Jobs, Investment and Energy: Meeting President Obama’s Challenge
EPS Bernard L. Schwartz Symposium: Working Groups on the Economics Crisis
Co-sponsored by The New America Foundation and Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center
Program
Welcoming Remarks: James K. Galbraith — Economists for Peace and Security and Bernard Schwartz (video, transcript)
Keynote: Edward G. Rendell — Governor of Pennsylvania (video, transcript)
Panel One: How to Budget for Jobs & Investments (video, transcript)
Chair: Allen Sinai — Decision Economics
Marshall Auerback — RAB Capital Plc
Linda Bilmes — John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
James K. Galbraith — Economists for Peace & Security
Panel Two: Rebuilding America: How to Do It & How to Pay For it (video, transcript)
Chair: James K. Galbraith — Economists for Peace and Security
John Robert Behrman — Democratic Executive Committeeman for the Thirteenth Senate District of Texas
John Alic — Independent Consultant
Michael Lind — New America Foundation, Economic Growth Program
Sherle Schwenninger — New America Foundation, Economic Growth program
Session Three: Energy and Climate: What is the Program? (video)
Chair: Richard Kaufman — Bethesda Research Group
Marcellus Andrews — Barnard College
Kate Gordon — Center for American Progress, Energy Policy
Charles Hall — SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Lisa Margonelli — New America Foundation, Energy Policy Initiative
Participant Biographies
Marcellus Andrews
Marcellus Andrews earned a BSBA from the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania as well as an MA, MPhil and PhD in economics from Yale University. Andrews is at present a professor of economics at Barnard College of Columbia University. Andrews’ current book projects are Economic Policy and the Road to Social Justice (completed manuscript) and Re-imagining American Freedom (in progress).
Marshall Auerback
Marshall Auerback has 28 years experience in the investment management business, serving as a global portfolio strategist for RAB Capital Plc, a UK-based fund management group with $2bn under management since 2003. He also serves as a consultant to PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund management group and a non-executivedirector of Pinetree Capital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is also a member of the Roosevelt Brain Trust and a contributor to www.newdeal20.org.
From 1983–1987, he was an investment manager at GT Management (Asia) Limited in Hong Kong, where he focussed on the markets of Hong Kong, the ASEAN countries (Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand), New Zealand and Australia. From 1988–91, Mr Auerback was based in Tokyo, where his Pacific Rim expertise was broadened to include the Japanese stock market. From 1992–95, Mr Auerback worked in New York for the Tiedemann Investment group, where he ran an emerging markets’ hedge fund. From 1996–99, he worked as an international economics strategist for Veneroso Associates, which provided macroeconomic strategy to a number of leading institutional investors. From 1999–2002, he managed the Prudent Global Fixed Income Fund for David W. Tice & Associates, a USVI-based investment management firm, and assisted with the management of the Prudent Bear Fund. Mr Auerback graduated magna cum laude in English & Philosophy from Queen’s University in 1981 and received a law degree from Corpus Christi College, Oxford University in 1983.
John Robert Behrman
Behrman holds a B.A. and M.A. from Rice University in Economics. His dissertation (1967) was on “Internationalization of Weapons System Acquisition”. “J.R.” is a Democratic State Executive Committeeman from Houston, Texas. He is retired from a career in government and public finance. Behrman was Judge-Alternate of the 2008 General Election in Harris County and is author of “The Texas (Energy + Economy) Plan”.
Linda Bilmes
Professor Linda J. Bilmes is a full-time faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School where she teaches budgeting, applied budgeting, and public finance. She has held senior positions in government, including Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of Commerce, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Administration, and US Representative to several high-ranking commissions, including a US Treasury Department commission to audit the Inter-American Investment Corporation. Bilmes served on the presidential transition team for President Barack Obama and is currently an advisor to the US Army, the US Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Parks. She also teaches budgeting workshops for newly-elected Mayors and Members of Congress, conducted by the Institute of Politics.
Bilmes has written extensively on financial and budgetary issues, including the cost of the Iraq War, veterans’ health and disability costs, state and local employee pensions, and federal workforce reform. She is the co-author (with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz) of the New York Times best-seller The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, and a number of papers and book chapters on related topics including "Soldiers Returning From Iraq and Afghanistan: The Long-term Costs of Providing Veterans Medical Care and Disability Benefits” and "The Economic Costs of The Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of The Conflict." Her most recent book The People Factor: Strengthening America by Investing in Public Service (co-authored with W. Scott Gould) was published in April 2009.
Bilmes is frequently interviewed on national media broadcasts, including the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN World News Tonight, In the Money, the Lou Dobbs Show, CBS Evening News, Democracy Now, NPR’s “Fresh Air”, “All Things Considered”, “Here and Now” and “On Point”; BBCWorld Service and Bloomberg television and radio. She is featured in the academy award-nominated documentary film No End In Sight. She was awarded the prestigious “Speaking Truth to Power” Prize by the American Friends Service Committee in 2008.
James K. Galbraith
James K. Galbraith teaches economics and a variety of other subjects at the LBJ School. He holds degrees from Harvard (B.A. magna cum laude, 1974) and Yale (Ph.D. in economics, 1981). He studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge in 1974-1975, and then served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1985. He directed the LBJ School's Ph.D. Program in Public Policy from 1995 to 1997. He directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group based at the LBJ School. Galbraith maintains several outside connections, including serving as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and as Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. He writes a column called "Econoclast" for Mother Jones, and occasional commentary in many other publications, including The Texas Observer, The American Prospect, and The Nation. He is an occasional commentator for Public Radio International's Marketplace.
Kate Gordon
Kate Gordon is the Vice President for Energy Policy at American Progress. Most recently, Kate was the co-director of the national Apollo Alliance, where she still serves as senior policy advisor. Kate was one of Apollo’s first staffers, joining in 2004 as the director of the Apollo Strategy Center, the policy arm of Apollo formerly housed at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, or COWS.
Kate is nationally recognized for her work on the intersection of clean energy and economic development policy. She also has a long history of working on economic justice and labor issues. At COWS, along with her energy work, Kate focused on corporate tax policy, progressive federalism, and rural economic development. Prior to that, she served as an employment and consumer rights litigator at Trial Lawyers for Public Justice in Oakland, CA. She is a primary or co-author on most of Apollo’s major reports, including “The New Apollo Program,” “Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities,” “Greener Pathways,” and the “New Energy” series. She is also the author of several published articles on contract fairness, federal preemption, mandatory arbitration litigation, and regional economic development.
Kate earned a J.D. and master's degree in city planning from the University of California-Berkeley and is a member of the the State Bar of California.
Charles Hall
Professor, Environmental and Forest Biology
Dr. Charles Hall is a Systems Ecologist who has written seven books and 230 scholarly articles. He is best known for developing the concept of EROI, or energy return on investment, which is an examination of how organisms, including humans, invest energy to obtain additional energy to improve their biotic or social fitness. He has applied this approach to fish migrations, carbon balance, tropical land use change and petroleum extraction in both natural and human-dominated ecosystems. His studies have been funded by more than $2.5 million from various agencies. He is highly sought as a speaker and has received a number of honors. His ultimate goal is to develop a new field, biophysical economics, as a supplement or alternative to conventional neoclassical economics.
Richard Kaufman
Richard Kaufman is a member of the board of directors and a vice chair of Economists for Peace and Security. He was formerly a staff economist and general counsel of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress where he directed and authored numerous studies on national and international security issues including defense spending, procurement, research and development, and economic trends in Russia and China. Most recently he directed and co-authored EPS reports on missile defense and the space program.
Michael Lind
Michael Lind is the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author, with Ted Halstead, of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics (Doubleday, 2001). He is also the author of Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (New America Books/Basic, 2003) and What Lincoln Believed (Doubleday, 2005). Mr. Lind has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and The New Republic. From 1991 to 1994, he was executive editor of The National Interest. He has also been a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School. Mr. Lind has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Prospect (U.K.), The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, and other leading publications, and has appeared on C-SPAN, National Public Radio, CNN’s Crossfire, and PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Mr. Lind’s first three books of political journalism and history, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (Free Press, 1995), Up From Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America (Free Press, 1996), and Vietnam: The Necessary War (Free Press, 1999) were all selected as New York Times Notable Books. He has also published several volumes of fiction and poetry, including The Alamo (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), which the Los Angeles Times named as one of the Best Books of the year, and a prize-winning children’s book, Bluebonnet Girl (Henry Holt, 2004). His ground-breaking study of American grand strategy, The American Way of Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life was published by Oxford University Press in October 2006.
Lisa Margonelli
Lisa Margonelli directs the New America Foundation's energy initiative. Her book about the oil supply chain, Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to Your Tank, was published by Nan Talese/Doubleday in 2007. Recognized as one of the 25 Notable Books of 2007 by the American Library Association, Oil on the Brain also won a 2008 Northern California Book Award for general nonfiction.
Ms. Margonelli has been published in The Atlantic, New York Times online, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Discover, Salon, Business 2.0, San Francisco Magazine, and California Monthly, among other publications.
Edward G. Rendell
Edward G. Rendell has served as Pennsylvania’s 45th Governor since January 2003. Governor Rendell’s unprecedented strategic investments have energized Pennsylvania’s economy, revitalized communities, improved education, protected the environment and expanded access to health care to all children and affordable prescription drugs for older adults.
Governor Rendell is building on his efforts to make government more responsible to the public, and more responsive to the public’s needs. He has annually cut wasteful spending and improved efficiency to save more than $1 billion and is pursuing a legislative agenda that includes commonsense political reforms to put progress ahead of partisanship.
Under Governor Rendell’s leadership, Pennsylvania’s economy rebounded sharply. Governor Rendell’s economic stimulus plan is investing more than $2.8 billion to create new jobs and revitalize communities. Governor Rendell is also making Pennsylvania a leader in pursuing energy independence – creating jobs in the emerging alternative energy economy while developing effective strategies to reduce dependence on foreign oil and save families money.
In addition, Governor Rendell won passage of the landmark Growing Greener 2 environmental investment package. The $625 million initiative is cleaning up rivers and streams, improving parks, returning abandoned industrial sites to productive use, protecting open space and preserving farmland.
From 1992 through 1999, Governor Rendell served as the 121st Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. Among his many accomplishments as Mayor, Rendell eliminated a $250 million deficit; balanced the city's budget and generated five consecutive budget surpluses; reduced business and wage taxes for four consecutive years; implemented new revenue-generating initiatives, and dramatically improved services to the City's neighborhoods. Before serving as Mayor, Rendell was elected district attorney of the City of Philadelphia for two terms from 1978 through 1985.
The Governor, who served as general chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2000 Presidential election, has always been active in the community through a variety of memberships on boards, and also teaches government and politics courses at the University of Pennsylvania. An Army veteran, the Governor is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (B.A. 1965) and Villanova Law School (J.D. 1968).
Bernard Schwartz
Bernard L. Schwartz is chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC, a private investment firm. He also manages the investments of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, which mainly supports higher education, medical research and New York City-based cultural organizations. He promotes the development of US economic policy initiatives through investment in educational institutions, think tanks and advocacy organizations.
Prior to establishing BLS Investments in March 2006, Mr. Schwartz served for 34 years as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Loral Space & Communications and its predecessor company, Loral Corporation. In recognition of his achievements and extensive experience in industry and global finance, Mr. Schwartz is often called upon to express his views or provide counsel on matters ranging from U.S. economic growth and competitiveness to technology and infrastructure investment. At a number of institutions, he has initiated programs (including the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and a Chair in Economics and Policy, at the New School) that rigorously examine current US economic performance, in the process challenging current orthodoxy to arrive at innovative policy proposals that will further US economic and technological preeminence. The programs employ lectures, position papers, conferences and debates, and tap the expertise of leading economists, business people and policy makers. The policy proposals that emerge from these programs are broadly distributed to government officials, members of Congress, educators, researchers, the media and the general public.
Mr. Schwartz graduated from City College of New York with a B.S. degree in finance and holds an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from the college. He and his wife live in New York City and have two daughters, three granddaughters and one grandson.
Sherle Schwenninger
Sherle Schwenninger directs the New America Foundation's Economic Growth Program, and the Global Middle Class Initiative. He is also the former director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program. Mr. Schwenninger was Founding Editor of World Policy Journal from 1983 to 1992, and served as Director of the World Policy Institute at The New School from 1992 to 1996. He was also Director of the Institute's Policy Studies Program and its Transnational Academic Program. More recently, Mr. Schwenninger served as Senior Program Coordinator for the Project on Development, Trade, and International Finance at the Council on Foreign Relations, and is the author, with Walter Russell Mead, of the CFR publication A Financial Architecture for Middle-Class-Oriented Development. He is also a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute. Mr. Schwenninger writes and speaks frequently on questions of American foreign policy and international economic strategy.
Allen Sinai
Allen Sinai is Chief Global Economist, Strategist and President of Decision Economics, Inc. (DE), a global economics, strategy, financial market information support and advisory firm.
During his career Dr. Sinai has served a wide variety of organizations and decision-makers in the United States and abroad, as a forecaster, educator, and econometric modelbuilder. He has been consulted by various administrations from both political parties on key economic and policy issues, has often testified before Congress, and meets regularly with senior level policymakers from other countries. He is a recognized expert on the Federal Reserve and monetary policy, both as a scholar and in forecasting Federal Reserve policy, and has served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve.
Between 1983 and 1996, Dr. Sinai was Chief Global Economist and a Managing Director, and the Director of Lehman Brothers Global Economics of Lehman Brothers, Inc.. From 1988 to 1992, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Economist of The Boston Company, an asset management and banking subsidiary of Shearson Lehman Brothers, where he also headed a small economic information company, The Boston Company Economic Advisors, Inc.. Before joining Lehman Brothers, he was at Data Resources, Inc., serving as Chief Financial Economist and a Senior Vice President. At DRI from 1971 to 1983.
Allen Sinai holds a Bachelors Degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and a Doctorate in Economics from Northwestern University.