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The Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation

Presents a debate:

The Credit Crisis:
What Caused it and What, If Anything, Should We Do About it?


Featuring

James Lardner
James Lardner is a senior fellow at Demos and co-author of Up to Our Eyeballs: How Shady Lenders and Failed Economic Policies Are Drowning Americans in Debt.

Prof. George Selgin
George A. Selgin is a professor of Economics in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. His principal research areas are monetary and banking theory, monetary history, and macroeconomics.

John Taylor
John Taylor is President and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Raised in the housing projects of Boston and trained as an attorney, he has dedicated his life to economic justice.

Walker Todd
Walker Todd is a reasearch fellow at the American Insititute of Economic Research. He is an attorney admitted to practice in Ohio and New York and is an economic consultant with 20 years’ experience at the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Cleveland.

Moderator: Bob Bowdon

Co-Sponsors:
International Policy Network
The Smith Family Foundation



In the past year, there has been a marked change in the availability of credit, which has had dramatic consequences for both lenders and borrowers. But what is to blame for the credit crisis – and what is the most appropriate policy response? Some blame the mortgage brokers who sold ‘sub-prime’ mortgages to impecunious borrowers. Some blame the ‘clever bankers’ who invented off balance sheet structured investment vehicles (SIVs) as a means of repackaging risky assets. Some blame the ratings agencies that gave AAA ratings to risky securities. Others blame the Federal Reserve for setting interest rates too low and letting credit expand too rapidly, thereby encouraging too much leverage and the underpricing of risk in financial markets. The appropriate policy response will, to a considerable degree, depend on what was the underlying cause of the crisis. To discuss these issues, IPN and the Smith Family Foundation have invited an esteemed panel of experts for our May debate.

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
6:30 P.M. Prompt
(Free and open to the public)

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York City
 (To reach the Lincoln Center Plaza entrance, enter the plaza, which is located west of Broadway and Columbus Avenue from W. 62nd to W. 65th Street. Proceed to the Metropolitan Opera House and turn right (north). The Library is between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Vivian Beaumont Theater.)

For more information contact Dawn Steeves at dawn@policynetwork.net

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The Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation
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