Vice President and Director, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, Cato Institute
Norbert Michel is vice president and director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, where he specializes on issues pertaining to financial markets and monetary policy. Michel was most recently the Director for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation where he edited, and contributed chapters, to two books: The Case Against Dodd–Frank: How the “Consumer Protection” Law Endangers Americans, and Prosperity Unleashed: Smarter Financial Regulation
Michel was previously a tenured professor at Nicholls State University’s College of Business, teaching finance, economics and statistics. Before that, he worked at Heritage as a tax policy analyst in the think tank’s Center for Data Analysis from 2002 to 2005. He previously was with the global energy company Entergy, where he worked on models to help predict bankruptcies of commercial clients.
Michel holds a doctoral degree in financial economics from the University of New Orleans. He received his bachelor of business administration degree in finance and economics from Loyola University. He currently resides in Virginia.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
President, Housing Policy Council
Ed DeMarco is President of the Housing Policy Council. Prior to joining HPC in June 2017, DeMarco was a senior fellow in residence at the Milken Institute’s Center for Financial Markets.
From 2009 to 2014, DeMarco was acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), where he served as the conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and regulator of those companies and the Federal Home Loan Banks. He was named HousingWire Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2012 for his impact on housing finance. DeMarco was chief operating officer and senior deputy director of the FHFA and its predecessor agency from 2006 to 2009.
DeMarco’s career in public service includes positions at the Social Security Administration, the Treasury Department, and GAO. He earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Vice President and Director, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, Cato Institute
Norbert Michel is vice president and director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, where he specializes on issues pertaining to financial markets and monetary policy. Michel was most recently the Director for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation where he edited, and contributed chapters, to two books: The Case Against Dodd–Frank: How the “Consumer Protection” Law Endangers Americans, and Prosperity Unleashed: Smarter Financial Regulation
Michel was previously a tenured professor at Nicholls State University’s College of Business, teaching finance, economics and statistics. Before that, he worked at Heritage as a tax policy analyst in the think tank’s Center for Data Analysis from 2002 to 2005. He previously was with the global energy company Entergy, where he worked on models to help predict bankruptcies of commercial clients.
Michel holds a doctoral degree in financial economics from the University of New Orleans. He received his bachelor of business administration degree in finance and economics from Loyola University. He currently resides in Virginia.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law, Yale Law School
Jonathan R. Macey is Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law at Yale University, and Professor in the Yale School of Management. From 1991 – 2004, Professor Macey was J. DuPratt White Professor of Law, Director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at Cornell Law School, and Professor of Law and Business at the Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Business. Professor Macey earned his B.A. cum laude from Harvard in 1977, and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1982, where he was Article and Book Review editor of The Yale Law Journal. In 1996, Professor Macey received a Ph.D. honoris causa from the Stockholm School of Economics. Following law school, Professor Macey was law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Professor Macey is the author of several books including the two-volume treatise, Macey on Corporation Laws, published in 1998 (Aspen Law & Business), and co-author of two leading casebooks, Corporations: Including Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies (2003 Thomson West), which is in its eighth edition, and Banking Law and Regulation (2002 Aspen Law & Business), which is now in its third edition. He also is the author of over 100 scholarly articles. His recent articles have appeared in the Banking Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, The Yale Law Journal, the Cornell Law Review, the Journal of Law and Economics, and the Brookings Wharton Papers on Financial Institutions. He has published numerous editorials in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, and The National Law Journal.
Professor Macey has taught at major universities throughout the world, including Bocconi University (Milan), the University of Tokyo; the University of Toronto; the University of Turin, the University of Amsterdam Department of Finance, and the Stockholm School of Economics, Department of Law. He also has been Professor of Law at the University of Chicago (1990) and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (1999). Professor Macey is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Economic Research (ICER) in Turin, Italy. Professor Macey also serves on the Academic Advisory Board (Comitato Scientifico) of the Associazione Disiano Preite for the study of corporate law (per lo studio del diritto dell’impresa). In 1995, Professor Macey was awarded the Paul M. Bator prize for excellence in Teaching, Scholarship and Public Service by the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy. In 1996, he received a Ph.D., honoris causa from the Stockholm School of Economics. And in 1998, he received the D.P. Jacobs prize for the most significant paper in volume 6 of the Journal of Financial Intermediation for his paper (co-authored with Maureen O’Hara), “The Law & Economics of Best Execution.”
In 1999 Professor Macey was made an honorary Fellow of the Society For Advanced Legal Studies. In 2000, Professor Macey became a member of the Legal Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange. In 2001 Professor Macey was appointed a Bertil Daniellson Distinguished Visiting Professor in Banking and Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics. In 2002 Professor Macey was appointed to the Economic Advisory Board of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). In 2004 Professor Macey was awarded a Teaching Award by the Yale Law Women in recognition of his “commitment to excellence in teaching, mentoring and inspiring.” In 2005 Professor Macey became a member of the Board of Editors of Thomson West Publishing Company.
Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Paul Hastings Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Securitie, UCLA School of Law
Professor Lynn A. Stout is the Paul Hastings Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Securities Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. Professor Stout is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of corporate governance, securities regulation, financial derivatives, law and economics, and moral behavior. She is the author of numerous articles and books on these topics and lectures widely. Her most recent book is Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People (Princeton University Press, 2011).
Professor Stout also serves as an Independent Trustee and as Chair of the Governance Committee for the Eaton Vance family of mutual funds; as a member of the Board of Advisors for the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program; and as a Research Fellow for the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. She has also served as Principal Investigator for the UCLA-Sloan Foundation Research Program on Business Organizations; as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Law and Economics Association; as Chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Law and Economics; and as Chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Business Associations. Professor Stout has also taught at Harvard Law School, NYU Law School, Georgetown University Law School, and the George Washington University National Law Center, and served as a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. She holds a B.A. summa cum laude and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a J.D. from the Yale Law School.
Principal, Ely & Company, Inc.
Bert Ely has specialized in deposit insurance and banking structure issues since 1981. In 1986, he became an early predictor of the S&L crisis and a taxpayer bailout of the FSLIC. In 1991, he was the first person to correctly predict the non-crisis in commercial banking; in 1992, he predicted an eventual taxpayer bailout of the Japanese banking system.
Bert continuously monitors conditions in the banking and S&L industries, monetary policy, and the growing federalization of credit risk. He has helped to draft legislation to enact the cross-guarantee concept for privatizing banking regulation and its related deposit insurance and systemic risks. He has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees on banking issues and he often speaks on these matters to bankers and others.
Bert first established his consulting practice in 1972. Before that, he was the chief financial officer of a public company, a consultant with Touche, Ross & Company, and an auditor with Ernst & Ernst. He received his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1968 and his Bachelor's degree in economics in 1964 from Case Western Reserve University.
President, Center for Responsible Lending
Mr. Calhoun is President of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to protecting homeownership and family wealth by promoting access to fair terms of credit for low-wealth families. CRL has conducted or commissioned landmark studies on the impact of predatory lending laws, worked with states on legislative issues, and pressed for regulatory changes governing mortgage and payday lending. Mr. Calhoun has testified on the federal level in both the U.S House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He also currently serves as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council.
CRL is an affiliate of the Center for Community Self-Help, a nonprofit community development lender, for which Mr. Calhoun has served as General Counsel. He also previously managed Self-Help’s home loan secondary market and real estate development programs. Self-Help’s mission is to create ownership and economic opportunity for women, rural residents and minority and low-wealth families through home mortgage and small business financing. It has provided over $5 billion in financing to more than 60,000 home buyers across the nation, with a loss rate of less than 0.5%.
Mr. Calhoun has specialized in consumer law for more than twenty five years. He has made presentations on predatory lending issues to many organizations, including the FDIC and the National Association of Attorneys General. He holds a B.A. in economics with honors from Duke University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina.
President, Canfield & Associates, Inc.
Anne Canfield is President of Canfield & Associates, Inc., a firm she formed in October 1996. Canfield & Associates, Inc. is a consulting firm providing strategic planning, policy advice, and representational services to major corporations on federal and state legislative and regulatory issues in the financial services, health care, tax, trade and budget policy areas. Ms. Canfield’s affiliated firm, Canfield Press, LLC, publishes The GSE Report, a publication that tracks and analyzes activities of the government-sponsored enterprises including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loans Banks, Ginnie Mae, Farmer Mac, the Postal Service, TVA, and assistance plans implemented by international governments to stabilize their financial systems. The GSE Report is distributed worldwide to public policy officials, academics, analysts, industry participants, and the media. Ms. Canfield’s firm also publishes the – Roadmap to Financial and Housing Market Stabilization Plans, a weekly publication that tracks the efforts of both the U.S.and worldwide governments to stabilize the financial system; Roadmap to the Dodd-Frank Act, a publication that tracks the requirements of the Act and the federal government’s agencies efforts to implement it; Roadmap to GSE Reform, a newer publication that tracks and compares the legislative initiatives that are being considered on Capitol Hill; The Mortgage Report, a quarterly publication that provides a comprehensive review of the legislative, regulatory and litigation challenges facing the mortgage industry; and the Washington Roundup, a weekly publication that summarizes the U.S. Government’s legislative and regulatory activities in key policy areas which are of interest to the firm’s clients. Prior to forming Canfield & Associates, Inc. Ms. Canfield was a Principal in the firm of McClure, Gerard & Neuenschwander, Inc. (MGN). Ms. Canfield joined MGN following ten years at GE/GE Capital Services. In that position, she developed and implemented corporate policy and legislative and regulatory strategies both domestically and abroad. Before joining GE Capital, Ms. Canfield had over eleven years of experience on Capitol Hill, working as a senior staff advisor for three Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and then as the senior advisor and Senate Finance Committee aide to a member of the Senate Finance Committee. Ms. Canfield received degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Paris, Paris, France.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Topics
Fed 'Independence' is a Slippery Slope
Many observers, like Captain Renault in "Casablanca," were “shocked, shocked!” at President Trump’s sharp criticism...
Federal Reserve Independence
Norbert J. Michel, Alex J. Pollock
Financial Services Practice Group and Regulatory Transparency Project Teleforum
In years, the issue of Federal Reserve independcy have arison to the top of public...
What Should the FHFA's 2019 Agenda Be?
Ed DeMarco, Alex J. Pollock
Regulatory Transparency Project Teleforum
January 7, 2019 starts a new leadership era for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as...
Book Review: Finance and Philosophy: Why We're Always Surprised
Wayne A. Abernathy, Alex J. Pollock
Financial Services & E-Commerce Practice Group and Regulatory Transparency Project Teleforum
Finance and Philosophy provides a concise and witty account of how bankers and financial regulators...
Topics
When Is a Bureaucracy So Independent That It’s Unconstitutional?
This blog was originally posted at the R Street Institute. Click here to visit. *...
Federal Reserve Accountability and the CHOICE Act - Podcast
Alex J. Pollock, Norbert J. Michel
Financial Services & E-Commerce Practice Group Podcast
To whom is the Federal Reserve accountable? Does the Fed's insistence on its "independence" mean...
Fannie and Freddie We’re Stuck With: But Can We Get Rid of GSEs?
Alex J. Pollock
Engage Volume 16, Issue 1
The model of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as “GSEs” (government-sponsored enterprises) was a profound...
Can the Dodd-Frank Act Be Reformed To Strengthen the Financial System and the Overall Economy? We Think So
Wayne A. Abernathy, Alex J. Pollock
Engage Volume 15, Issue 3
Note from the Editor: This article is about potential reforms to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street...
Shareholder Value Theory: Myth or Motivator?
Jonathan R. Macey, Lee Liberman Otis, Alex J. Pollock, Lynn A. Stout
Faculty Division and the American Enterprise Institute
Conventional wisdom holds that corporations should maximize shareholder value. In her new book “The...
Risk Retention on Mortgages: Boon or Costly Mistake? - Podcast
Bert Ely, Michael Calhoun, Anne Canfield, Alex J. Pollock, Dean Reuter
Financial Services & E-Commerce Practice Group Podcast
One of the major issues under the Dodd-Frank Act is required credit risk retention on...