The Economic and Security Future
EPS Bernard L. Schwartz Symposium
Co-sponsored by The New America Foundation
Program
Welcoming Remarks: James K. Galbraith — Economists for Peace and Security (transcript, audio below)
Session One: World Security Situation — Russia, Iraq and Syria, and Beyond (video, transcript, audio below)
Chair: Richard Kaufman — Bethesda Research Institute
Carl Conetta — Project on Defense Alternatives
Bill Hartung — Center for International Policy
Heather Hurlburt — New America Foundation
Keynote: Damon Silvers — Policy Director, AFL-CIO (presentation, video, transcript, audio below)
Session Two: Growth and Jobs (video, transcript, audio below)
Chair: James K. Galbraith — Economists for Peace and Security
Bill Spriggs — AFL-CIO
Allen Sinai — Decision Economics (paper)
Stephanie Kelton — University of Missouri – Kansas City (presentation)
Ralph Gomory — New York University
Keynote: Senator Jim Webb (video, transcript, audio below)
Session Three: Agenda Ahead: Climate, Infrastructure, Finance and Security (video, transcript, audio below)
Chair: Marshall Auerback — Institute for New Economic Thinking
Rachel Cleetus — Union of Concerned Scientists
Michael Lind — New America Foundation (presentation)
Bruce Bartlett
Gallery
Participant Biographies
Marshall Auerback
Auerback has over 20 years of experience in the investment management business. He served as a director and global portfolio strategist for the Canada-based fund management group Pinetree Capital. He also was head of economic research for Madison Street Partners, a Denver-based investment management group, and he worked as an economic consultant to PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund management group. In addition, Auerback is a Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and a Fellow for Economists for Peace and Security.
Previously, Auerback managed the Prudent Global Fixed Income Fund for David W. Tice & Associates and assisted with the management of the Prudent Bear Fund. He also worked as an international economics strategist for Veneroso Associates, which provided macroeconomic strategy to a number of leading institutional investors. Prior to that, Auerback ran an emerging markets fund for Tiedemann Investment Group in New York. He began his finance career as an investment manager at GT Management, focusing on the markets of Japan, Australia, and the Pacific Rim, while based in Hong Kong and then Tokyo.
Auerback graduated magna cum laude from Queen’s University in Canada and received a post-graduate masters degree from Oxford University.
Bruce Bartlett
Bruce Bartlett is a columnist for The Fiscal Times, an online newspaper covering public and personal finance, and Tax Notes, a weekly magazine for tax practitioners and policymakers. He also contributes a weekly post to the Economix blog at the New York Times, and writes regularly for the Financial Times. Bartlett was previously a columnist for Forbes magazine and Creators Syndicate. His writing often focuses on the intersection between politics and economics and attempts to inform politicians about economics, and economists about the current nature of politics.
Bartlett’s work is informed by many years in government, including service on the staffs of Congressmen Ron Paul and Jack Kemp and Senator Roger Jepsen, as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House, and deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department during the George H.W. Bush administration.
Bruce is the author of eight books including the New York Times best-seller, The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform—Why We Need It and What It Will Take. His earlier book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, was also a New York Times best-seller.
Rachel Cleetus
Rachel Cleetus is an economist with the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The focus of her work is designing and advocating for effective global warming policies at the federal, regional, state and international levels. These policies include both market-based approaches (such as cap-and-trade programs) and complementary, sector-based approaches (such as efficiency, renewable energy and clean technology R&D). She also analyzes the economic costs of inaction on climate change.
Prior to joining UCS, Dr. Cleetus worked as a consultant for the World Wildlife Fund, doing policy-focused research on the links between sustainable development, trade and ecosystems in Asia and Africa. She also worked for Tellus Institute in the energy and environment program, under the mentorship of Steve Bernow.
Dr. Cleetus holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in economics from Duke University and a B.S. in economics from West Virginia University.
Carl Conetta
Since January 1991, Carl Conetta has been co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). Prior to joining PDA, Mr. Conetta was a Research Fellow of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) and also served for three years as editor of the IDDS journal Defense and Disarmament Alternatives, and the Arms Control Reporter.
As co-director of PDA, Mr. Conetta has authored and co-authored numerous reports on security issues and has published in Defense News, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, NOD and Conversion Journal, the Boston Review, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the American Sentinel, Security Dialogue, and Hawk, the journal of the Royal Air Force Staff College of the United Kingdom. Mr. Conetta has also made presentations at the Pentagon, US State Department, US House Armed Services Committee, Army War College, National Defense University, UNIDIR, and other governmental and nongovernmental institutions in the United States and abroad. He is a frequent expert commentator on radio and TV. He edits the Chinese Military Power and Revolution in Military Affairs Webpages.
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.
Ralph Gomory
Ralph Gomory is a Research Professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University (NYU).
Gomory joined NYU in 2007 after 18 years as president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He came to the Sloan foundation after thirty years with IBM that included 20 years as head of IBM’s Research Division and the eventual title of IBM Senior Vice President for Science and Technology. He has also been a director of a number of Fortune 500 companies including the Washington Post Company and the Bank of New York.
Gomory has written extensively about the motivation of today’s American corporations and the consequences of that motivation. He has also written about international trade and is the author (with William J. Baumol) of “Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests” MIT Press 2001. He is also well known for his mathematical research
Gomory has been elected to the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. He has been a trustee of Princeton University and has served three presidents on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He has been awarded eight honorary degrees and many prizes including the National Medal of Science.
Bill Hartung
He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). His previous books include And Weapons for All (HarperCollins, 1995), a critique of US arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations. From July 2007 through March 2011, Mr. Hartung was the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Prior to that, he served as the director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams. Bill Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal. He has been a featured expert on national security issues on CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News, the Lehrer Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international radio outlets. He blogs for the Huffington Post and TPM Café.
Heather Hurlburt
Heather Hurlburt’s policy work focuses primarily on the politics of US foreign policy, counter-terrorism and resilience, and the nexus of civilian and military approaches to conflict resolution. She has previously served in the White House, State Department and Congress and held leadership positions in Washington-based non-governmental organizations. Before joining NSN, Hurlburt ran her own communications and strategy practice, working on global and political issues with political, entertainment, and educational leaders. From 1995-2001, Hurlburt served in the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant and Speechwriter to the President, speechwriter for Secretaries of State Albright and Christopher, and member of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff. She has also worked for the International Crisis Group, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Congressional Helsinki Commission. In 2012, Hurlburt was named to Foreign Policy’s “FP Top 50”. She appears frequently as a commentator in print and new media and her work has been published by the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Guardian, POLITICO, and New Republic. Hurlburt holds a BA from Brown University and an MA from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs.
Richard Kaufman
Richard Kaufman is a member of the board of directors and a vice chair of Economists for Peace and Security, and Director of Bethesda Research Institute, which he founded. He was formerly a staff economist and general counsel of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. At the Joint Economic Committee he directed numerous investigations of the Pentagon and its spending and contracting practices. As he would point out, that was at a time when there was more rigorous and relevant congressional oversight than we have had over the past 8 years, and when oversight meant to look hard, not to hardly look.
Stephanie Kelton
Stephanie Kelton, Ph.D. is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is also Editor-in-Chief of the top-ranked blog New Economic Perspectives and a member of the TopWonks network of the nation’s best thinkers. Her book, The State, The Market and The Euro (2001) predicted the debt crisis in the Eurozone, and her subsequent work correctly predicted that: (1) Quantitative Easing (QE) wouldn’t lead to high inflation; (2) government deficits wouldn’t cause a spike in US interest rates; (3) the S&P downgrade wouldn’t cause investors to flee Treasuries; (4) the US would not experience a European-style debt crisis.
She is a regular commentator on national radio and broadcast television.
Stephanie consults with policymakers, investment banks and portfolio managers across the globe. Her research expertise is in: Federal Reserve operations, fiscal policy, social security, health care, international finance and employment policy.
Michael Lind
Michael Lind is a co-founder of the New America Foundation, where he is Policy Director of its Economic Growth Program and Next Social Contract Initiative. A former editor or staff writer at Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The New Republic and The National Interest, he has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins. He is the author of a number of books of history, political journalism, fiction and poetry, including The Next American Nation (1995) and The American Way of Strategy (2006). His most recent book is Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States. He is a member of the board of Economists for Peace and Security.
Damon Silvers
Damon A. Silvers is the Director of Policy and Special Counsel for the AFL-CIO. He joined the AFL-CIO as Associate General Counsel in 1997.
Mr. Silvers serves on a pro bono basis as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the state of New York. Mr. Silvers is also a member of the Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department’s Financial Research Advisory Committee, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s Standing Advisory Group and its Investor Advisory Group.
Mr. Silvers served as the Deputy Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP from 2008 to 2011. Between 2006 and 2008, Mr. Silvers served as the Chair of the Competition Subcommittee of the United States Treasury Department Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession and as a member of the United States Treasury Department Investor’s Practice Committee of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
Prior to working for the AFL-CIO, Mr. Silvers worked for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, and as a law clerk at the Delaware Court of Chancery for Chancellor William T. Allen and Vice-Chancellor Bernard Balick.
Allen Sinai
Dr. Allen Sinai is CEO, Co-Founder and Chief Global Economist and Strategist of Decision Economics. Prior to DE, he was Chief Economist at Lehman Brothers and The Boston Company (1983-96). Prior to Lehman, Dr. Sinai was Chief Financial Economist at Data Resources, Inc. (1971-1983), a pioneer in new techniques of econometric modeling. Dr. Sinai has also been a non-partisan adviser and consultant to multiple facets of the U.S. Government including past Presidential Administrations, House and Senate Committees. He meets regularly with fiscal and monetary policy leaders globally including Japan, Europe, and Asia, on current matters relating to the economy, macroeconomic policy and financial markets. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University and an A.B. from the University of Michigan.
Bill Spriggs
William Spriggs serves as Chief Economist to the AFL-CIO, and is a professor in, and former Chair of, the Department of Economics at Howard University. Bill assumed these roles in August 2012 after leaving the Executive Branch of the US Government.
Bill was appointed by President Barack Obama, and confirmed by the US Senate, in 2009 to serve as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Policy at the United States Department of Labor, taking a leave of absence from Howard University to do so. At the time of his appointment, he also served as chairman for the Healthcare Trust for UAW Retirees of the Ford Motor Company and as chairman of the UAW Retirees of the Dana Corporation Health and Welfare Trust, vice chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute; and on the joint National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Public Administration’s Committee on the Fiscal Future for the United States and the UFCW National Commission on ICE Misconduct; and, as Senior Fellow of the Community Service Society of New York; and served on the boards of the National Employment Law Project and the Eastern Economic Association.
Bill’s previous work experience includes roles leading economic policy development and research as a Senior Fellow and Economist at the Economic Policy Institute; as Executive Director for the Institute for Opportunity and Equality of the National Urban League; as a Senior Advisor for the Office of Government Contracting and Minority Business Development for the US Small Business Administration; as a Senior Advisor and Economist for the Economics and Statistics Administration for the US Department of Commerce; as an Economist for the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress; and, as staff director for the independent, federal National Commission for Employment Policy.
While working on his PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Bill began his labor career as co-president of the American Federation of Teachers, Local 3220 in Madison, Wisconsin.
He is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the National Academy of Public Administration
Senator Jim Webb
Jim Webb, former U.S. Senator from Virginia, has been a combat Marine, a counsel in the Congress, an assistant secretary of defense and Secretary of the Navy, an Emmy-award winning journalist and a filmmaker, and is the author of 10 books.
While in the Senate, Webb was selected to deliver the response to the President's State of the Union address in 2007, and served on the Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Veterans Affairs, and the Joint Economic committees. He wrote, introduced and guided to passage the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans legislation since World War II, and co-authored legislation which exposed $60 billion of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. A long-time advocate of fixing America's broken criminal justice system, Webb was spotlighted in The Atlantic Magazine as one of the world's "Brave Thinkers" for tackling prison reform and possessing "two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine."
U.Va. politics professor Larry Sabato called Webb "the most apolitical senator I've ever met."
"Many people run for the Senate to be something, rather than do something - but not Webb," Sabato said. "He's a restless, 'been-there, done-that, close-the-door' kind of guy. For a one-term senator, he's got quite a legacy. I've watched senators serve three, four, five terms and have less to show for it."
Having widely traveled in Asia for decades, as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee's Asia-Pacific Subcommittee Webb was a leading voice in calling for the U.S. to re-engage in East Asia, meeting frequently with key national leaders throughout the region. In 2009, he led a historic visit to Burma, becoming the first American leader to visit that country in 10 years, and opening a dialogue that resulted in the re-establishment of relations between our two countries.
Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, receiving a special commendation for his leadership contributions. First in his class of 243 at the Marine Corps Officer's Basic School, he served as a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam and was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals and two Purple Hearts. He graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1975, having received the Horan Award for excellence in legal writing.
Webb served Congress as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981. In 1982, he led the fight to include an African-American soldier in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. In 1984 he was appointed assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, and in 1987 became Secretary of the Navy. He was a Fall 1992 Fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics.
In addition to his public service, Webb has enjoyed a varied career as a writer. He taught literature at the Naval Academy. Traveling widely as a journalist, he received an Emmy Award for his PBS coverage of the U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983, and in 2004 was embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. He wrote the original story and was executive producer of the film "Rules of Engagement," which held the top slot in U.S. box offices for two weeks in April 2000.
Webb's books include "Born Fighting," a sweeping history of the Scots-Irish culture; "Fields of Fire," widely recognized as the classic novel of the Vietnam War; and "I Heard my Country Calling," a memoir of his early life published by Simon and Schuster in May.
Webb has six children and lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, Hong Le Webb, who was born in Vietnam and is a graduate of Cornell Law School. He speaks Vietnamese and has done extensive pro bono work with the Vietnamese community dating from the late 1970s.