Stephen C. Freidheim Symposium on Global Economics

Virtual Keynote Session: A Conversation With Cecilia Rouse

Speaker

Cecilia Elena Rouse
Chair, Council of Economic Advisers; CFR Member

Presider

Afsaneh Mashayekhi Beschloss
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, RockCreek; Member, Board of Directors, Council on Foreign Relations

Transcript

BESCHLOSS: Thank you very much, and good afternoon, and happy new year. I hope you all are well and keeping safe under these extraordinary circumstances.

Welcome to today’s Council on Foreign Relations Stephen C. Freidheim Virtual Symposium on Global Economics. This symposium, which is focused on reforming U.S. capitalism, is presented by Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and made possible through the generous support of Council Board member Stephen Freidheim.

I’m Afsaneh Beschloss, founder and CEO of RockCreek, and a member of the Board of Directors at CFR.

We are so pleased to welcome Chairwoman Cecilia Rouse, who’s currently serving as the thirtieth chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Dr. Rouse leads the agency that is charged with providing the president with objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international economic policy. Until last January, Dr. Rouse served for nearly a decade as dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She previously served as a member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and she worked at the National Economic Council as a special assistant to President Clinton. A labor economist who focuses on the economics of education, Dr. Rouse joined...

Virtual Session Two: Reforming U.S. Capitalism

Speakers

Megan E. Greene
Senior Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School; Dame Deanne Senior Fellow in International Economics, Chatham House; Columnist, Financial Times; CFR Member
Steven Pearlstein
Robinson Professor of Public Affairs, George Mason University; Author, Can American Capitalism Survive? Why Greed is Not Good, Opportunity is Not Equal and Fairness Won’t Make Us Poor; Former Business and Economics Writer and Columnist, Washington Post (1988–2021); 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Commentary
Thomas Philippon
Max L. Heine Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business, New York University; Author, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

Presider

Sebastian Mallaby
Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics, Council on Foreign Relations; Author, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future; @scmallaby

Transcript

MALLABY: Thanks so much, and welcome, everyone, to the second session of the Stephen C. Freidheim Symposium on Global Economics. As you know, the symposium is presented by the Maurice Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and it’s made possible through the support of the Council Board member Stephen C. Freidheim.

The title of this session is “Reforming U.S. Capitalism.” I’m Sebastian Mallaby, for those of you who don’t know me, and I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion. I’m a fellow here at CFR, and encouraged by my supportive colleagues and allies in the CFR meetings department, I’m going to overcome my shyness and mention that I’m also the author of a new book that will be out in a couple of weeks about venture capital. It’s called The Power Law. And with me to discuss the reforming of U.S. capitalism I have people who have written their own books or are about to come out with them on the topic under discussion, which is more than I can claim. Steve Pearlstein is a professor at George Mason University and the author of the provocatively titled Can American Capitalism Survive? Megan Greene is a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and...