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It Takes a Pillage

Date: September 24, 2009

Time: 1:00 PM

Economic Policy Institute
1333 H Street NW
Suite 300, East Tower
Washington, DC

Last fall, the US government embarked on a huge public rescue of Wall Street, necessary, we were told, to avert a second Great Depression and to save Main Street from a devastating credit crunch. As we approach the one-year anniversary of this historic bailout, Demos, the Economic Policy Institute, and The American Prospect and Americans for Financial Reform are proud to present a discussion with Demos Senior Fellow Nomi Prins on her new book, "It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street." Prins, a former Goldman Sachs Managing Director, presents the sharpest dissection yet of the bailout, and pulls back the veil of spin, secrecy, and self-interest to reveal the truth about financial power in America.

Join us for a much-needed public conversation about Wall Street's pillage of America and how to restore financial sanity and responsibility in our economy going forward. The event will feature Nomi in a conversation with two of America's leading experts on financial reform: Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen, and Heather Booth, Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform. The discussion will be moderated by John Irons, Research and Policy Director at the Economic Policy Institute.

About the Author:

Nomi Prins is a journalist and Senior Fellow at Demos. In addition to It Takes a Pillage, Nomi is the author of Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America, a devastating exposé into corporate corruption, political collusion and Wall Street deception. Other People's Money was chosen as a Best Book of 2004 by The Economist, Barron's and The Library Journal. Her book Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted For Them or Not) catalogs her traveling around the country; talking to people about their wallets, lives, and opinions: card by card - issue by issue. Before becoming a journalist, Nomi worked on Wall Street as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and running the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London. She has appeared internationally on BBC World and BBC Radio and nationally in the U.S. on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, ABCNews, CSPAN and other TV stations. She has been featured on dozens of radio shows across the U.S. including CNNRadio, Marketplace Radio, Air America, NPR, WNYC-AM and regional Pacifica stations. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, Fortune, Mother Jones, Slate.com, The Guardian UK, The Nation.com, The American Prospect, The Left Business Observer, LaVanguardia, Against the Current and other publications.

Respondents:

Robert Weissman is President of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. Weissman is an expert on the economy, health care, trade and globalization, intellectual property and regulatory policy, and issues related to corporate responsibility and commercialism. He has written extensively on corporate accountability, access to medicines, corporate influence over the political process, and World Trade Organization and regulation of the financial markets. Prior to joining Public Citizen, he was the Director of the corporate accountability organization Essential Action. He has also served as editor of the Multinational Monitor, a magazine that tracks corporate actions worldwide, and as a public interest attorney at Center for Study of Responsive Law. Weissman has appeared on CBS, CNN, PBS, CNBC, NPR and Marketplace Radio, and has been published and quoted in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Economist, the Financial Times, the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Time Magazine.

Heather Booth, the Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform, has been an organizer for over forty years, starting in the civil rights movement. She was the founding Director and is now President of the Midwest Academy, training social change leaders and organizers. She has been involved in and managed several political campaigns, and was the Training Director of the Democratic National Committee. In 2000, she was the Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which helped to increase African American election turnout by nearly 2 million voters. She has been a consultant to a variety of social change and political groups.  Booth was the first DC representative for MoveOn.org and has consulted with such organizations as NPA/NTIC, Campaign for America’s Future, NAACP, NOW and Women Voices/Women Vote.  She was the lead consultant for the 2006 Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. In 2008 she was the director of the Health Care Campaign for the AFL-CIO, organizing to win affordable high quality reform for all. She spent several years doing international pro-democracy work. Just recently, Booth directed the campaign to pass President Obama’s budget.  In addition, she is on the board of USAction, NAACP National Voter Fund, and the Center for Community Change.

Moderator:

John Irons is the Research and Policy Director at the Economic Policy Institute. His areas of research include the U.S. economy and economic policy, with an emphasis on federal tax and budget policy. He previously worked as the Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress, and as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Economics at Amherst College. He has also worked for the Brookings Institution and at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. His academic publications have appeared in several journals including the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, and the Review of Financial Economics. He is also co-editor of Testing Exogeneity, published by Oxford University Press. Irons has won several awards for his economics Web sites, including top-5 awards from The Economist and Forbes. He currently serves on the Committee on Electronic Publishing for the American Economic Association and on the Board of Governors of the National Economists Club.

 

For more information and to RSVP, click here or contact Jinny Khanduja at jkhanduja@demos.org or 212-389-1399.

Tags: Market Economy | Wall Street

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