This program is co-sponsored with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Amity Shlaes is a senior fellow for economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and within the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, where she is examining the relationship between commodity wealth and entrepreneurship, with a focus on Russia and India. She will discuss the lessons learned from the Great Depression, the financial reforms that we need now, and how to avoid missteps that could prolong the current crisis.

A columnist for the past eight years, Miss Shlaes writes on issues surrounding the political economy. Her column appears on Bloomberg terminals and websites, and in papers such as the Chicago Sun-Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She is also a commentator for the public radio show Marketplace. She has won numerous prizes for economic reporting including Frederic Bastiat Prize, The Deadline Club Award, and the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Front Page award.

Her book The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression published in 2007 became U.S. bestseller and is now in its 10th printing. A journalist for more than two decades, Miss Shlaes was an editorial board member at the Wall Street Journal in the 1990s, writing on such areas as economics and school reform. Over the years, her work has appeared in periodicals as diverse as The New Republic, National Review, New Yorker, Fortune, Financial Times, and Foreign Affairs.