Alumni Author Book Talk: Howard B. Adler, A&S '72

Sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations Lifelong Learning

Join former Treasury officials, Howard B. Adler, A&S '72 and Alex J. Pollock for a webinar presentation of their book Surprised Again! –The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble. Howard and Alex will discuss the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath on the economy with a special focus on Chapter 6 (Cryptocurrencies: An Assault on Central Banks or Their New Triumph?) and Chapter 12 (Central Banking to the Max). An opportunity for Q&A will follow the presentation.

For more information about the book, visit Pauldry Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and other book sellers.

A zoom link will be sent to all registrants prior to the webinar.

 

About this Book

About every ten years, we are surprised by a financial crisis. In 2020, we were Surprised Again! by the financial panic of the spring triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Not one of the 30 official systemic risk studies developed in 2019 had even hinted at this financial crisis as a possibility, or at the frightening economic contraction which resulted from the political responses to control the virus. In response came the unprecedented government fiscal and monetary expansions and bailouts. Later 2020 brought a second big surprise: the appearance of an amazing boom in asset prices, including stocks, houses, and cryptocurrencies.

Alex J. Pollock and Howard B. Adler lived through this historic instability while serving as senior officials of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Their book lays out the many elements of the panic and its aftermath, from the massive elastic currency operations which rode to the rescue by financing the bust with unprecedented government debt, to the consequent asset price boom, which included a renewed bubble in house prices financed by government guarantees. It considers key leveraged sectors such as commercial real estate, student loans, pension funds, banks, and the government itself. It reflects on how to understand these events both in retrospect and prospect.

Disclaimer: The perspectives and opinions expressed by the speaker(s) during this program are those of the speaker(s) and not, necessarily, those of Johns Hopkins University and the scheduling of any speaker at an alumni event or program does not constitute the University’s endorsement of the speaker’s perspectives and opinions.

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