Speaker Biographies

Charles W. Calomiris is the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Economics and the codirector of the Project on Financial Deregulation at AEI. He is also the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions in the Department of Finance and Economics; the director of the Program on Financial Institutions at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business; and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Mr. Calomiris has written many papers and several books on financial institutions, financial economics, and financial history. He has been a consultant on financial regulation for the Federal Reserve Board; the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Chicago, and St. Louis; the World Bank; the Central Bank of Argentina; and the governments of Mexico, El Salvador, China, and Japan.

Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg. Before joining AEI, Mr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He was an economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential election and was the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2000 primaries. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the former Bush and Clinton administrations. Mr. Hassett is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s Dynamic Scoring Advisory Panel. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of six books on economics and economic policy, including the AEI book on tax reform, Toward Fundamental Tax Reform (2005). He has published scholarly articles in The American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, and many other professional journals. His popular writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. His economic commentaries are regularly aired on radio and television, including recent appearances on the Today Show, CBS’s Morning Show, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.

Gregory Ip is a senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal, based in Washington. He covers the Federal Reserve, the economy, financial markets, and economic policy. Prior to assuming his current assignment in January 2001, Mr. Ip had covered the financial markets for the Journal's Money & Investing section since November 1996, when he joined the paper as a reporter in the New York bureau. He was named a senior special writer in October 2000. Mr. Ip began his journalism career as a reporter for the Vancouver (B.C.) Sun from May to December 1989. He then joined the Financial Post in Toronto, Ontario, and was an economics and financial reporter in Canada, and later Washington, D.C., as a correspondent for the paper. In September 1995, he became a business and economics reporter for the Globe and Mail in Toronto. In March 2005, Mr. Ip won a Business Journalist of the Year award from the World Leadership Forum in the "Best Story on Economics" category for his story, "How U.S. Fed Chairman Deftly Steered Economy through Thick and Thin." In 2002, the Wall Street Journal staff was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in the breaking news reporting category for articles from the September 12, 2001, Journal. Mr. Ip and a Journal colleague wrote "Attacks Raise Fears of a Recession," one of the articles included in the prize-winning package. The Journal staff also received the Jesse Laventhol Prize for deadline news reporting from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and won second place in the National Headliner Awards. In 1998, Mr. Ip and a team of Journal reporters received the Overseas Press Club’s Malcolm Forbes Award for business reporting for their coverage of the Asian financial crisis. He was also a member of a team of reporters who received the 1998 Society of American Business Editors and Writers Best in Business Award; this award in the spot news category was for coverage of the financial market drop of October 27, 1997.

Lawrence B. Lindsey is president and chief executive officer of the Lindsey Group and a visiting scholar at AEI. He has held leading positions in government, academia, and business. Before forming the Lindsey Group, he held the position of assistant to the president and director of the National Economic Council at the White House, and was the chief economic adviser to George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign. Mr. Lindsey also served as a governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, as special assistant to the president for domestic economic policy during the George H. W. Bush administration, and as senior staff economist for tax policy at the Council of Economic Advisers during President Reagan's first term. Mr. Lindsey served for five years on the economics faculty of Harvard University and held the Arthur F. Burns Chair for Economic Research at AEI. From 1997 until 2001 he was managing director of Economic Strategies, a global consulting firm. He is the author of numerous articles and two books: The Growth Experiment (Basic Books, 1990) and Economic Puppetmasters (AEI, 1998).

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