Jeffrey Sachs

Sachs at Brasilia, Brazil 2005
Born	(1954-11-05) November 5, 1954 (age 57) Detroit, Michigan
Nationality	United States
Institution	Columbia University
Field	Political economics, International Development
Alma mater	Harvard University
Opposed	William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo
Influences	John Maynard Keynes[1][2]
Influenced	Nouriel Roubini, Peter Diamond
Contributions	Millennium Villages Project

Jeffrey David Sachs (/ˈsæks/; born November 5, 1954, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American economist and Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. One of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became known for his role as an adviser to Eastern European and developing country governments during the transition from communism to a market system or during periods of economic crisis. Subsequently he has been known for his work on the challenges of economic development, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, debt cancellation, and globalization.

Sachs is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia's School of Public Health. He is Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the United Nations Millennium Project's work on the Millennium Development Goals, eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger, and disease by the year 2015. Since 2010 he has also served as a Commissioner for the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, which leverages broadband technologies as a key enabler for social and economic development.^[3]

Sachs has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). He has been named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" twice, in 2004 and 2005.

Biography[link]

Academic career[link]

Sachs was raised in Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from Oak Park High School. He attended Harvard College, where he received his B.A. summa cum laude in 1976. He went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, and was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard graduate student. In 1980, he joined the Harvard faculty as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1982. A year later, at the age of 28, Sachs became a Full Professor of economics with tenure at Harvard.

During the next 19 years at Harvard, he became the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, the Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development at the Kennedy School of Government (1995–1999), and the Director of the Center for International Development (1999–2002).

In 2002, Sachs left Harvard to become the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. At Columbia he is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and is also a professor in Columbia's Department of Economics and the Department of Health Policy and Management. His classes are taught at the School of International and Public Affairs and the Mailman School of Public Health, and his course "Challenges of Sustainable Development" is taught at the undergraduate level.

In his capacity as Director of the Earth Institute, he leads a university-wide organization of more than 850 professionals from natural-science and social-science disciplines, in support of sustainable development. Sachs has consistently advocated for the expansion of University education on sustainable development, and helped to introduce the PhD in Sustainable Development at Columbia University, one of the first PhD programs of its kind in the U.S. He championed the new Masters of Development Practice (MDP), which has led to a consortium of major universities around the world offering the new degree. The Earth Institute has also guided the adoption of sustainable development as a new major at Columbia College. The Earth Institute is home to cutting-edge research on all aspects of earth systems and sustainable development.

Sachs’ policy and academic works span the challenges of globalization, and include: the relationship of trade and economic growth; the resource curse and extractive industries; public health and economic development; economic geography; strategies of economic reform; international financial markets; macroeconomic policy; global competitiveness; climate change; and the end of poverty. He has authored or co-authored hundreds of scholarly articles and several books, including three bestsellers and a textbook on macroeconomics that is widely used around the world.

Advising in Latin America and post-communist economies[link]

Sachs is known for his work as an economic adviser to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. A trained macroeconomist, he advised a number of national governments in the transition from communism to market economies.

In 1985, Bolivia was undergoing hyperinflation and was unable to pay back its debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sachs, an economic adviser to the Bolivian government at the time, drew up an extensive plan, later known as shock therapy, to cut inflation drastically by liberalizing the Bolivian market, ending government subsidies, eliminating import quotas, and linking the Bolivian economy to the US dollar. After Sachs's plan was implemented, inflation fell from 11,750% to 15% per year from 1985 to 1987.^[4]

In 1989, Professor Sachs advised Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity movement and the first post-communist Government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. He wrote the first-ever comprehensive plan for the transition from central planning to a market democracy, which became incorporated into Poland’s highly successful reform program led by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. Professor Sachs was the main architect of Poland’s successful debt reduction operation. Sachs and ex-IMF economist David Lipton advised the rapid conversion of all property and assets from public to private ownership. In Poland, Sachs was firmly on the side of rapid transition to "normal" capitalism. At first he proposed US-style corporate structures, with professional managers answering to many shareholders and a large economic role for stock markets. That did not fly with the Polish authorities, but he then proposed that large blocks of the shares of privatized companies be placed in the hands of private banks.^[5] As a result, there were some economic shortages and inflation, but prices in Poland eventually stabilized.^[6] The Government of Poland awarded Sachs with one of its highest honors in 1999, the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Cracow University of Economics.

Sachs’s ideas and methods of transition from central planning were successfully adopted throughout the transition economies. He helped Slovenia (1991) and Estonia (1992) to introduce new stable and convertible currencies. Based on Poland’s success, he was invited first by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and then by Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the transition to a market economy. He served as advisor to Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and Finance Minister Boris Federov during 1991-93 on macroeconomic policies. He received the Leontief Medal of the Leontief Centre, St. Petersburg, for his contributions to Russia’s economic reforms.

Work on global economic development[link]

More recently, Sachs has turned to global issues of economic development, poverty alleviation, health and aid policy, and environmental sustainability. He has written extensively on climate change, disease control, and globalization, and is one of the world's leading experts on the fight against poverty and sustainable development.^[7]

Since 1995, Professor Sachs has been deeply engaged in Africa’s escape from poverty. He has worked in more than two-dozen African countries, and has advised the African leadership at several African Union summits. In the mid-1990s he worked with senior officials of the Clinton Administration to develop the concept of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). He has engaged with dozens of African leaders to promote smallholder agriculture and to fight high disease burdens through strengthened primary health systems. His pioneering ideas on investing in health to break the poverty trap have been widely applied throughout the continent. He currently serves as an advisor to several African governments, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda, among others.

In his 2005 work, The End of Poverty, Sachs wrote "Africa's governance is poor because Africa is poor." According to Sachs, with the right policies and key interventions, extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1 a day — can be eradicated within 20 years. India and China serve as examples, with the latter lifting 300 million people out of extreme poverty during the last two decades. Sachs believes a key element to accomplishing this is raising aid from $65 billion in 2002 to $195 billion a year by 2015. He emphasizes the role of geography and climate, with much of Africa suffering from being landlocked and disease-prone. However, he stresses that these problems can be overcome.^[8]

Sachs suggests that with improved seeds, irrigation, and fertilizer, the crop yields in Africa and other places with subsistence farming can be increased from 1 ton/hectare to 3-5 tons/hectares. He reasons that increased harvests would significantly increase the income of subsistence farmers, thereby reducing poverty. Sachs does not believe that increased aid is the only solution. He also supports establishing credit and microloan programs, which are often lacking in impoverished areas.^[9] Sachs has also advocated the distribution of free insecticide-treated bed nets to combat malaria. The economic impact of malaria has been estimated to cost Africa US$12 billion per year. Sachs estimates that malaria can be controlled for US$3 billion per year, thus suggesting that anti-Malaria projects would be an economically justified investment.^[10]

From 2002 to 2006, Sachs was the Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to then Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. Sachs founded the Millennium Villages Project, a plan dedicated to ending extreme poverty in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa through targeted agricultural, medical, and educational interventions. Along with philanthropist Ray Chambers, Sachs founded Millennium Promise, a nonprofit organization, to help the Earth Institute fund and operate the Millennium Villages Project.

The Millennium Villages Project, which he directs, operates in more than one dozen African countries, and covers more than 500,000 people. The MVP has achieved notable successes in raising agricultural production, reducing children’s stunting, and cutting child mortality rates, with the results described in several peer-reviewed publications. Its key concepts of integrated rural development to achieve the MDGs are now being applied at national scale in Nigeria and Mali, and are being used by many other countries to help support national anti-poverty programs. He works very closely with the Islamic Development Bank to scale up programs of integrated rural development and sustainable agriculture among the Bank’s member countries. One such project supports pastoralist communities in the Horn of Africa, with six participating nations: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan.

Since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, Professor Sachs has been the leading academic scholar and practitioner on the MDGs. He chaired the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (2000-1), which played a pivotal role in scaling up the financing of health care and disease control in the low-income countries to support MDGs 4, 5, and 6. He worked with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000-1 to design and launch the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He worked closely with senior officials of the administration of George W. Bush to develop the PEPFAR program to fight HIV/AIDS, and the PMI to fight malaria. On behalf of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, from 2002-2006 he chaired the UN Millennium Project, which was tasked with developing a concrete action plan to achieve the MDGs. The UN General Assembly adopted the key recommendations of the UN Millennium Project at a special session in September 2005. The recommendations for rural Africa are currently being implemented and documented in the Millennium Villages, and in several national scale-up efforts such as in Nigeria.

Now a Special Adviser to current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Sachs is still a leading advocate for the Millennium Development Goals, frequently meeting with foreign dignitaries and heads of state. He has also become a close friend of international celebrities Bono and Angelina Jolie, both of whom have traveled to Africa with Sachs to witness the progress of the Millennium Villages.^[11]

Sachs has been a consistent critic of the IMF and its policies around the world. He has blasted the international bankers for what he sees as a pattern of ineffective investment strategies.^[12]

Criticisms[link]

One of Sachs's strongest critics is William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University. Easterly reproached The End of Poverty in his review for The Washington Post, and Easterly's 2006 book White Man's Burden is an even more thorough rebuttal of Sachs's argument that poor countries are stuck in a "poverty trap" from which there is no escape except by massively scaled-up foreign aid, though Sachs himself has clearly emphasized the need for a complex, multifaceted, clinical and unique approach to economic development, of which increased and responsible foreign aid is nearly always a necessary but insufficient part.^[13] Easterly presents statistical evidence that he claims proves that many emerging markets attained their higher status without the large amounts of foreign aid Sachs proposes.^[14] Other evidence is included in Easterly's previous work, The Elusive Quest for Growth.

Another Sachs critic is Amir Attaran, a scientist and lawyer who holds the Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development at the University of Ottawa. Sachs and Attaran have worked closely as colleagues, coauthoring a famous study in The Lancet documenting the dearth of foreign aid money to fight HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, which led to the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But Sachs and Attaran part company in their opinion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), and Attaran argued in a paper published in PLoS Medicine and an editorial in the New York Times that the United Nations has misled people by setting specific, but immeasurable, targets for the MDGs (for example, to reduce maternal mortality or malaria).^[15] Sachs dismissed that view in a reply to PLoS Medicine, saying that only a handful of the MDGs are immeasurable, but Attaran then cited the United Nations' own data analysis (which the UN subsequently blocked from public access) showing that progress on a very large majority of the MDGs is never measured.^[16]

Sachs has also been criticized by leftists for having an overly neoliberal perspective on the economy. Nancy Holmstrom and Richard Smith pointed out that, in advising implementation of his shock therapy on the collapsing Soviet Union, Sachs "supposed the transition to capitalism would be a natural, virtually automatic economic process: start by abandoning state planning, free up prices, promote private competition with state-owned industry, and sell off state industry as fast as possible…". They go on to cite the drastic decreases in industrial output over the ensuing years, a near halving of the country's GDP and of personal incomes, a doubling of the suicide rate, and a skyrocketing unemployment rate.^[17] The Lancet^[18] has recently reported that rapid privatization of the Soviet Union caused a 12.8% death rate increase among males in just two years,^[19] a claim that The Economist attributed to alcoholism, though The Lancet article attributed the rise in alcoholism to changes in the economy.^[20]

Accolades and affiliations[link]

Sachs has received many awards and honors. In 2004 and 2005, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine. He was also named one of the "500 Most Influential People in the Field of Foreign Policy" by the World Affairs Councils of America.^[21]

In February 2002, Nature Magazine stated that Sachs "has revitalized public health thinking since he brought his financial mind to it." In 1993 he was cited in the New York Times Magazine as "probably the most important economist in the world." In 1994, Time Magazine called him "the world's best-known economist." In 1997, the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur cited Sachs as one of the world's 50 most important leaders on globalization.^[22]

In 2005, he received the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice. In 2007, Sachs was awarded the Padma Bhushan, a high civilian honor bestowed by the Government of India. Also in 2007, he received the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution International Advocate for Peace Award as well as the Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for his contributions to society.^[22]

From 2000 to 2001, Sachs was Chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization, and from 1999 to 2000 he served as a member of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission established by the U.S. Congress. Sachs has been an adviser to the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Development Program. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Harvard Society of Fellows; the Fellows of the World Econometric Society; the Brookings Panel of Economists; the National Bureau of Economic Research; and the Board of Advisers of the Chinese Economists Society, among other international organizations.^[22]

Sachs has received honorary degrees from Connecticut College; Lehigh University; Pace University; the State University of New York; Cracow University of Economics; Ursinus College; Whitman College; the Mount Sinai School of Medicine; Ohio Wesleyan University; the College of the Atlantic; Southern Methodist University; Simon Fraser University; McGill University; Southern New Hampshire University; St. John's University; Iona College; University of St. Gallen in Switzerland; the Lingnan College of Hong Kong; and the University of Economics Varna in Bulgaria.^[22]

Sachs is first holder of the Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Chair in Poverty Studies at the Centre for Poverty and Development Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for 2007-09. In addition, he holds an honorary professorship at the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. He has lectured at the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, and Yale University, as well as in Tel Aviv and Jakarta.^[22]

In early 2007, the Sachs for President Draft Committee was formed to encourage Sachs to run for President of the United States in the 2008 election.^[23]

In September 2008, Vanity Fair magazine ranked Sachs 98th on its list of 100 members of the New Establishment.

In July 2009, Sachs became a member of the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation's International Advisory Board.^[24]

In 2009, Princeton University's American Whig-Cliosophic Society awarded Symington the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service.^[25]

In May 2012, Bryant University awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Publications[link]

Sachs is the author of hundreds of academic articles and many books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (Penguin, 2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin, 2008), and The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity (Random House, 2011).

He writes a monthly foreign affairs column for Project Syndicate, a nonprofit association of newspapers around the world that is circulated in 145 countries.^[26] He is also a frequent contributor to such major publications as the Financial Times, Scientific American, Time Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Selected works[link]

• Sachs, Jeffrey (October 4, 2011). The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity Random House ISBN 978-1-4000-6841-8
• Sachs, Jeffrey (2008). Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet Penguin Press HC ISBN 978-1-59420-127-1
• Humphreys, Macartan, Sachs, Jeffrey, and Stiglitz, Joseph (eds.). "Escaping the Resource Curse" Columbia University Press ISBN 978-0-231-14196-3
• Sachs, Jeffrey (2005). The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time Penguin Press HC ISBN 1-59420-045-9
• Sachs, Jeffrey (2003). Macroeconomics in the Global Economy Westview Press ISBN 0-631-22004-6
• Sachs, Jeffrey (2002). A New Global Effort to Control Malaria (Science), Vol. 298, October 4, 2002
• Sachs, Jeffrey (2002). Resolving the Debt Crisis of Low-Income Countries (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity), 2002:1
• Sachs, Jeffrey (2001). The Strategic Significance of Global Inequality (The Washington Quarterly), Vol. 24, No. 3, Summer 2001
• Sachs, Jeffrey (1997). Development Economics Blackwell Publishers ISBN 0-8133-3314-8
• Sachs, Jeffrey and Pistor, Katharina. (1997). The Rule of Law and Economic Reform in Russia (John M. Olin Critical Issues Series (Paper)) Westview Press ISBN 0-8133-3314-8
• Sachs, Jeffrey (1994). Poland's Jump to the Market Economy (Lionel Robbins Lectures) MIT Press ISBN 0-262-69174-4
• Sachs, Jeffrey (1993). Macroeconomics in the Global Economy Prentice Hall ISBN 0-13-102252-0
• Sachs, Jeffrey (ed) (1991). Developing Country Debt and Economic Performance, Volume 1 : The International Financial System (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-73332-7
• Sachs, Jeffrey and Warwick McKibbin Global Linkages: Macroeconomic Interdependence and Co-operation in the World Economy, Brookings Institution, June, 277 pages. (ISBN 0-8157-5600-3)
• Sachs, Jeffrey (ed) (1989). Developing Country Debt and the World Economy (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-73338-6
• Bruno, Michael and Sachs, Jeffrey (1984), "Stagflation in the World Economy"

Personal[link]

Sachs lives in New York City with his wife Sonia Ehrlich Sachs, a pediatrician. They have three children: Lisa, Adam, and Hannah Sachs.

See also[link]

Sustainable development portal

• Gro Harlem Brundtland

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jeffrey Sachs

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (November 2009)

Official[link]

• Official website
• Earth Institute at Columbia University

Other[link]

• Column archive at The Guardian (since 2002)
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Jeffrey Sachs on Charlie Rose
• Jeffrey Sachs at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Jeffrey Sachs in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Jeffrey Sachs collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• A Bridge for the Carmakers (Washington Post, 2008-11-16).
• Podcast, University of Sydney, Economics for a Crowded Planet Public lecture, Sydney Ideas, July 14, 2008
• Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, on BUniverse, Boston University's video lecture archive.
• Jeffrey Sach's Reith lectures hosted by the Royal Society in London, during April and May 2007
• Article on Jeff Sachs in the Yale Economic Review
• Interview on PBS' Commanding Heights
• Interview on The Colbert Report, March 2006
• Economics for a Crowded Planet (video)
• Audio/Video recording of Jeffrey Sachs lecture as part of the University of Chicago World Beyond the Headlines series.
• Sachs addresses Harvard Law students in the Harvard Law Record
• Asia Society Video: Jeffrey Sachs on Water Security Issues in Asia April 17, 2009
• Jeffrey Sachs Speaker Biography on the World Business Forum where Sachs is a featured speaker for the 2009 event
• Audio: Jeffrey Sachs in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum
• Bio from Leigh Bureau

Katrina vanden Heuvel, 2011

Katrina vanden Heuvel (pronounced /ˈvændənhuːvəl/; born October 7, 1959) is the editor, publisher, and part-owner of the magazine The Nation. She has been the magazine's editor since 1995. She is a frequent guest on numerous television programs. Vanden Heuvel is a self-described liberal and progressive.^[1] She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.^[2]

Early life[link]

Vanden Heuvel was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Jean Stein, an heiress, a best-selling author, and editor of the literary journal Grand Street, and William vanden Heuvel, an attorney, former US ambassador, member of John F. Kennedy's administration, businessman, and author. She has one sister and two step-siblings. Her maternal grandparents were Music Corporation of America founder Jules C. Stein and Doris Babbette Jones (originally Jonas). Through her maternal grandmother, vanden Heuvel is a distant cousin of actor/comedian George Jessel.^[3]

Vanden Heuvel graduated from Trinity School in 1977.^[4] Vanden Heuvel studied politics and history at Princeton University, writing her senior thesis on McCarthyism and serving as editor-in-chief of The Nassau Weekly. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1981.

Career[link]

During her undergraduate years at Princeton, she served as editor of the Nassau Weekly, a school publication, and had an internship at National Lampoon magazine in 1978." She also worked as a production assistant at ABC Television. According to a Princeton alumni publication, during her junior year, she had already worked "as a The Nation intern for nine months after taking the 'Politics and the Press' course taught by Blair Clark, the magazine's editor from 1976 to 1978" and "returned to The Nation in 1984 as assistant editor for foreign affairs".^{[citation needed]}

As an owner of The Nation, she is one of a group of investors brought together in 1995 by then-editor Victor Navasky in a for-profit partnership to buy the magazine — then losing $500,000 a year^{[citation needed]} — from investment banker Arthur L. Carter. This group of investors included, among others, actor Paul Newman, novelist E.L. Doctorow, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Alan Sagner^{[citation needed]}, and Peter Norton,^{[citation needed]} creator of the Norton Utilities software.^[5]

In 1989, vanden Heuvel was promoted to The Nation's editor-at-large position, responsible for its coverage of the USSR. In 1990, she co-founded Vy i My ("You and We"), a quarterly feminist journal linking American and Russian women. In 1995, vanden Heuvel was made editor of The Nation.

Vanden Heuvel's blog at The Nation is called "Editor's Cut". She also writes a column for the Washington Post op-ed page.^[6]

She is the co-editor of Taking Back America—And Taking Down The Radical Right (Nation Books, 2004) and, most recently, editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms, (Nation Books, 2005). She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (Norton, 1989) and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.

She is a frequent commentator on American and international politics on ABC's "This Week,"^[7] and also on MSNBC, CNN, and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe.

Vanden Heuvel serves on the Institute for Policy Studies Board of Trustees.

Personal life[link]

In 1988, vanden Heuvel married New York University Russian Studies Professor Stephen F. Cohen, a writer on the Soviet Union and a professor at Princeton University for 30 years.^[8][9] They have one daughter Nicola, born in 1991. The family resides in the Upper West Side section of the Manhattan borough of New York City.^[10]

Awards[link]

Vanden Heuvel is a recipient of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award for her 2003 article, "Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia," a report on the pro-life movement in that country. The special issue she conceived and edited, "Gorbachev's Soviet Union", was awarded New York University's 1988 Olive Branch Award. Vanden Heuvel was also co-editor of Vyi i Myi, a Russian-language feminist newsletter.

Vanden Heuvel has received awards for public service from numerous groups, including the Liberty Hill Foundation, the Correctional Association and the Association for American-Russian Women. In 2003, she received the New York Civil Liberties Union's Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy. She was the recipient of the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee's 2003 "Voices of Peace" award. Vanden Heuvel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She also serves on the board of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, the Institute for Policy Studies, the World Policy Institute, the Correctional Association of New York, and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

Bibliography[link]

• Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (1990), co-authored with Stephen F. Cohen (ISBN 0-393-30735-2)
• A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy, and September 11, 2001 (2002), edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel (ISBN 1-56025-400-9)
• Taking Back America: And Taking Down the Radical Right (2004), edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel and Robert Borosage (ISBN 1-56025-583-8)
• Dictionary of Republicanisms: The Indispensable Guide to What They Really Mean When They Say What They Think You Want to Hear (2005) by Katrina vanden Heuvel (ISBN 1-56025-789-X)
• The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama. New York: Nation Books. 2011. ISBN 978-1-56858-688-5. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Nation Bio
• Katrina vanden Heuvel's campaign contributions
• "Tomdispatch Interview: Katrina vanden Heuvel, the Media on Speed", April 20, 2006.
• vanden Heuvel's blog at the Huffington Post
• Katrina vanden Heuvel's blog "Editor's Cut" at The Nation magazine
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with vanden Heuvel, June 10, 2007

Peter Schiff

Austrian School
Born	(1963-03-23) March 23, 1963 (age 49)
Nationality	United States
Field	Financial Economics
Alma mater	U.C. Berkeley (B.B.A.), 1987[1]
Opposed	John Maynard Keynes,[2] Alan Greenspan,[3][4][5] Ben Bernanke,[6][7][8] Paul Krugman,[9] Christopher Dodd,[10] Barack Obama,[11]
Influences	Irwin Schiff, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard

Peter David Schiff (pronounced /ˈʃɪf/; born March 23, 1963) is an American businessman, investment broker, author and financial commentator. Schiff is CEO and chief global strategist^[1] of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a broker-dealer based in Westport, Connecticut^[12] and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.^[13]

Schiff frequently appears as a guest on financial television and is often quoted in major financial publications. He is host of The Peter Schiff Show, a radio show broadcast on terrestrial and internet radio. He is a frequent guest on internet radio^[14][15][16] as well as the host of the former podcast Wall Street Unspun.^[14][17] In 2010 Schiff ran as a candidate in the Republican primary for the United States Senate seat from Connecticut.^[18]

Schiff is known for his bearish views on the dollar and dollar denominated assets, while bullish on investment in tangible assets as well as foreign stocks and currencies.

Early life and education[link]

Peter Schiff was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irwin Schiff, is a prominent figure in the U.S. tax protester movement, currently serving a 13-year sentence for tax evasion.^[19] Peter Schiff attended Beverly Hills High School in California,^[20] and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in finance and accounting.^[1]

Financial career[link]

Schiff began his career as a financial consultant at a Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage.^[1] In 1996 Schiff and a partner acquired a small brokerage firm that had been founded in 1980, reincorporated it in California and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital.^[21][22] The company today has more than 15,000 clients^{[citation needed]} and six offices nationwide, with its headquarters in Westport, Connecticut.^[12][21][23]

According to a 2005 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut Schiff relocated the firm to Darien, Connecticut to find brokers "who think like him". The New York Metropolitan Area, Schiff says, has the biggest concentration of brokers in the country, making it easier to recruit employees.^[24] The company has offices in Newport Beach, California as well as in Scottsdale, Arizona, Palm Beach, Florida, Los Angeles and New York City. Euro Pacific Capital also holds the exclusive rights to broker some Perth Mint gold products in the United States.^[25]

Economic forecasts[link]

Peter Schiff voices strong support for the Austrian School of economic thought, first introduced to him by his father.^{[26][27][28][29]}

2002–2008[link]

In his 2007 book Crash Proof, Schiff wrote that United States economic policies were fundamentally unsound, and predicted that the United States dollar would lose much of its value.^[3] Schiff believed that the imbalance between the amount of goods the U.S. consumed and what it produced would eventually lead to problems for the U.S. economy.^[30][31] As a remedy Schiff favored increased personal savings and production which he said would stimulate economic growth.^[32] Schiff cited the U.S.'s low personal savings rate as one of the causes of its transformation from the world's largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation in the year 2000.^[33] Schiff attributed the low savings rate to higher inflation and the artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.^[34]

In a May 2002 interview with Southland Today, Schiff predicted that the economic downturn triggered by the bursting of the dot-com stock market bubble, an event that he had also forecast well in advance, would lead to a bear market likely to last "another 5 to 10 years."^[35][36] Later that year, following a 30% decline in the Dow Jones, Schiff reversed his call, and became bullish on U.S. stocks in nominal terms. However, he remained bearish in gold terms. In November 2002, as Schiff predicted, US stock indexes began a nominal bull market uptrend that held steady for five years,^[37] until reversing course in 2008, when they began a decline to less than half of their peak 2008 values,^[38] followed in 2009 by the Dow climbing 61% from its low point over the following year.^[39] However, priced in gold, U.S. stocks remained in a bear market the entire time. In May of 2002, the date of the Southland Today interview,^[40] the Dow Jones was worth over 34 ounces of gold. By 2011 the Dow fell below 6 ounces of gold, a nine-year decline of over 80%, in line with Schiff’s 2002 forecast.^[41]

In an August 2006 interview he said: "The United States economy is like the Titanic and I am here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship... I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States."^[42] On December 31, 2006 in debate on Fox News, Schiff forecast that "what's going to happen in 2007" is that "real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to Earth".^[42]

As part of these exchanges on Fox News and his repeated appearances on financial news network CNBC, Schiff had mentioned factors such as speculators and "the absence of lending standards" which are now seen by many^[43][44] to indeed be contributing factors to the housing crisis which began in 2007. On December 13, 2007 in a Bloomberg interview on the show Open Exchange, Schiff further added that he felt that the crisis would extend to the credit card lending industry.^[45] Following this observation, it was soon reported on December 23, 2007 by the Associated Press that "The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP... At the same time, defaults -- when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt -- rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission."^[46]

Since 2007, Schiff has stated many times that if the government doesn't change course there will be hyperinflation in the US.^[3] Schiff is one of a minority of economists credited with accurately predicting the financial crisis of 2007–2010 while "nearly all [macroeconomists] failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs".^[47][48] In his book Crash Proof, he described several aspects of the U.S. economy that would lead to a recession.^[3]

A YouTube video entitled "Peter Schiff was right" became popular in late 2008 and 2009.^[49][50] The video consists of a compilation of clips of his many appearances on various financial news programs from networks including CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg, most of which took place from 2005 to 2007. In the video segments Schiff explains the fundamental problems he saw with the United States economy at that time. Schiff's warnings of a coming economic collapse earned him the moniker "Dr. Doom."^[22][51][52]

2009–present[link]

Despite predictions regarding the housing bubble and automotive industry difficulties coming to fruition, as early as 2009 Schiff was receiving criticism due to the performance of some of his client's accounts in 2008, as well as controversies over the predictions themselves. In January 2009, economic blogger and investment adviser Michael Shedlock reported, "I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008."^[53] Later that week an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal reporting that Schiff's broker-dealer firm, Euro Pacific Capital Inc., "advised its clients to bet that the dollar would weaken significantly and that foreign stocks would outpace their U.S. peers" and that instead, the dollar advanced against most currencies, "magnifying the losses from foreign stocks Mr. Schiff steered his investors into."^[54]

The Director of Communications at Schiff's investment firm responded to the original Shedlock piece by saying, "While it is true, that our accounts have suffered badly in 2008, a fact that we have never disputed or ran from, [Shedlock's] estimates for the size of our typical client losses are exaggerated and unfair."^[55][56] Schiff personally responded to Shedlock's criticism by saying, "to examine the effectiveness of my investment strategy immediately following a major correction by looking only at those accounts who adopted the strategy at the previous peak is unfair and distortive" and called Shedlock's blog entry "nothing more than an overt advertisement (and a highly deceptive one at that) to use my popularity to advance his career," adding that losses were felt mostly by recent clients and not by others.^[57]

Schiff responded similarly to criticisms made by Wade Slome of Sidoxia Capital Management, LLC. in a September 2009 blog entry entitled, "The Emperor Schiff Has No Clothes."^[36] Schiff stated not only were the losses suffered by his clients in 2008 highly exaggerated, but also that most of those losses have already been recouped, stating that many who were down then are now up, and most long-term clients were never down at all, but merely temporarily lost some of the profits they had earned over the years.^[36]

The January 2009 Wall Street Journal article discussed the value of Schiff's predictions, and stated how deficiencies "made mincemeat of investors who took his advice in 2008."^[54] In an interview the following week Schiff likened himself to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, saying they were both "buy and hold" long-term investors. Contrasting his negative press he compared claims about accounts managed under Schiff's firm to the stock market value of Buffett's company, saying: "His approach is you buy stocks and you never sell them—you hope to never sell them—and Berkshire Hathaway is down 40% in the last thirteen months; I don't see the Wall Street Journal saying 'Warren Buffett made mincemeat out of his clients.'"^[58] The Wall Street Journal also published a letter written by Schiff in response to his critics saying: "My central investing premise, a weakening dollar and safety in gold, commodities and foreign stocks, didn't materialize in 2008. But all the ingredients were (and remain) present for those movements to occur. Over the past year, market reactions that I didn't foresee—massive global deleveraging, a knee-jerk 'flight to quality' into U.S. Treasuries and a sharp counter trend rally in the U.S. dollar—have kept the scenario from playing out."^[59]

In a November 2009 videoblog, Schiff said that five stocks he picked for Fortune Magazine in January 2009 had gained a total of 360%.^[60][61]

In a March 2009 speech Schiff said that it would be impossible for the U.S. debt to China to be repaid unless the U.S. dollar's value is substantially diluted through inflation. In September 2009 Schiff said that "I would not be surprised to see [gold] at $5,000 over the next several years" and that the 2009 stock market rally was a "bear market rally".^[62]

According to economist Paul Krugman, Schiff's Austrian approach to economics led him to incorrectly predict hyperinflation in the United States.^[63]

Political career[link]

Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. In support of Paul's economic revitalization plan, he said: "We need a plan that stimulates savings and production, not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul's plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change—for the better that is—Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it."^[64]

In 2008, Schiff also endorsed Murray Sabrin for the U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.^[65]

In an interview in February 2009, Schiff's position was summarized as a nonpartisan critique of American policymakers, comparing former presidents George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Barack Obama to former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, with neither of the more recent incumbents comparing favorably to the earlier ones.^[66]

Schiff supports the reduction of government economic regulation, and is concerned that President Obama's administration may increase such regulation.^[67] Schiff says that the economic crisis of the late-2000s provides an opportunity to transition from borrowing and spending, to saving and producing. He is critical of the U.S. government's efforts to "ease the pain" with economic stimulus packages and bailouts. According to Schiff, the U.S. government's approach of replacing "legitimate savings with a printing press" could result in hyperinflation.^[68]

2010 U.S. Senate campaign[link]

In December 2008, Connecticut citizens created a website encouraging Schiff to campaign against the incumbent Senator Christopher Dodd.^[69][70] Approximately 5,000 people made campaign contributions using the web site.^[69] On February 21, 2009, a moneybomb raised over $20,000 for Schiff's campaign.^[71] In a May 2009 video blog, Schiff said that he was seriously considering a run for the senate and when questioned by a Washington Post reporter, he said the chance of him entering politics was "better than 50-50".^[72] In June 2009 Schiff commissioned a poll of likely voters which indicated that he trailed Dodd in popularity by four percentage points.^[73] On July 9, 2009, Schiff launched an exploratory committee and an official campaign website.^[69] He began accepting donations in an attempt to see if "people who really believe in freedom, liberty, sound money and the constitution are prepared to support that with an actual political contribution or to volunteer their services and work on this campaign." He received over 10,000 donations and many e-mails from around the world.^[69]

After giving some hints on The Daily Show^[74] Schiff officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on September 17, 2009, during the MSNBC Morning Joe show.^[18][75][76] By October 2009 Schiff had received more than 10,000 telephone calls and letters^[69] and raised over $1,960,000 (USD) in campaign contributions.

At the May 2010 Republican convention, Linda McMahon received the most delegate votes but not enough to prevent an August primary election. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons received more than the required 15 percent of the total votes necessary to force the primary. Schiff then collected the signatures necessary to earn a position on the August 2010 GOP primary ballot, submitting at least 400 signatures over the state requirement.

In July 2010, Schiff's campaign received endorsements from Steve Forbes and Ron Paul.^[77][78]

In the Republican primary, held on August 10, 2010, Schiff lost the nomination to Linda McMahon.^[79] McMahon collected 49% of the vote, with Simmons on 28% and Schiff 23%.^[80]

Ultimately, the election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.^[81]

Broadcasting[link]

From 2005 to 2010 Schiff hosted a weekly podcast named Wall Street Unspun. In October 2010 Schiff began hosting a new radio show named The Peter Schiff Show. The show is broadcast weekdays from 10am-noon ET on internet and terrestrial radio. The show has featured guests such as Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Niall Ferguson, Dennis Kucinich, Rick Santelli, and others.^[82]

Books[link]

Peter Schiff is the author of six books published by John Wiley & Sons. His book, Crash Proof 2.0, appeared on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

• Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04360-8 1
• The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0 2
• Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, 2nd Edition, September 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-47453-2 3
• The Little Book of Bull Moves, Updated and Expanded: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Up, Down, Or Sideways, 2010, ISBN 0-470-64399-4 4
• How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-52670-5 5
• The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy---How to Save Yourself and Your Country, 2012, ISBN 978-1-250-00447-5

References[link]