On April 30, the School of Public Policy hosted the annual Schelling Lecture, “10 Years After the Crisis,” with Carmen Reinhart, Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School.
As he welcomed the audience, SPP Dean Robert Orr said, “It’s my pleasure to welcome you here today for a homecoming. It is a homecoming for Carmen, who spent some time here.”
He went on to explain that throughout the School’s history there have been two joint appointments with the UMD Department of Economics: Thomas Schelling and Carmen Reinhart.
“Tom Schelling was so much more than just a Nobel laureate--this lecture reflects that,” Orr said. “It wasn’t just his brilliant mind, it was his heart. This lecture is in honor of Tom.”
Professor Susan Schwab provided the crowd with a biography of Reinhart prior to the lecture. “Carmen was a marvelous catch,” Schwab said of Reinhart’s time at SPP. “She came here first, and then joined economics. She is part of the marvelous category of scholar-practitioners that we love.”
As Reinhart started her lecture on the global financial crisis, she said, “People ask me when is the next crisis, and my answer is that we’re not quite done with the previous one.” She then went on to say that in her opinion, the Global Financial Crisis was an advanced crisis that expanded across countries, and we’re seeing that situation happening again.
“It’s hard to argue that demographic trends done lend themselves to slowing growth rates,” Reinhart said of secular stagnation. “Demographics is a secular down force.”
View photos from this event on the SPP Flickr account and watch the video on the SPP YouTube channel.