Looking Around Is Educational

Julian Fellowes (the writer who gave us Downton Abbey) followed up with a 2018 movie called The Chaperone about a girl named Louise Brooks who became a global superstar, especially in Weimar (pre-Hitler) Germany:

Louise Brooks is a rebellious 15-year-old schoolgirl who dreams of fame and fortune in the early 1920s. She soon gets her chance when she travels to New York to study with a leading dance troupe for the summer—accompanied by a watchful chaperone.

Louise Brooks starts as a would-be dancer, “inducted” into an avant-garde dance school. This is the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts (founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California), which helped many perfect their dancing talents and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company.

Upon Louise’s “induction” into the school, one of the founders says to the girls, “Remember you are not in your body, your body is in you.”

The listener wonders: What could this possibly mean?

The answer is this: In one sense you have a body, but in another, you are your body. The first body is the “thing” you weigh on the bathroom scale. This is your interaction with gravity, as measured in conventions like pounds. On the other hand, you are also “somebody” (i.e., some body). To have and to be are entwined here. In philosophy, say in the writings of Gabriel Marcel during the fifties, the body you weigh is “corporeal” and the body you are is “existential.”

Very roughly, the first body is objectively weighed, the second subjectively sensed as your experience of yourself.

Physics and Dance (by Emily Coates and Sarah Demers), a recent book from Yale University Press, gives you the dancing body as a biomechanical problem. Dancing itself is the expression through biomechanics and movement based on physics, but apart from this, it’s also an art form.

The student will see that a moment in a movie—in this case The Chaperone—can open a door to a whole set of domains, realms and phenomena. Education at its best comes from learning how to go from such instantaneous accidents on the street or screen to a larger canvas.

Thus the declaration, “Remember you are not in your body, your body is in you” explains that biomechanics is an infrastructure, while the artistry of the dance is an art form (i.e., a kind of “communicative action,” to use a Habermas phrase).

“2022 Monkeypox Outbreak: Situational Awareness” with Syra Madad [Zoom]

[from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, part of Harvard University]

Thursday, July 21, 2:30-4:00 PM EDT

RSVP (Required)

The 2022 Monkeypox outbreak continues to expand with case counts mounting in many countries. This seminar will cover where we are in the global fight against monkeypox, where we may be headed as a nation, and what we need to do right now to mitigate the growing threat of monkeypox. Join Belfer Fellow Dr. Syra Madad in conversation with Kai Kupferschmidt, Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, Dr. Anne Rimoin, Dr. Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, and Dr. Jay K. Varma.

About the Speakers

Dr. Anne Rimoin is a Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She is the Gordon-Levin Endowed Chair in Infectious Diseases and Public Health. Dr. Rimoin is the director of the Center for Global and Immigrant Health and is an internationally recognized expert on emerging infections, global health, surveillance systems, and vaccination.

Rimoin has been working in the DRC since 2002, where she founded the UCLA-DRC Health Research and Training Program to train U.S. and Congolese epidemiologists to conduct high-impact infectious disease research in low-resource, logistically-complex settings.

Dr. Rimoin’s research focuses on emerging and vaccine-preventable diseases. It has led to fundamental understandings of the epidemiology of human monkeypox in post-eradication of smallpox, long-term immunity to Ebola virus in survivors and durability of immune response to Ebola virus vaccine in health workers in DRC. Her current research portfolio includes studies of COVID-19, Ebola, Marburg, Monkeypox and vaccine-preventable diseases of childhood.

Boghuma Kabisen Titanji (MD, MSc., DTM&H, PhD) is a Cameroonian born physician-scientist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta. She obtained her MD from the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon and worked for two years after graduation as a medical officer, before pursuing post-graduate research training in London, United Kingdom. As an awardee of the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship program, she obtained a Masters Degree in Tropical Medicine and International Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Royal College of Physicians and a Ph.D. in Virology from University College London. Dr. Titanji joined Emory University School of Medicine in 2016 where she completed a residency in Internal Medicine, on the ABIM research pathway and a fellowship Infectious Diseases. She has three parallel career interests: translational and clinical research in HIV and emerging virus infections, science communication, and global health. Her clinical focus is general infectious diseases and people with HIV. Her current research focuses on chronic inflammation as a mediator of cardiovascular disease in people with HIV. She is passionate about leveraging translational research to improve the care of people with HIV, global health equity and using science to influence health policy through science communication and advocacy.

Jay K. Varma, MD is a Professor of Population Health Sciences and Director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Varma is an expert on the prevention and control of diseases, having led epidemic responses, developed global and national policies, and led large-scale programs that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the United States. After graduating magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard, Dr. Varma completed medical school, internal medicine residency, and chief residency at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. From 2001-2021, he worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with postings in Atlanta, Thailand, China, Ethiopia, and New York City. From April 2020 – May 2021, he served as the principal scientific spokesperson and lead for New York City’s COVID-19 response. Dr. Varma has authored 143 scientific manuscripts, 13 essays, and one book.

Kai Kupferschmidt is a science journalist based in Berlin, Germany. He is a contributing correspondent for Science where he often covers infectious diseases. Kai received a diploma in molecular biomedicine from the University of Bonn, Germany and later visited the Berlin Journalism School. He has won several awards for his work, including the Journalism Prize of the German AIDS Foundation. Together with two colleagues he runs a podcast on global health called Pandemia [German]. He has also written two books, one about infectious diseases and one about the science of the color blue.

Krutika Kuppalli, MD, FIDSA is a Medical Officer for Emerging Zoonotic Diseases and Clinical Management in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization where she currently supports activities for the Monkeypox outbreak and COVID-19 pandemic. She completed her Internal Medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship at Emory University, a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and the Emerging Leader in Biosecurity Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Dr. Kuppalli currently serves on the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Trainee Committee and is the Chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Global Health Committee.

Dr. Kuppalli was previously awarded the NIH Fogarty International Clinical Research Fellowship and conducted research in Southern India to understand barriers to care and how emerging infections impacted persons living with HIV/AIDS. She was the medical director of a large Ebola Treatment Unit in Sierra Leone during the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, helped lead the development and implementation of pandemic response preparedness activities in resource limited settings, and has consulted on the development of therapeutics for emerging pathogens. Her clinical and research interests focus on health systems strengthening in resource limited settings, research and clinical care for emerging infections, outbreak preparedness and response, and policy. She has worked in numerous countries including Ethiopia, India, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Haiti.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Kuppalli served as a consultant for the San Francisco Department of Health and helped develop and operationalize a field hospital. She served as an expert witness to the U.S. Congress, Financial Services Committee Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) about how digital technologies may be leveraged for exposure notification and contact tracing to improve the pandemic response. She also collaborated with the Brennan Center for Justice to develop guidelines to inform “Healthy in-person Voting” in advance of the 2020 U.S. election and testified before the U.S. House Select Subcommittee regarding these recommendations. Prior to her position at WHO, she was the medical lead for COVID-19 vaccine rollout at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and helped coordinate vaccine education events for the staff and community and oversaw the reporting of adverse vaccine events.

Since joining WHO in August 2021, Dr. Kuppalli has been part of the WHO headquarters incident management team (IMST) for COVID-19, the clinical characterization and management working group for COVID-19, the COVID-19 therapeutics steering committee, and is the technical focal point for the post COVID-19 condition (Long COVID) steering committee. She is a member of the secretariat on the scientific advisory group on the origins of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (SAGO) which was convened by the Director General to understand and investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and other novel pathogens. More recently since the development of the multi-country monkeypox outbreak she has been part of the IMST at WHO as one of the clinical management focal points. In this capacity she was part of the WHO core group that helped write the recently published Clinical Management and Infection Prevention and Control guidelines for Monkeypox and advising on the clinical endpoints for the global CORE therapeutics protocol.

Dr. Kuppalli is recognized as a scientific expert in global health, biosecurity and outbreak response. She was recognized by NPR Source of The Week early in the pandemic as an expert to follow and named to Elemental’s 50 Experts to Trust in a Pandemic. She has been a frequent contributor to numerous domestic and international media outlets including The New York Times, NPR, Reuters, The Washington Post, Vox, Stat News, San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, NBC Bay Area, BBC News.

3rd Harvard Korean Security Summit: “Korea—A Catalyst for Global Trends” [Zoom]

[from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, part of Harvard University]

Tuesday, July 19Thursday, July 21

RSVP REQUIRED FOR EACH DAY

During July 19-21, 2022, the Korea Project will convene the 3rd Harvard Korean Security Summit. Our theme of “Korea—A Catalyst of Global Trends” explores how quickly various Korea-related functional issues play out with global implications. Korea cases provide unique insights into global trends ranging from ongoing efforts to change leader-level calculus (2017 Korean Missile Crisis) to the ROK’s designs for bolstering tech supply chain resilience to the DPRK’s expanding use of cryptocurrency theft for funding the regime.

Day 1: Tue., July 19, 2022 | 5:00 – 7:30 PM ET  (RSVP for Day 1)
Day 2: Wed., July 20, 2022 | 5:00 – 7:15 PM ET  (RSVP for Day 2)
Day 3: Thu., July 21, 2022 | 5:00 – 7:15 PM ET  (RSVP for Day 3)

Day 1 Agenda (Tuesday, July 19)

5:00 – 5:05 PM ET: Day 1 Overview

Dr. John Park (Director, Korea Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

5:05 – 5:10 PM ET: Korea Foundation’s Opening Remarks

Dr. Geun Lee (President, Korea Foundation)

5:10 – 5:15 PM ET: Belfer Center’s Opening Remarks

Natalie Colbert (Executive Director, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

5:15 – 5:20 PM ET: Congratulatory Remarks

The Honorable Dr. Park Jin (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea)

5:20 – 7:25 PM ET: Panel 1: Enhancing Security on the Korean Peninsula

Panelists

General (Ret.) Vincent Brooks (Senior Fellow, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School & Former Commander, ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command)

Emma Chanlett-Avery (Specialist in Asian Affairs, Congressional Research Service)

General (Ret.) Leem Ho-Young (President, Korea Association of Military Studies & Former Deputy Commander, ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command)

Dr. Sue Mi Terry (Director, Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy, Wilson Center)

The Honorable Dr. Yoon Young-kwan (Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea)

Moderator

Nick Schifrin (Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent, PBS NewsHour) – TBC

7:25 – 7:30 PM ET: Day 1 Wrap-Up

Dr. John Park (Director, Korea Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

Day 2 Agenda (Wednesday, July 20)

5:00 – 5:05 PM ET: Day 2 Overview

Dr. John Park (Director, Korea Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

5:05 – 5:15 PM ET: Day 2 Keynote Remarks

Tami Overby (Senior Director, McLarty Associates & Former President, U.S.-Korea Business Council)

5:15 – 7:10 PM ET: Panel 2: Building Mutual Prosperity Through Resilient Technology Supply Chains

Panelists

The Honorable Dr. Taeho Bark (Former ROK Minister for Trade & President, Lee & Ko Global Commerce Institute)

Ambassador Mark Lippert (Executive Vice President, Head of U.S. Public Affairs, and Chief Risk Officer, Samsung Electronics & Former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea)

Damien Ma (Managing Director, MacroPolo, Paulson Institute)

Naomi Wilson (Vice President of Policy, Asia, Information Technology Industry Council)

Moderator

Dr. Francesca Giovannini (Executive Director, Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

7:10 – 7:15 PM ET: Day 2 Wrap-Up

Dr. John Park (Director, Korea Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

Day 3 Agenda (Thursday, July 21)

5:00 – 5:05 PM ET: Day 3 Overview

Dr. John Park (Director, Korea Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

5:05 – 5:15 PM ET: Day 3 Keynote Remarks

Jean Lee (Host of BBC Podcast Series, The Lazarus Heist)

5:15 – 7:05 PM ET: Panel 3: Addressing North Korea’s Cybercriminal Statecraft Activities

Panelists

Jason Bartlett (Research Associate, Energy, Economics, and Security Program, Center for a New American Security)

Ashley Chafin-Lomonosov (DPRK Cybercrimes Expert, Chainalysis)

Saher Naumaan (Principal Threat Intelligence Analyst, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence)

David Park (Senior Policy Advisor, U.S. Department of the Treasury)

Moderator

Alex O’Neill (Coordinator, Korea Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

7:05 – 7:10 PM ET: Day 3 Wrap-Up

Dr. John Park (Director, Korea Project, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)

7:10 – 7:15 PM ET: Closing Remarks

Consul General Kijun You (Korean Consulate General in Boston)

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Taeho Bark is the first president of the Lee & Ko Global Commerce Institute (GCI), newly established in September 2017. Together with the GCI team members working under his supervision, Dr. Bark monitors new developments and trends in global trade and investment, analyzes major international trade dispute cases and provides in-depth advice and strategic insights to Korean and foreign enterprises in connection with their trade and investment-related planning and concerns. Dr. Bark is an internationally renowned trade expert and, among other accomplishments, is a Seoul National University (SNU) Professor Emeritus, who has lectured extensively on international commerce and related subjects, and former Dean of the SNU Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS). In addition to his academic career, Dr. Bark has extensive experience serving as a public official working on trade policy and negotiation matters, having served with distinction as Minister for Trade of the Korean government (December 2011 – March 2013), as well as serving as the Ambassador-at-Large for International Trade and as the Chairman of the International Trade Commission of Korea.

Jason Bartlett is a Research Associate for the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He analyzes developments and trends in sanctions policy and evasion tactics, proliferation finance, and cyber-enabled financial crime with a regional focus on North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. He also researches the U.S.ROK alliance and international security issues, such as North Korean military provocations and cybercrime. Lastly, Bartlett leads research and writing for the CNAS Sanctions by the Numbers series. Prior to joining CNAS, Bartlett worked at various nonprofit research organizations such as C4ADS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in South Korea. He also spent several years volunteering at human rights-focused NGOs resettling North Korean defectors in the United States and South Korea. Bartlett was a 2018-2019 Boren Fellow and Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) recipient in South Korea for Korean language immersion through the U.S. Departments of Defense and State, respectively. He holds a master’s degree in Asian studies and a graduate certificate in refugee and humanitarian emergencies from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He received a B.S. in Spanish language and literature and a B.A. in international studies from SUNY Oneonta. He also graduated from the Korean Language Institute at Yonsei University in Seoul. Bartlett is fluent in Korean and Spanish. Outside of CNAS, Bartlett is a contributing author for The Diplomat, where he writes on the intersections of cyber, culture, and security in Asia. He is also a member of the North Korea Cyber Working Group at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. His commentary and analysis have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Government MattersBusiness InsiderYahoo! FinanceThe Wire China, NK News, Inkstick Media, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America – Korean, The National Interest, and El País.

General (Ret.) Vincent K. Brooks is a career Army officer who retired from active duty in January 2019 as the four-star general in command of over 650,000 Koreans and Americans under arms. General Brooks is a 1980 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which was the first class to include women. He led the 4,000 cadets as the cadet brigade commander or “First Captain.” A history-maker, Brooks is the first African American to have been chosen for this paramount position, and he was the first cadet to lead the student body when women were in all four classes. He is also the eighth African American in history to attain the military’s top rank – four-star general in the U.S. Army. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; a Master of Military Art and Science from the prestigious U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; was a National Security Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. General Brooks also holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from the New England School of Law as well as an honorary Doctor of Humanities from New England Law | Boston. He is a combat veteran and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In retirement, General Brooks is a Director of the Gary Sinise Foundation; a non-resident Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Texas, with both the Clements Center for National Security and also the Strauss Center for International Security and Law; an Executive Fellow with the Institute for Defense and Business; and the President of VKB Solutions LLC.

Ashley Chafin-Lomonosov is a Cybercrimes Investigator with Chainalysis, the blockchain data company that serves the public and private sectors globally in order to enable investigations and compliance in the crypto space. Prior to joining Chainalysis, Ashley served in the U.S. government. She leverages the past 10 years of developing financial threat intelligence analysis skills to investigate nation state activity on the blockchain. She specifically focuses on East Asian issues, spending the majority of her time studying DPRK’s tactics, techniques, and procedures on the blockchain. Ashley holds a Master’s in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism & Public Relations.

Emma Chanlett-Avery is a Specialist in Asian Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. She focuses on U.S. relations with Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Thailand, and Singapore. Ms. Chanlett-Avery joined CRS in 2003 through the Presidential Management Fellowship, with rotations in the State Department on the Korea Desk and at the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group in Bangkok, Thailand. She also worked in the Office of Policy Planning as a Harold Rosenthal Fellow. She is a member of the Mansfield Foundation U.S.-Japan Network for the Future, Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Japan America Society of Washington, and the 2016 recipient of the Kato Prize. Ms. Chanlett-Avery received an M.A. in international security policy from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and her B.A. in Russian studies from Amherst College.

Natalie Colbert is the Belfer Center’s Executive Director. Before coming to the Belfer Center, Colbert served in the Central Intelligence Agency for 13 years. Most recently, she was Director of Analytic Resources and Corporate Programs for the Near East Mission Center, where she led strategic management of analytic personnel resources and created a career development seminar for mid-level analysts. Prior to this role, Colbert led multiple analytic teams to produce intelligence assessments covering fast-paced issues in the Middle East for the President and other customers in the policymaking, intelligence, and military communities. Colbert previously served as an intelligence analyst covering conflict zones in Africa and Latin America. Across her CIA career, Colbert has earned awards for leadership excellence and in 2021 received the Near East Mission Center Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Colbert is a 2008 graduate of Harvard Kennedy School, where she earned a Master in Public Policy. She graduated in 2006 from New York University, majoring in International Relations and Francophone Studies.

Dr. Francesca Giovannini is the Executive Director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In addition, she is a non-residential fellow at the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Dr. Giovannini served as Strategy and Policy Officer to the Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), based in Vienna. In that capacity, she oversaw a series of policy initiatives to promote CTBT ratification as a confidence-building mechanism in regional and bilateral nuclear negotiations, elevate the profile of CTBT in academic circles and promote the recruitment of female scientists from the Global South. Prior to her international appointment, Dr. Giovannini served for five years at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston as Director of the Research Program on Global Security and International Affairs. Working to leverage academic knowledge to inform better policies, she led and promoted countless academic research on issues such as bilateral and multilateral arms control frameworks, regional nuclear proliferation dynamics, and nuclear security and insider threats. With a Doctorate from the University of Oxford and two Masters from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Giovannini began her career working for international organizations and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Dr. Geun Lee was appointed President of the Korea Foundation in September 2019. Prior to joining the Korea Foundation, he was a professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University, and former Dean of Office of International Affairs, Seoul National University. From 2015 to 2016, he was visiting Super Global Professor at Keio University in Japan. He is also former Chair of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Korea at the World Economic Forum (Davos Forum), and currently a member of the Global Future Council of the World Economic Forum. Before joining the faculty of Seoul National University, he served as a professor at the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (which is now part of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy). He also served as President of an independent think tank, Korea Institute for Future Strategies from 2003-2007. His publications include “Clash of Soft Power between China and Japan,” “A Theory of Soft Power and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy,” “The Nexus between Korea’s Regional Security Options and Domestic Politics,” “U.S. Global Defense Posture Review and its Implications on the U.S.-Korea Relations.” He co-authored The Environmental Dimension of Asian Security. Dr. Lee received his B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Jean Lee is a veteran foreign correspondent and expert on North Korea. Lee led the Associated Press (AP) news agency’s coverage of the Korean Peninsula as bureau chief from 2008 to 2013. In 2011, she became the first American reporter granted extensive access on the ground in North Korea, and in January 2012 opened AP’s Pyongyang bureau, the only U.S. text/photo news bureau based in the North Korean capital. She has made dozens of extended reporting trips to North Korea, visiting farms, factories, schools, military academies, and homes in the course of her exclusive reporting across the country. During Lee’s tenure, AP’s coverage of Kim Jong Il’s 2011 death earned an honorable mention in the deadline reporting category of the 2012 Associated Press Media Editors awards for journalism in the United States and Canada. Lee also won an Online Journalism Award in 2013 for her role in using photography, video, and social media in North Korea. Lee is a native of Minneapolis. She has a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies and English from Columbia University, and a master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She worked as a reporter for the Korea Herald in Seoul, South Korea, before being posted with AP to the news agency’s bureaus in Baltimore, Fresno, San Francisco, New York, London, Seoul, and Pyongyang. Lee served as a Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar and Global Fellow before joining the Asia Program as Korea Center program director. She has contributed commentary and feature stories to the New York Times Sunday ReviewEsquire magazine, the New Republic and other publications. She appears as an analyst for CNN, BBC, NPR, PRI, and other media, and serves frequently as a guest speaker on Korea-related topics. She is a member of the National Committee on North Korea, the Council of Korean Americans, the Asian American Journalists Association, and the Pacific Council. She serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on the Korean Peninsula. She is co-host of the Lazarus Heist podcast on the BBC World Service.

General (Ret.) Leem Ho-Young is the President of the Korea Association of Military Studies, a nonprofit think tank operating under the auspices of the ROK Ministry of National Defense. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Korea Defense Veterans Association and Vice President of the Korea-U.S. Alliance Foundation. Previously, General Leem was the Commander of the Ground Component Command and Deputy Commander of the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command from 2016 to 2017. General Leem has served as the ROK Army’s Director of Audit and Inspection and the Director of Strategy and Planning for the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has been a lifelong Infantry officer since his graduation from the Korea Military Academy, Class Number 38.

Ambassador Mark Lippert has had a distinguished career in the U.S. government that spanned approximately two decades and included a series of senior-level positions across multiple agencies. From 2014-2017, he served as the U.S. ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Republic of Korea, based in Seoul. He previously held positions in the Department of Defense, including as chief of staff to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (2013-2014) and as assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (2012-2013), the top official in the Pentagon for all Asia issues. Lippert also worked in the White House as chief of staff to the National Security Council in 2009. Lippert served in the uniformed military. An intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy, he mobilized to active duty from 2009 to 2011 for service with Naval Special Warfare (SEALs) Development Group that included deployments to Afghanistan and other regions. From 2007 to 2008, he deployed as an intelligence officer with Seal Team One to Anbar Province, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Earlier in his career, Lippert served as a staff member in the U.S. Senate, where he worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for then-Senator Obama; the Senate Appropriations Committee State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee for Senator Leahy, and for other members of the Senate. His awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal for his service in Iraq, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Basic Parachutist Badge. He is also the recipient of the Department of Defense’s Distinguished Public Service Award and the Department of the Navy’s Distinguished Public Service Award. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science and holds an M.A. in international policy studies from the same institution. He speaks Korean and also studied Mandarin Chinese at Beijing University.

Damien Ma is Managing Director and co-founder of MacroPolo, the Think Tank of the Paulson Institute. He is the author or editor of the books, In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China’s Ascent in the Next DecadeThe Economics of Air Pollution in China (by Ma Jun), and China’s Economic Arrival: Decoding a Disruptive Rise, published by Palgrave Macmillan. He is also adjunct faculty at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Previously, Ma was a Senior Analyst at Eurasia Group, the political risk research and advisory firm. At Eurasia Group, he mainly focused on the China and East Asian markets, covering areas that spanned energy and commodities and industrial policy to elite politics and U.S.-China relations. He also led work on analyzing Mongolian politics and its mining sector. His advisory and analytical work served a range of clients from institutional investors and multinationals to the U.S., Japanese, and Singaporean governments. Prior to joining Eurasia Group, he was a manager of publications at the U.S.-China Business Council in Washington, D.C., where he was also an adjunct instructor at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Early in his career, he worked at public relations firm H-Line Ogilvy in Beijing, where he served multinational clients. In addition, Ma has published widely, including in The AtlanticNew York TimesForeign AffairsThe New RepublicForeign Policy, and Bloomberg, among others. He has also appeared in a range of broadcast media such as the Charlie Rose Show, BBC, NPR, and CNBC. In addition to media appearances, Ma has keynoted or spoken at various industry, investor, and academic conferences, including CLSA and Credit Suisse Latin America. Ma was named a “99under33” foreign policy leader by the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. He speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.

Saher Naumaan is Principal Threat Intelligence Analyst at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. She currently researches state-sponsored cyber espionage with a focus on threat groups and activity in the Middle East. Saher specialises in analysis covering the intersection of geopolitics and cyber operations, and regularly speaks at public and private conferences around the world, including SAS, Virus Bulletin, FIRST, and Bsides. Prior to working at Applied Intelligence, Saher graduated from King’s College London with a Master’s in Intelligence and Security, where she received the Barrie Paskins Award for Best MA dissertation in War Studies.

Alex O’Neill is Coordinator of the Korea Project and an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also a Co-Founder of the Belfer Center’s North Korea Cyber Working Group. As Coordinator, Alex helps oversee all Korea Project events and initiatives, including the annual Harvard Korean Security Summit. He previously worked as Research Assistant to Prof. Matthew Bunn at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. Alex’s work focuses on North Korean financially motivated cyber operations, as well as links between North Korean and Russian-speaking criminals. His most recent research publication is “Cybercriminal Statecraft: North Korean Hackers’ Ties to the Global Underground.” Alex is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Refugee Assistance Project and of the Young Professionals Briefing Series at the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks fluent Spanish and has advanced proficiency in Russian. Alex holds an M.Sc. in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in History from Yale University.

Tami Overby is Board Director for The Korea Society and Senior Director at McLarty Associates, where she advises clients on Asia and trade matters, with a particular focus on Korea. She has three decades of Asia work, including 21 years living and working in Seoul. Her most recent experience includes eight years leading the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Asia team while also serving as President of the U.S.-Korea Business Council. Ms. Overby’s extensive experience helps American companies compete and prosper in Asia. She attended many of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating rounds, often leading the American business delegation to help ensure U.S. firms’ priorities were well understood by the negotiating partners. She oversaw the U.S. Coalition for TPP, an alliance led by the U.S. Chamber, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Farm Bureau, and the Emergency Committee for Trade.

David Park is a Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes (TFFC). He advises senior leadership on policies and strategies that utilize Treasury’s tools to compete against China in the national security context, including in the technology, economy, and military spheres. He is also responsible for developing polices and strategies that seek to counter Chinese illicit financing, money laundering, financial crimes, corruption, and human rights abuses to advance U.S. national interests in the Indo-Pacific. Previously, David was the first U.S. Treasury Representative to Korea. While there, he advised U.S. government (USG) senior officials and agencies on North Korea sanctions, economy, and illicit financing and sought ways to work cooperatively with ROK institutions to enhance the USG’s pressure campaign on North Korea. Before his assignment to Korea, David was Senior Advisor to the Acting Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) for TFFC, advising her on countering terrorist financing, proliferation financing, money laundering, corruption, and financial crimes issues. David began his Treasury career as a Policy Advisor, responsible for developing Treasury’s strategy and policy to counter North Korean illicit financing, financial crimes, and sanctions evasion. Before Treasury, David served in the Office of U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly as a Defense and Foreign Affairs Legislative Staffer. In this role, he advised the Senator on his Senate Armed Services Committee work and advanced U.S. national interests through the annual National Defense Authorization Act. David began his public service career as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. In the Air Force, he served with service members from all the service branches, the ROK Air Force in Korea, and NATO nations in Belgium. David earned his B.A. with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, MPA from the University of Oklahoma, and MA from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Dr. Park Jin is Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea. He previously served four terms as a Member of the National Assembly (16th, 17th, 18th, 21st), including as a member of the Science, Technology, Information and Communication Committee (2002-2004), a ranking member of the National Defense Committee (2004-2006), a member of the Intelligence Oversight Committee (2004-2006), a member of the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee (2006-2010) and a ranking member of the Knowledge Economy Committee (2010-2012). He served as the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Trade and National Unification Committee from 2008-2010. In that capacity, he passed the KORUS FTA, Korea-EU FTA, North Korea Human Rights Act, ODA Law and PKO Law. He was also actively involved in parliamentary diplomacy with the U.S., the U.K., China, Japan, ASEAN, Central Asia, Israel and the Middle East. He previously served as the Presidential Secretary for Press Affairs and later Political Affairs under the Kim Young-sam administration (1993-1998) before being elected parliamentary member in August 2002 in Seoul. During his private life, Dr. Park led the Asia Future Institute (AFI), an independent policy think-tank established in 2013 and designed to conduct research on economic, political and strategic issues in Asia and promote Korea’s role in the Asia-Pacific region. He also served as the Chairman of Korea-America Association (KAA), which was created in 1963 to promote mutual understanding, friendship and cooperation between Korea and the United States. He served as a Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. from 2014 to 2021. Dr. Park also taught as an endowed Chair Professor at the Graduate School of International and Area Studies of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Previously he led the Korea-Britain Society as the Executive President (2007-2017). With great affection for the sea, he served in the Korean military as a Navy officer, Lieutenant JG (1980-1983) lecturing naval cadets in the Korean Naval Academy in Jinhae. Dr. Park graduated from the College of Law at Seoul National University (B.A.), Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MPA), New York University Law School (LL.M.) and received a doctorate degree (D. Phil.) in politics from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.

Dr. John Park is Director of the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also a Faculty Member of the Committee on Regional Studies East Asia, an Associated Faculty Member of the Korea Institute, and a Faculty Affiliate with the Project on Managing the Atom. His core research projects focus on the political economy of the Korean Peninsula, nuclear proliferation, economic statecraft, Asian trade negotiations, and North Korean cyber operations. He previously worked at Goldman Sachs and The Boston Consulting Group. Dr. Park presented a TEDxPaloAlto talk in 2019 titled “How North Korea Inc. Evades Sanctions Through Innovation.” Dr. Park’s key publications include: “Stopping North Korea, Inc.: Sanctions Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences,” (MIT Security Studies Program, 2016 – co-authored with Jim Walsh); “The Key to the North Korean Targeted Sanctions Puzzle,” The Washington Quarterly (Fall 2014); “Assessing the Role of Security Assurances in Dealing with North Korea” in Security Assurances and Nuclear Nonproliferation (Stanford University Press, 2012); “North Korea, Inc.: Gaining Insights into North Korean Regime Stability from Recent Commercial Activities” (USIP Working Paper, May 2009); and “North Korea’s Nuclear Policy Behavior: Deterrence and Leverage,” in The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia (Stanford University Press, 2008). Dr. Park received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow. He completed his pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.

Nick Schifrin is the foreign affairs and defense correspondent for PBS NewsHour, based in Washington, D.C. He leads NewsHour’s foreign reporting and has created week-long, in-depth series for NewsHour from China, Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Cuba, Mexico, and the Baltics. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2018 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In November 2020, Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America’s Middle East correspondent. He won an Overseas Press Club Award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011, he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow Award for its bin Laden coverage. He has a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), with a concentration in Strategic Studies.

Dr. Sue Mi Terry is Director of the Asia Program and the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Wilson Center. Prior to joining the Wilson Center, Dr. Terry served in a range of important policy roles related to both Korea and its surrounding region. Formerly a Senior Fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), she served as a Senior Analyst on Korean issues at the CIA (2001-2008), where she produced hundreds of intelligence assessments – including a record number of contributions to the President’s Daily Brief, the Intelligence Community’s most prestigious product. She received numerous awards for her leadership and outstanding mission support, including the CIA Foreign Language award in 2008. From 2008 to 2009, Dr. Terry was the Director for Korea, Japan, and Oceanic Affairs at the National Security Council under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. In that role, she formulated, coordinated, and implemented U.S. government policy on Korea and Japan, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. From 2009 to 2010, she was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council. In that position, she led the U.S. Intelligence community’s production of strategic analysis on East Asian issues and authored multiple National Intelligence Estimates. From 2010 to 2011, Dr. Terry served as the National Intelligence Fellow in the David Rockefeller Studies Program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Since leaving the government, Dr. Terry has been a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute (2011-2015), where she taught both graduate and undergraduate courses on Korean politics and East Asia. She holds a Ph.D. (2001) and an M.A. (1998) in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a B.A. in political science from New York University (1993).

Naomi Wilson serves as vice president of policy, Asia at the Information Technology Industry Council. Prior to joining ITI, Naomi served at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where she most recently held the position of acting director for Asia-Pacific. In that capacity, she played a leading role on cybersecurity, law enforcement, and customs cooperation issues related to Asia and served as a senior advisor to Secretary Jeh Johnson. During her tenure at DHS, Naomi led development and implementation of priority policy initiatives for DHS engagement with China, including secretarial engagements and agreements. She worked closely with interagency colleagues to negotiate and implement agreements stemming from the September 2015 State visit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, including managing the U.S.China High-Level Dialogue on Cybercrime and Related Issues for DHS. Prior to joining DHS, Naomi served as a staffer on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs and as a research assistant at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). Naomi holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Master’s in International Affairs & National Security. In 2011, she completed intensive Chinese language training at Peking University. Naomi speaks advanced Mandarin and French and is a native of Connecticut.

Dr. Yoon Young-kwan served as the inaugural Senior Visiting Scholar with the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He also served as the 2021 Kim Koo Visiting Professor at the Korea Institute at Harvard University. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Seoul National University. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea from 2003 to 2004. Before he joined the faculty of Seoul National University in 1990, he taught at the University of California at Davis. He served as Korea’s Eminent Representative to, and co-chair of, the East Asia Vision Group II from September 2011 to October 2012. He has published several books and some 70 articles in the fields of international political economy, Korea’s foreign policy, and inter-Korean relations, some of which appeared in World Politics, International Political Science Review, Asian Survey, and Project Syndicate. Dr. Yoon received his doctoral degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Consul General Kijun You serves in the Korean Consulate General in Boston. His previous positions in the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs include: Director-General for International Legal Affairs; Deputy Director-General for International Legal Affairs; Minister-Counsellor, Korean Embassy in the Republic of Kenya; Counsellor, Korean Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York; Director, Territory and Oceans Division, Treaties Bureau. Consul General You received his B.A. in French Language and Literature at Korea University, Master of Law from Korea University, LL.M. from the University of Edinburgh, and LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Education and the Long-Term: Automation As Example

The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker’s Notebook

Chapter 2: The Challenge of Automation

“Since 1955 and the advent of automation, overtime has been detrimental to the workers. Again and again workers have been faced with the decision to work overtime or not to work overtime, and the decision has usually been: ‘To hell with those out of work. Let’s get the dollar while the dollar is gettable.’ The amazing thing is that this has nothing to do with the backwardness of these workers. Not only can they run production and think for themselves, but they sense and feel the changes in conditions way in advance of those who are supposed to be responsible for their welfare. But with all these abilities there is one big organic weakness. Over and over again workers in various shops and industries, faced with a critical issue, only divide and become disunited, even though they are well aware that they are being unprincipled and weakening their own cause as workers. Since the advent of automation there has not been any serious sentiment for striking, particularly if the strike was going to come at the expense of material things that the workers already had in their possession, like cars, refrigerators, TV sets, etc. They were not ready to make any serious sacrifices of these; they would rather sacrifice the issue. Between the personal things and the issue, they have chosen the personal. Most American workers have geared themselves to a standard of living that is based on a five-day week plus—either in the form of overtime or another job, part or full time. And any time this standard of living is threatened, it is a personal crisis, which means that more and more decisions are being personalized and individualized rather than collectivized and socialized.”

(The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker’s Notebook, James Boggs, Monthly Review Press, 1963, page 33)

As far back as 1963, with President John Kennedy in office, James Boggs (a Detroit autoworker) was already quite aware of automation and its challenges.

A “meta-intelligent” education means we learn from any sources available including “angry pamphlets” without worrying about the ideological blinders or fireworks because our desire is not to engage in polemics but to “extract signals” from a noisy world.

Chapter 2 of James Boggs’s pamphlet is called “The Challenge of Automation” and begins: “Since 1955 and the advent of automation, overtime has been detrimental to the workers…”

This immediately tells you that automation is a very long-run historical trend and should be seen in a larger sweep with history as your searchlight.

Indeed the famous German classic The Weavers by Gerhart Hauptmann is about machines as a threat to employment:

The Weavers (German: Die Weber, Silesian German: De Waber) is a play written by the German playwright Gerhart Hauptmann in 1892. The play sympathetically portrays a group of Silesian weavers who staged an uprising during the 1840s due to their concerns about the Industrial Revolution and replacement by machines and automation.

In 1927, it was adapted into a German silent film The Weavers, directed by Frederic Zelnik and starring Paul Wegener.

A Broadway version of The Weavers was staged in 1915–1916.

To dismiss all such movements and revolts as Luddite-like is not useful since it sweeps legitimate problems under the rug.

This includes Ernst Toller’s classic The Machine Wreckers (German: Die Maschinenstürmer). Two of his early plays were produced in this period: The Machine Wreckers (1922), whose opening night in 1937 he attended, and No More Peace, produced in 1937 by the Federal Theatre Project and presented in New York City in 1938.

All of these critiques of machines and automation are part of a long-term historical overview of machines and jobs and in our time, robotics and AI, etc which should be analyzed as a trajectory and arc where “machine wreckers” à la Hauptmann or Toller are understood empathetically and realistically and not dismissed as vandals.

Then and Now Thinking: Zola Novels

Émile Zola died in 1902 and gives us a social overview of France, people caught between all kinds of pressures and changing circumstances and disruptions.

La Curée (1871–72; English translation: “The Kill”) is the second novel in Émile Zola’s 20-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. It deals with property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy nouveau riche (“new money”) of the Second French Empire (1852-1870), against the backdrop of Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s.

The Second French Empire, (officially the French Empire, French: Empire français), was the regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic (1848-1852) and the Third Republic (1870 to 1940).

Zola’s other novels such as L’Assommoir (“The Drinking Salon”) also have various kinds of “urban renewal” as backdrop.

Baron Haussmann, who died in 1891, was the “czar” of Parisian urban renewal and the speculation fever and real estate manipulating and maneuvering were echoes of Haussmann Paris.

Think of Robert Moses in New York a few decades ago and his remaking of NYC to fit automobiles and Jane Jacobs’s bitter struggle against Moses with her cars-should-adjust-to-the-city and not cities-to-cars view.

In Japan, in recent decades, real estate “nouveaux riches” are called “tochi narikin” (Japanese: 『土地成金』, “land rich”) and are similar to Zola’s “little foxes” since the way money was made was to know in advance via insider knowledge where railroads (say) were slated to be built and which stretches of land would be therefore needed and acquired by the government at any price (in the absence of “eminent domain”).

The debates and tensions raging around the Baron Haussmann Parisian bulldozing were obviously not about cars but the nature of the tensions was similar. Another dimension of these urban renewal “revolutions” was the impact on renters.

Thus Zola and his “society and social novels” do have “echoic” lessons for us and are “raw material” for “then and now” thinking which is a pillar of meta-intelligence (i.e., perspective-enhancing).

Then and now thinking helps students get some sense of long-term trends or resonances and to get away from history-started-this-morning myopia.

Economy Watching: Philadelphia Fed

from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia:

Fed President Patrick Harker Says It Will “Soon” Be Time to Taper Asset Purchases

Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker told a virtual audience at the Prosperity Caucus in Washington, D.C., that the asset purchases once necessary during the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic are no longer effective as a tool for supporting the economy. He also said the U.S. economy created millions of jobs in recent months, but “we just can’t fill them.”

Economic Outlook: Growth Despite Constraints

Good evening! Thanks so much for having me. I understand that when this group meets in person there is usually pizza involved — so I intend to collect on that debt next time we do this in the flesh.

I plan to offer a few remarks about the state of the national economy and the path of Federal Reserve policy. Then we can move to our Q&A, which I’m really looking forward to.

But before I do that, I need to give you the standard Fed disclaimer: The views I express today are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of anyone else on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or in the Federal Reserve System.

Fed Structure

I know this group encompasses a very diverse crowd — we have everyone from House staffers to Senate staffers here. So, just in case anyone doesn’t know, I want to begin by giving you a very brief explanation of what, exactly, a regional Federal Reserve Bank is. Our nation’s central bank, after all, is quite unusual — unique, even — in its design.

The configuration of the Federal Reserve System — a central bank with a decentralized structure — owes its existence to the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. It is something of a testament to old-fashioned American compromise and reflects the unique demands of the United States and our economy.

The System consists of a Board of Governors, which sits in Washington, and 12 regional Banks around the country.

The Board seats seven governors, including the Chair. Each regional Bank has its own president and board of directors, which is made up of business, banking, and community leaders from the area. Fundamentally, this provides the Fed with a perspective — within each District — of the sectors and issues that make the region tick. Mine is the Third District, which encompasses eastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and the state of Delaware. We’re the smallest District geographically, but I like to think we punch above our weight.

The FOMC, which is responsible for monetary policy, is composed of the Fed’s governors and regional Bank presidents. Regional Bank presidents don’t always get to vote. Most of us rotate into a voting position every three years, but the governors always vote, as does the president of the New York Fed. New York, owing to the presence of Wall Street, enjoys something of a “first among equals” status within the System.

While the rest of us don’t always vote, we do always represent our Districts and play a part in the discussion. If you were at a normal FOMC meeting, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell a voting member until the end of the meeting when it’s time to raise hands. Everybody contributes.

The Fed’s decentralized nature is, in my view, a unique strength. We’re making national policy, but we’re doing it for an enormous country, and the averages of economic data can obscure realities on the ground. Conditions look very different in Philadelphia, Dover, or Washington than they do in Dallas, Salt Lake City, or Honolulu. This System gives a voice to a range of localities and sectors. It also allows us to focus on regional issues within each Bank’s District.

The United States has a unique set of needs. It’s easy to forget that we’re an outlier because we’re such a massive country: Only Russia and Canada are bigger geographically, only China and India have larger populations, and no one country has a bigger economy, at least for now. And that economy is vast, spreading across sectors and natural resources in a way that is not typical of other nations.

So, it makes sense that we have a System that feeds back information from around the country.

The State of the Economy

And what that information is telling us is that, for the past 18 months, the economy has moved in tandem with the waxing and waning of the COVID-19 pandemic. During periods when case rates and hospitalizations have declined, the economy has surged as American consumers have voted with their wallets. When COVID-19 risks abate, more Americans dine out at restaurants, check in to hotels, and fill up airplanes. Those are important categories of spending in a country where consumption makes up about 70 percent of total economic activity. In the second quarter of this year, for instance, GDP grew at a very healthy annualized rate of around 6.7 percent as case rates plummeted.

And, of course, the opposite occurs during periods when the virus spikes. When the Delta variant of COVID-19 erupted, fomenting the country’s fourth major wave of the pandemic, things started moving sideways. Consumer confidence tanked, and large industries like hospitality and leisure stagnated at best. So for this quarter, we can expect growth to come in at an annualized rate of around 3 percent, a sharp slowdown from earlier this year. 

But there are reasons to be sanguine that the country’s recovery from this wave of COVID-19 may prove more durable than in the past and that we can avoid a fifth wave. And that is because more than half of the country is fully vaccinated. Getting more shots into arms will save lives and aid the recovery by reducing the size and severity of future spikes. The Delta variant has also concentrated minds: It seems to have not only persuaded more Americans to get shots on their own, but it also pushed more corporations and institutions to mandate their employees to get vaccinated. That is cause for optimism.

Filling me with less optimism is the persistent constraints the economy is operating under.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how fragile many of our supply chains are. We’re now experiencing shortages of crucial parts like computer chips, which has hobbled not only the production of cars and trucks, but also comparatively smaller durable goods like home appliances. My recent experience attempting to purchase a printer — there were essentially none at my local electronics store — testifies to that. And good luck trying to find a new washing machine or dishwasher.

These supply chain constraints are rippling through the entire economy. Manufacturers in our region have reported having to curtail production because of difficulties securing raw materials. We’re also seeing low inventory of everything from shoes to backpacks to even chicken wings, which is a particularly troubling development as the NFL season is picking up. Unfortunately, there are indications that these constraints could persist for a couple of more years.

There’s another input lacking in supply as well, further constraining the economy: labor. It isn’t true, as was widely reported, that the economy only created 194,000 jobs in September. In reality, the U.S. economy has created many millions of jobs in recent months — we just can’t fill them. Indeed, job openings are at record highs, hitting nearly 10.5 million at the end of August. Simultaneously, more people are quitting their jobs, and the rate at which open positions are being filled is continuing to slow.

It seems that a combination of factors — trouble accessing childcare or eldercare, lingering fears about the virus, the rise in equities and home values spurring people to retire, and perhaps a general revaluation of life choices — is persuading a lot of Americans to stay on the sidelines even as the economy has reopened. And notably, the elimination of extra federal unemployment benefits has not — at least not yet — appeared to nudge people back into the workforce. I do expect that will change eventually and especially as other forbearance programs run out.

So, where does all of this leave us? For 2021, I would expect GDP growth to come in around 5.5 percent, which is a downward revision from before Delta took hold. Growth will then moderate to about 3.5 percent in 2022, and 2.5 percent in 2023. Inflation, meanwhile, should come in around 4 percent for 2021, though I do see upside risk here. After that, our modal forecast — that is, the average of all of our forecasts — calls for inflation of a bit over 2 percent for 2022 and right at 2 percent in 2023.

Fed Policy

In terms of monetary policy, I am in the camp that believes it will soon be time to begin slowly and methodically — frankly, boringly — taper our $120 billion in monthly purchases of Treasury bills and mortgage-backed securities. This comes down to the efficacy of these purchases as a tool.

They were necessary to keep markets functioning during the acute phase of the crisis. But to the extent that we are still dealing with a labor force issue, the problem lies on the supply side, not with demand. You can’t go into a restaurant or drive down a commercial strip without noticing a sea of “Help Wanted” signs. Asset purchases aren’t doing much — or anything — to ameliorate that.

After we taper our asset purchases, we can begin to think about raising the federal funds rate. But I wouldn’t expect any hikes to interest rates until late next year or early 2023, unless the inflation picture changes dramatically.

Conclusion

Given the strong headwinds facing the economy, it is a testament to its underlying strength that growth continues at a relatively robust pace. That is a tribute, as always, to the ingenuity and tenacity of our people, especially in the face of huge challenges.

Thank you very much again for having me. And now let’s move on to questions.

Essay 96: Education and London’s Centrality in Global Finance: Then and Now

To understand our world, we have to go back to classics of understanding such as Lombard Street [Project Gutenberg ebook] which gives one a vivid sense of London’s rise as world’s banker, already in 1873. 

Our current world was certainly shaped by these long-term historical trends.

…But very few persons are aware how much greater the ready balance—the floating loan-fund which can be lent to any one or for any purpose—is in England than it is anywhere else in the world. A very few figures will show how large the London loan-fund is, and how much greater it is than any other. The known deposits—the deposits of banks which publish their accounts—are, in

London (31st December, 1872). . . . . . . .£120,000,000
Paris (27th February, 1873) . . . . . . . . . .13,000,000
New York (February, 1873) . . . . . . . . . .40,000,000
German Empire (31st January, 1873) . . .8,000,000

And the unknown deposits—the deposits in banks which do not publish their accounts—are in London much greater than those in any other of these cities. The bankers’ deposits of London are many times greater than those of any other city—those of Great Britain many times greater than those of any other country.

Of course the deposits of bankers are not a strictly accurate measure of the resources of a Money Market. On the contrary, much more cash exists out of banks in France and Germany, and in all non-banking countries, than could be found in England or Scotland, where banking is developed. But that cash is not, so to speak, “Money-Market money”: it is not attainable. Nothing but their immense misfortunes, nothing but a vast loan in their own securities, could have extracted the hoards of France from the custody of the French people. The offer of no other securities would have tempted them, for they had confidence in no other securities. For all other purposes the money hoarded was useless and might as well not have been hoarded. But the English money is “borrowable” money. Our people are bolder in dealing with their money than any continental nation, and even if they were not bolder, the mere fact that their money is deposited in a bank makes it far more obtainable. A million in the hands of a single banker is a great power; he can at once lend it where he will, and borrowers can come to him, because they know or believe that he has it. But the same sum scattered in tens and fifties through a whole nation is no power at all: no one knows where to find it or whom to ask for it. Concentration of money in banks, though not the sole cause, is the principal cause which has made the Money Market of England so exceedingly rich, so much beyond that of other countries.

…I believe that our system, though curious and peculiar, may be worked safely; but if we wish so to work it, we must study it. We must not think we have an easy task when we have a difficult task, or that we are living in a natural state when we are really living in an artificial one. Money will not manage itself, and Lombard Street has a great deal of money to manage.

Essay 47: Novels as a Kind of University Demonstrating Storms of Global Finance and Technification

Edith Wharton began writing The Age of Innocence in 1917 as a way of recalling and criticizing the world of her youth, which had not yet experienced the devastation of World War I (1914–18).  Beginning in July 1920, the novel was published in serial form in New York’s monthly Pictorial Review.

The centrality of finance and technical change can be seen. We are reminded of the very first line in The Magnifcent Ambersons of Booth Tarkington, which tells the reader that the basis of the magnificence of the Ambersons was established when they somehow benefited from the 1873 financial crisis which destroyed many others. (Whether the Ambersons were shrewd or lucky or wily is not clarified.)

The Age of Innocence is set in New York in the 1870s and the financial storm and “techno-storm” become vital:

The Panic of 1873:

In The Age of Innocence, the investment bank run by Julius Beaufort collapses, bringing shame upon him and his wife and throwing New York into a tizzy. Beaufort’s business failure is a fictionalized version of the Panic of 1873, industrial capitalism’s first worldwide depression. Then, the United States backed its currency with both silver and gold, but when Germany and several other countries stopped using silver to back their currency, the price of silver fell precipitously, devaluing U.S. currency. The U.S. Treasury made matters worse by releasing large amounts of paper money into the economy. Speculators and bankers now had to immediately pay off their debts with gold.

In 1873, a prominent investment banker by the name of Jay Cooke went bankrupt, the effects rippled throughout the entire U.S. economy, and panic ensued. Trading was suspended for two weeks on the New York Stock Exchange as company after company failed, wages dropped precipitously, and unemployment spiked. The rise of the labor movement can be traced to the widespread unrest and economic instability set off by the panic. Additionally, the panic allowed a few of the wealthiest businessmen—such as Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Cyrus McCormick, who retained access to valuable capital—to vastly increase their wealth and snuff out competitors.

Technological Advancements

Characters in The Age of Innocence are aware their world is about to be forever changed by the culture of outsiders, brought to them in part by advancements in technology. Although inventions like the telephone were on the horizon, they seemed improbably fantastic to people living in the early 1870s world of telegrams and horse-drawn carriages. However, in the final chapter, Wharton depicts Newland Archer living in a world that has been significantly altered by these technologies, a mere quarter century later.

In 1876, for example, American inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) patented an early telephone and wowed audiences by demonstrating the world’s first telephone call by placing a call from one telegraph station to another five miles away.  The Western Union company refused to buy Bell’s telephone patent, claiming his invention would amount to no more than a novelty. However, the first telephone line was built in 1877-78, and after that, telephone usage skyrocketed.  At the start of the 1880s, there were almost 50,000 telephones in use, a number that swelled to over half a million by the turn of the century.

A similar large-scale change was the invention and development of electricity. Although the first electric light was developed in 1835, it was not until 1879 that American inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) developed and patented a light bulb with a life span of 15 hours. Edison’s work also focused on the problems of electrical generation and conductivity.

At the same time that communication was becoming easier and the day was lengthened artificially through electric lighting, the distance between continents was shortened by advances in turbine steam engines

In the 1860s, it took between eight and nine days to cross the Atlantic Ocean; by 1907, the Mauretania (the ship that Dallas and Newland Archer take to Europe in the last chapter) makes the voyage in half that time.  This was a contributing factor to the great influx of European immigrants who arrived in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In Chapter 29, Newland contemplates the “brotherhood of visionaries,” who predict a train tunnel under the Hudson River as well as “ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days … and other Arabian Night marvels.” In 1904, excavation for train tunnels under the Hudson began, directed by Alexander Cassatt, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1910, New York’s Penn Station opened and began receiving traffic from electric trains that traveled through the tunnels.

Notice that the novel The Magnificent Ambersons is from 1918, Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence from 1920. In each, the personal storms of private emotion are somewhat carried along and swept up into the storms coming from national and even global finance (1873 caused a tremendous crash in Germany and Austria called the “Grunderkrach” [founder’s crash]) as well as techno-waves that are very baffling to the people of the time.