Finance and Mortgage sectors. Before joining BAS, Mr. Lacoursière was a vice president of Financial Strategies in the corporate development group at Capital One Financial. Previously he was a senior vice president at Lehman Brothers, first as director of Latin American equity research and then as an equity research analyst covering the U.S. small & mid capitalization bank sector. He was also a vice president at Santander Investment, and before that was manager of Latin America credit and investment at the Bank of Nova Scotia.
Jason Thomas is the economic analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee and its chairman, Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). Mr. Thomas directs Senate Republican research on financial services, banking, Social Security, agriculture, and telecommunications policy issues. Prior to coming to the Senate, Mr. Thomas was a staff economist at Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation—a nonprofit, free market advocacy and research group—and also worked as an analyst for a division of Tyson Foods. Mr. Thomas’s articles and essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Times, Newsday, Investors’ Business Daily, and many regional papers.
Peter J. Wallison joined AEI in 1999 as a resident fellow and as the co-director 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 (2000), a proposal for a system of private deposit insurance; coauthor of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (2000) and The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of the Internet (2000); and editor of Serving Two Masters Yet out of Control: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (2001) and Optional Federal Chartering of Insurance Companies (2000), 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.
Lawrence J. White is Arthur E. Imperatore Professor of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. From 1986 to1989, he was on leave to serve as a board member of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board; and from 1982 to 1983, he was on leave to serve as director of the Economic Policy Office in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Mr. White served on the senior staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (1978–1979), and he was chairman of the Stern School’s Department of Economics (1990–1995). He is the author of International Trade in Ocean Shipping Services: The U.S. and the World (Ballinger, 1988); The S&L Debacle: Public Policy Lessons for Bank and Thrift Regulation (Oxford University Press,1991); and articles in leading economics and law journals.
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