March Policy Conference Set to Focus on New Options

The newly installed economic team of the Obama administration is working on proposals for boosting the economy and restructuring the financial sector just as NABE prepares to hosts its 25th Annual Washington Economic Policy Conference March 1-3.

The conference theme is “Restoring Financial and Economic Stability.”  The location is the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac from the historic district of Georgetown in Washington, D.C.

The lineup of keynote speakers includes Christina Romer, confirmed in late January as chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.  She will address the conference at the breakfast session on Tuesday, March 3. 

Other confirmed speakers include: Jeff Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; and Jeff Liebman, executive associate director, Office of Management and Budget.

Conference attendees are invited to a special evening reception on Monday, March 2, in the atrium of the Federal Reserve Board’s Eccles building on Constitution Avenue, in the Foggy Bottom area of the nation’s capital.

Before her appointment to the CEA, Romer was the Garff  B. Wilson professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley.  Earlier, she taught at Princeton University.

Romer will update conference attendees on the administration's economic goals and expectations for the coming year and beyond. She is known for her research on the causes and recovery from the Great Depression, and on the government’s role in that recovery, according to the CEA.

Lacker has been president of the Richmond Fed since 2004 and is currently a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.  Before joining the Obama administration at OMB, Liebman was a professor of public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

New Policies, Options in First 100 Days

“When we look at the past few months, we see increasing volatility in the markets—including the housing sector and the bond markets,” said NABE Board Member William Strauss, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the leader of the NABE Policy Conference Organizing Committee.  He pointed out that the conference will focus, in part, on analyzing “factors that continue to cause instability, and to look at the new administration and the policy solutions they might be thinking about.”
 
 “There is a new team in town, and by early March, the major appointees will be in place and business economists will be able to learn a lot by hearing from new policymakers and attending [Policy Conference] sessions on key issues,” said Strauss.

NABE members serving on the policy conference program committee are Richard Wobbekind, Richard Brown, Stuart Mackintosh, Nayantara Hensel, Diane Swonk, Sviatlana Francis, and Nicole Firment.

Other confirmed speakers for general and concurrent sessions include:

• Nariman Behravesh, IHS Global Insight
• Carmen Reinhardt, University of Maryland
• Larry Lindsey, The Lindsey Group
• Henry Aaron, Brookings Institution
• Bill Gale, Brookings Institution
• Brad Delong, University of California at Berkeley
• Alan Viard, American Enterprise Institute
• Kevin Hassett, American Enterprise Institute
• Robert Scott, Economic Policy Institute
• Morris Goldstein, Peterson Institute for International Economics
• Domenico Lombardi, Oxonia
• Ngozi Ikonjo-Iweala, World Bank and former Finance Minister of Nigeria
• Peter Hooper, Deutsche Bank
• Brian Sack, Macroeconomic Advisers
• Charles Calomiris, Columbia University
• Markus Brunnermeier, Princeton University
• Jim Thomas, National Visual Analytics Center

Concurrent sessions and speakers include:

• State and local government finances - with Donald J. Boyd, Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, and Michael Bird, National Conference of State Legislatures
• Controlling government healthcare costs or expanding coverage:  can we do both? - with Henry Aaron, Brookings Institution; Robert Reischauer, Urban Institute; and Diane Rowland, Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation
• Transforming the defense industry - with Kenneth A. Minihan, former director, National Security Agency, and John Terrence Blake, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy
• Energy independence - with Guy Caruso, former Energy Information Agency administrator, and David Dismukes, Center for Energy Studies, Louisiana State University

Other concurrent educational sessions will address: the auto industry in transition; education, technology, and the labor force; the Euro and the European Central Bank;
the role of the international financial institutions in managing crises; and monetary policy and the new Fed tools.
 
Check here for program updates and click here to register for the conference.

Call to Jazz Musicians!

Jazz musicians, bring your saxe, horn, voice, or whatever to the policy conference for our third annual jam session set for the evening welcome reception on Sunday, March 1. Enthusiasm is more important than proficiency. If you sound like Stan Getz or Diana Krall, that’s cool; if you play outside—either on purpose or by accident—that’s cool, too. Our focus will be on relatively simple tunes—a mix of standards, blues, bossas and bebop tunes—in order to maximize participation. Head charts in C, B-flat, and E-flat will be provided. Also, the room will have a piano, drum set, and stands. We need to know how many will show up and what instruments, so please contact Bob Crow at (650) 343-7615 or rtcrow@comcast.net to let him know if you will participate and to offer comments and suggestions. Drop your inhibitions, bring your instrument, and be there!