Tonight: 'Mysteries of the Meltdown' at Bernhard Theater

A month after Congress passed its $700-billion financial rescue plan and just a week before Election Day, Skidmore College will host an expert panel discussion on the current economic crisis and its fallout. The discussion will begin tonight at 5:30 p.m. in Bernhard Theater on the Saratoga Springs campus. Admission is free and open to the public.

Presented by the Zankel Chair and the Department of Management and Business at Skidmore College, the panel?titled ?Mysteries of the Meltdown??will include the following:

? Charles Wait, president, CEO, and chairman of the board of the Adirondack Trust Co. Wait currently serves as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a director of the New York Bankers Association.

? Paul Calhoun, F. William Harder Professor in the Management and Business Department at Skidmore. Prior to joining Skidmore, Calhoun worked more than 30 years for Mellon Financial Corp., one of the world?s largest money management firms and a major commercial bank.

? David McCarthy, chief investment officer at Martello Investment Management at Great Barrington, Mass., and a member of Skidmore?s Management and Business faculty. With an M.B.A. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in banking and finance from University College in Dublin, Ireland, McCarthy was formerly investment manager at Global Asset Management, New York.

? Roy Rotheim, Quadracci Professor of Social Responsibility and professor of economics at Skidmore. With research interests in the history of economic thought, economic methodology and post-Keynesian economic theory, Rotheim is the author of New Keynesian Economics/Post Keynesian Alternatives, published by Routledge. .

Pushkala Prasad, Zankel Professor in Management at Skidmore, will moderate the panel, which will ?offer insight into the origins, merits and limitations of the government?s response to the financial crisis, and explore its wider implications for the nation and the global economy,? she said.

Prasad continued, ?Living through the current economic crisis is something like riding a turbulent roller coaster in the dark with no idea of when we might be able to get off. The panel of experts will shine some light on where we might be headed, how bumpy the ride might be, and how long we might have to be on it. The panelists have very different area of expertise, including community banking, state regulation, investment banking, hedge fund management, and macroeconomic theory. They will examine the financial meltdown from very different perspectives.?

Skidmore President Philip A. Glotzbach will open the event with brief comments. Christine Page, chair of the College?s Department of Management and Business, will introduce the participants.