This Time is Different. 8 Centuries of Financial Folly: Faculty Conference Call
Monday, December 14, 2009

Downturns that follow financial crises are typically long and deep. If the normal pattern holds, U.S. equity and housing prices will not bottom until about mid-2011. Looking further out, we should also expect much higher interest rates and stunted growth in the U.S. for at least four to six more years. Will this time be different? The answer could have important implications for your business and investment portfolio.

Join the Wharton Club of Northern California for a conference call with the prescient authors of, “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”, Univ. of Maryland Economics Prof. Carmen M. Reinhart and Harvard University Economics Prof. Kenneth Rogoff.

Register Online
Date: Monday, December 14, 2009
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm PT
Location: Via Conference Call (Dial-in and pass code to be provided the day before the event by e-mail.)
Cost: No charge for current WCNC members. Registration closes Friday, December 11th at 1:00pm PT. (Note: although there is no event registration fee for Wharton Club members, "seating" will be limited at this event--please register only if you are confident you'll be able to attend.)

[E]ssential reading . . . both for its originality and for the sobering patterns of financial behaviour it reveals.
(Economist)

The four most dangerous words in finance are 'this time is different.' Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart at the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again. . . . The authors have put an immense amount of work into collecting the data financial institutions needed if they were to have any chance of making quantitative risk management work.
(Martin Wolf Financial Times)

Everyone working on economic policy should own This Time is Different and open it for a bracing blast of sobriety when things seem to be going well.
(Greg Ip Washington Post)


Carmen M. Reinhart is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. Her work has helped to inform the understanding of financial crises for over a decade. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Reinhart held positions as Chief Economist and VP at Bear Stearns in the 1980s, where she became interested in financial crises, international contagion and commodity price cycles. Subsequently, she spent several years at the International Monetary Fund. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kenneth Rogoff is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society and is on the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY and the Central Bank of Sweden. In addition, Prof. Rogoff is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; co-editor of NBER Macroeconomics Annual; a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Centre for Economic Policy Research; and an International Grandmaster of Chess. From 2001-2003, Prof. Rogoff served as Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. His “Foundations of International Macroeconomics” (joint with Maurice Obstfeld) is the standard graduate text in the field worldwide. Prof. Rogoff received his Ph.D. from MIT and B.A./M.A. degrees, summa cum laude, with Honors in Economics from Yale University.