Please join the Adam Smith Society Professional Network for a discussion with Hoover Institution visiting fellow and Rutgers distinguished economist, Michael Bordo in conversation with Jean-Piere Conte, chairman and managing director of Genstar Capital, L.P. on how business should and do, respond to record low interest rates.

The conversation will center around questions like: How do low interest rates impact investment decisions? What factors should business consider long term? Are near-zero rates healthy? What is the impact on the market?

Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Board of Governors Professor of Economics and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Dr. Michael Bordo is also a member of the Shadow Open Markets Committee.

He has held academic positions at the University of South Carolina and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Bordo has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, Carnegie Mellon University, Princeton University, Harvard University, and Cambridge University, where he was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions. He is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund; the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis, Cleveland, and Dallas; the Federal Reserve Board of Governors; the Bank of Canada; the Bank of England; and the Bank for International Settlement. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee. He is also a member of the Federal Reserve Centennial Advisory Committee. He has a BA degree from McGill University, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics, and PhD from the University of Chicago in 1972.

He has published many articles in leading journals including the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics, and the Journal of Economic History. He has authored and coedited fourteen books on monetary economics and monetary history. These include (with Owen Humpage and Anna J Schwartz), Strained Relations: US Foreign Exchange Operations and Monetary Policy in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2014); (with Athanasios Orphanides), The Great Inflation (University of Chicago Press for the NBER, 2013); (with Will Roberds), A Return to Jekyll Island (Cambridge University Press, 2013); (with Ronald MacDonald) Credibility and the International Monetary Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2012); (with Alan Taylor and Jeffrey Williamson), Globalization in Historical Perspective (University of Chicago Press for the NBER,2003). He is also editor of a series of books for Cambridge University Press: Studies in Macroeconomic History.

He is currently doing research on a Hoover Institution book project The Historical Performance of the Federal Reserve: The Importance of Rules, a project on “Bank Lending and Policy Uncertainty”; a project on “Financial Globalization and Financial Crises”; and a project on “Central Bank Credibility and Reputation: A Historical Perspective.”

Jean-Pierre L. (J-P) Conte is Chairman and Managing Director of Genstar Capital, a leading middle-market private equity firm with $17 billion in capital with investments in health care, software, financial services and industrial technology. He began his career at Chase Manhattan Bank in 1985. He currently serves as a Director of ConnectiveRx, Alvarado and CRF Bracket. A prolific philanthropist, he also serves as board of trustees for non-profit organizations including the Pepperwood Preserve, the Pan American Development Fund, the California Pacific Medical Center and founded the J-P Conte Family Foundation. J-P is on the board of overseers for the Hoover Institution, and has hosted Hoover events for young leaders and established a Hoover Task Force to promote legal immigration. Mr. Conte earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Colgate University. J-P has four amazing children, and lives with his partner Hillary in the Bay Area. He enjoys biking, skiing, surfing and traveling.