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At the euro's launch in 1999, Milton Friedman famously observed that the euro would not survive its first major economic recession. At this event, experts discussed whether the brewing Greek economic crisis in the aftermath of the worst postwar global economic recession will prove Friedman right. They also addressed the
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implications of the economic difficulties in Spain, Ireland, and Portugal for the survival of the eurozone in its present form.
The panel featured Jacob F. Kirkegaard, research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; Desmond Lachman, resident fellow at AEI; Georges Pineau, permanent representative of the European Central Bank in Washington, D.C.; and Carmen M. Reinhart, professor of economics and director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. AEI resident scholar Philip I. Levy moderated.
| 9:45 a.m. | Registration | |
| 10:00 | Panelists: | Jacob F. Kirkegaard, Peterson Institute for International Economics |
| Desmond Lachman, AEI | ||
| Georges Pineau, European Central Bank | ||
| Carmen M. Reinhart, University of Maryland | ||
| Moderator: | Philip I. Levy, AEI | |
| 12:00 p.m. |
Adjournment |
American Enterprise Institute
Speaker biographies
Jacob F. Kirkegaard has been a senior research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2002. Before joining the institute, he worked with the Danish Ministry of Defense, the United Nations in Iraq, and the private financial sector. He is the author of The Accelerating Decline in America's High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy (Peterson Institute, 2007) and the coauthor of US Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries (Peterson Institute, 2009) and Transforming the European Economy (Peterson Institute, 2004) and assisted with Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology (Peterson Institute, 2006). His current research focuses on European economies and reform, pension systems and accounting rules, demographics, offshoring, high-skilled immigration, and the impact of information technology.
Desmond Lachman joined AEI as a resident fellow after serving as a managing director and chief emerging-market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. He previously served as deputy director in the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Policy and Review Department and was active in staff formulation of IMF policies toward emerging markets. Mr. Lachman has written on topics such as economic policy, fund arrangements, monetary reform, import restrictions, and exchange rates. At AEI, he studies major emerging-market economies and the role of multilateral lending institutions.
Philip I. Levy studies international trade and development at AEI. Before joining AEI, he handled international economic issues as a member of the secretary of state's policy planning staff (2005-2006), was senior economist for trade on the President's Council of Economic Advisers (2003-2005), and was a faculty member in Yale University's department of economics (1994-2003). An economist by training, he has experience in many international trade and development policy issues, including free trade agreements, trade with China, antidumping policy, welfare effects of globalization, U.S. foreign assistance policy, and economic development policy.
Georges Pineau is the European Central Bank (ECB) permanent representative in Washington, D.C., with observer status at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He is the former deputy director general of the International and European Relations Department at the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany. Prior to that, he was the head of the European Monetary System and European Currency Unit policy division at the General Secretariat of the European Monetary Institute (EMI) in Frankfurt, Germany. He has also worked as the rapporteur to the Foreign Exchange Policy Subcommittee of the Committee of Governors of the European Union Central Banks (Bank for International Settlements, Basle, Switzerland), which was the forerunner of the EMI; market economist at the Banque de France (Foreign Exchange Division, Foreign Department, Paris, France); adviser to the French executive director at the IMF in Washington, D.C.; and economist at the Banque de France (International Relations Division, Foreign Department, Paris, France).
Carmen M. Reinhart is the coauthor of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton University Press, 2009). Ms. Reinhart is a professor of economics and director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. Ms. Reinhart held positions as chief economist and vice president at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s. Subsequently, she spent several years at the International Monetary Fund. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ms. Reinhart has been published on a variety of topics in macroeconomics and international finance and trade in scholarly journals such as American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
