Laurence Kotlikoff 'The Economic Consequences of the Vickers Commission' 31st May 2012

15:36, Tue 14 Aug 2012

Laurence J. Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist who is seeking a third-party nomination as a candidate for President of the United Sates, presented an open lecture on May 31st exploring the economic consequences of the reforms recommended by the UK Independent Commission on Banking. Prof. Kotlikoff is an expert on fiscal policy, national savings and personal finance. In March, he announced his political candidacy, saying he wanted to promote “Purple Plans,” policies designed to appeal to red Republicans, blue Democrats and independents. He said he was motivated to run because of the inability of the two political parties to solve the severe and growing economic problems plaguing the United Sates. “... the problems we face are primarily economic ones and may be better addressed by someone who has spent his life focused on our economic problems and their solutions,” he wrote on his website for his candidacy. “No economist has, to my knowledge, ever run for President. In recent years, we've had a nuclear engineer, an actor, two businessmen, and two lawyers. In their hands, the economy has done very poorly on a number of critical dimensions. In particular, none has come to grips with the country's long-term fiscal insolvency.” Prof. Kotlikoff is the author of 15 books. The most recent of them, written with Scott Burns, “The Clash of Generations: Saving Ourselves, Our Kids and Our Economy,” is a call for radical reform of the U.S. tax, healthcare and Social Security systems. An economist who has served the faculties of the University of California Los Angeles and Yale University, Prof. Kotlikoff is also the founder and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc., a company specializing in financial software. He publishes extensively in newspapers and magazines on a wide variety of financial reform issues. He is a columnist for Bloomberg and Forbes, and a blogger for The Economist magazine. In 1981-82, he was a Senior Economist with the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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