A key economic policymaker from the Southeast will provide his views about monetary policy in an economic outlook speech Thursday in Dallas.
members, financial industry leaders and the public are invited to hear Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President and CEO Dennis P. Lockhart at the Chamber’s Georgia Power Luncheon at the . Lockhart will field questions from the audience following his speech at the event, which begins at noon.
According to a news release, in a speech in early May, Lockhart said that “whether additional monetary policy actions should be used to try to speed the recovery must be balanced against the risks to the Fed's price stability objective—risks that could accompany an overestimation of the amount of economic slack, particularly labor-market slack.”
Tickets are expected to sell out prior to Thursday’s event. Luncheon tickets are $20 pre-paid and $25 at the door for Chamber members and $25 in advance and $30 at the door for non-members. The Chamber accepts pre-payments through Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
Lockhart, the 14th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, has been responsible for all of the bank’s activities, including payment services, monetary policy and bank supervision and regulation since March 2007. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District that covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, with branches also in Birmingham, Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville and New Orleans.
Lockhart also is a current member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve’s chief monetary policy body. The FOMC is comprised of 12 members, including the seven members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and four of the remaining 11 Reserve Bank presidents serving rotating, one-year terms. Lockhart is one of the four voting members in the rotation this year.
A California native, Lockhart has a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Stanford University and a master’s degree in international economics and American foreign policy from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. An officer in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from 1968 to 1974, he did domestic and international work from 1971 to 1988 for what is now Citigroup, including stints in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Iran.
Lockhart was Citicorp’s senior corporate officer and head of corporate banking for the Southeast from 1978 to 1986, based in Atlanta. In 1987 and 1988, he led the company’s Latin American debt-to-equity swap investment program, restructuring sovereign debt.
He then served Heller Financial for 13 years and was president of Heller International Group, providing commercial finance and merchant banking services in Latin America, Europe and Asia. In 2000, Lockhart chaired the advisory committee of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and was managing partner of New York-based private equity firm Zephyr Management LP from 2001 to 2003.
In the intervening years before taking the Federal Reserve role, Lockhart chaired Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, which sponsored and operated emerging-market venture capital/private equity funds. He taught in the master’s program of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service from 2003-2007, leading the program’s focus on global commerce and finance and international business-government relations and teaching courses that included international finance and investment and global business strategy.
Lockhart also returned to Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies as an adjunct professor.
Currently, Lockhart serves on the boards of directors for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and St. Joseph’s Health System, chairs the World Affairs Council of Atlanta and the Midtown Alliance and is a trustee at Agnes Scott College.
