February 2015

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 23, 2015 -- On April 7, Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business will host a panel exploring the Federal Reserve’s key strategies over the past six years – “quantitative easing” – which some say has set us on our current recovery path, and others believe has warped and damaged the U.S. economy and laid the foundations for future inflation and recurrent booms and busts.

 

The event will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on April 7, in Santa Clara University’s Recital Hall. Please note: Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis for the first 250 attendees. 

 

The evening will feature viewing of the 45-minute documentary, Money for Nothing, written, produced and directed by Jim Bruce, which describes the origins and controversy over quantitative easing as told by prominent economists and political and corporate figures.

 

That will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Patrick Yam, a finance and technology executive, Santa Clara University regent, and member of the Leavey School of Business advisory board.  He will be joined by two panelists:  John Taylor, the veteran Stanford economist and Hoover Institution fellow who has advised U.S. presidents, Congress and the Treasury on economic matters, and Alexander Field, noted economic historian, Santa Clara University professor and author of the critically acclaimed 2011 book, A Great Leap Forward:  1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth.

 

Among the topics for the panel: Now that the Federal Reserve has said it will cease buying trillions of dollars of government and private sector bonds to flood banks with money in order to stimulate economic activity, how will the U.S. economy fare? And now that the European Central Bank is embarking on quantitative easing, what will be the global impact?

 

 

John Taylor is a Stanford economist and Hoover Institution fellow who has previously served on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers; the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisers; and the office of the Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs. Taylor, a critic of the Federal Reserve’s extensive quantitative easing, in 1992 proposed “the Taylor Rule,” a rules-based means of guiding monetary policy which he and others say should be a basis for evaluating any actual or proposed Federal Reserve monetary policy. 

 

Alexander Field is the Michel and Mary Orradre Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. The former executive director of the Economic History Association,  his research into U.S. macroeconomic history includes his critically acclaimed 2011 book, A Great Leap Forward:  1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth. Field has been generally supportive of recent U.S. monetary policy, saying that inability after 2010 to implement further fiscal stimulus put the entire burden of closing the U.S. “output gap” on the Federal Reserve.   

 

Patrick Yam is CEO of Sensei Partners LLC, a Menlo Park, CA based private investment firm. A macro-economist, financial and technology executive and investor, Yam started his career at the Federal Reserve Bank. He was Santa Clara’s first Dean’s Executive Professor of Entrepreneurship and assisted in establishing the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.  In 2010 he wrote an early publication on Quantitative Easing entitled “Quantitative Easing: A Curse or Blessing.”

 

Media Contact
Deborah Lohse | SCU Media Relations | dlohse@scu.edu | 408-554-5121