Panel to address causes of recession
As the nation struggles with its financial meltdown, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs will host an economic forum today to address the origin of the crisis. The two-hour event will begin at 4 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium.
The forum will feature six short presentations by professors from the Maxwell School and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management concerning the root causes of the economic meltdown, followed by a question and answer period.
The event will be moderated by David Richardson, professor of economics and international relations. Additional professors set to present include Derek Laing, an economics professor, Stuart Brown, an international relations professor, and finance professor Ravi Shukia.
‘The focus of today’s event is first to try and lay out a shell that will help people think more carefully about how it is we wound up in the financial crisis that we are in,’ said economics Professor Stuart Rosenthal, one of the faculty members presenting at the forum.
Rosenthal explained that there are several reasons why the economy reached its current state.
‘There are a fair number of pieces in this puzzle,’ he said. ‘They range from housing policy we actually promoted and government policy that perhaps we were too lax about, as well as issues in the market and not providing sufficient mechanisms to encourage for-profit companies to really keep an eye on their exposure to risk.’
Another presenter, Yildiray Yildirim, a professor in the finance department, explained that each professor will be talking about the financial crisis from his or her own perspective.
Yildirim said he will be talking about how the secondary mortgage market caused the crisis, while Rosenthal plans to speak about how the housing and financial markets relate to the state of the economy.
Though a new administration is now in place, both Yildirim and Rosenthal explained that the focus of the forum will not be on how America’s new leaders will solve the crisis.
‘We need to know what the problem is in order to know how to fix it,’ Rosenthal said. ‘It’s difficult to really appreciate what our possible options are and the pros and cons of different solutions without first having a sense of how we got to where we are,’ Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal said that although the professors will focus on the root causes of the financial crisis, talk of solutions is bound to arise in the question and answer period.
The state of the economy is a pressing issue, and Kayla Burgos, a junior public relations major, acknowledged the importance of the forum due to the timeliness of the crisis at hand.
‘I definitely think it’s relevant, so I wouldn’t mind going,’ Burgos said.
William Stevens, a senior political science and French major, said he would not be attending because he has class, but shared a slightly different perspective than Burgos.
‘I have a limited knowledge of the economic crisis,’ Stevens said. ‘I know the major topics but if they went into serious detail, I’m not sure I’d understand.’
Published on January 20, 2009 at 12:00 pm
