St. Louis Fed President James Bullard welcomed attendees to the annual lecture and introduced this year’s speaker, Lawrence H. Summers, one of the country’s most influential economists and policymakers.
Dr. Summers has helped steer the United States through national and international financial crises over the past two decades. He did so while serving as director of the National Economic Council (Obama administration), as secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Clinton administration) and as chief economist at the World Bank.
Summers is president emeritus and a distinguished professor at Harvard University, and he directs the university’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.
The St. Louis Fed’s annual Homer Jones Memorial Lecture honors those who exemplify the highest qualities of leadership in economics and public policy. Jones (1906-1986) was a longtime research director at the St. Louis Fed, playing a major role in developing the St. Louis Fed as a leader in monetary research and statistics.