Distinguished Guests

• The Honourable John Howard, Former Prime Minister of Australia
• The Honourable Bob Hawke, Former Prime Minister of Australia
• Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
• Peter Scher, former United States Special Trade Ambassador
• Professor Marvin Goodfriend, Chairman of The Gailliot Center for Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

The Honourable John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia

Former Prime Minister John Howard was the guest of honour at a United States Studies Centre dinner hosted by Chairman of the Macquarie Group David Clarke in early September, 2008. The dinner was attended by members of the Centre’s Board of Directors, Vice Chancellor Dr Michael Spence and other leaders from the University of Sydney, senior executives from the business community, as well as prominent politicians, military leaders and public servants who worked with Mr Howard during his tenure as Prime Minister for more than a decade.

In his remarks, the former Prime Minister reflected on the importance of Australia’s relations with both the United States and China, his personal relationship with US President George W Bush, and the centrality of the ANZUS alliance to peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and globally.

Chairman of the US Studies Centre and the American Australian Association Malcolm Binks thanked Mr Howard and members of his government for their crucial support in the months leading up to the creation of the US Studies Centre in 2006.

The Chief Executive of the Centre Professor Geoffrey Garrett told guests of recent and upcoming activities of the Centre relating to education at all levels in Australia, analysis of critical policy issues, and collaboration across the Pacific with the United States.

The Honourable Bob Hawke, former Prime Minister of Australia

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke was guest of honour at the United States Studies Centre book launch and reception honouring the late Professor Hedley Bull (1932-1985) in late August, 2008.

In his address Mr Hawke, paid tribute to Professor Bull, one of the world’s leading international relations scholars. He was also a personal friend from their days together at Oxford University.

The book, Remembering Hedley is a compilation of essays by Professor Bull’s edited by ANU academics, Coral Bell and Meredith Thatcher.

Professor Bull, a graduate of The University of Sydney, had a distinguished academic career in both Britain and Australia. His highly influential book The Anarchical Society: a Study of Order in World Politics published in 1977 remains a standard text in international relations courses around the world.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University

"The next US President will face one of the most complex and challenging sets of circumstances in modern American history."

One of the world’s leading economists, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, was the guest of honour at a dinner hosted by US Studies Centre chief executive Professor Geoffrey Garrett on 15 July 2008.

Professor Sachs noted that the US is facing enormous challenges, not only abroad in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism but also at home regarding America’s deepening economic slump. The necessity of responding immediately to these challenges will constrain the next president’s capacity for global leadership in addressing pressing issues such as climate change, energy security, poverty reduction and human health.

US financial crisis

Sachs criticised President Bush’s signature tax cuts as unsustainable given America’s aging population and its frayed social safety net. He also said that the combination of overly expansionary monetary policy and lax financial regulation led to America’s housing bubble, ballooning current account deficit and reliance on foreign borrowing - all of which are now constraining the country’s ability to rebound from the sub-prime crisis.

"The Bush tax cuts need to be history, but the fiscal adjustment will be painful…..the weakening of the US dollar is the leading edge of a significant adjustment for the American economy", said Professor Sachs.

Climate change and energy

Sachs began by saying that achieving energy independence and tackling climate change are not, as is sometimes suggested in the US, mutually exclusive goals. "There can be no solution to the energy crisis without a climate change approach", he said. Sachs suggested that creating incentives to develop and deploy new technology was the most important and over-arching need, with emissions trading or carbon taxes only playing a supportive role in a broad technology policy, including direct public outlays for R&D and for demonstration projects.

Foreign Aid

Professor Sachs went on to say that it was a profound miscalculation for America to put US $700 billion into the military annually and only USD$ 21 billion or so into all development aid, of which only around one fourth was for Africa, and half or more was for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries in that region. "In this interconnected world, foreign aid is not an issue of charity but one of international security. The world cannot be safe with one billion impoverished people struggling for food and water," he said.

Professor Sachs is Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York and is widely hailed as a policy adviser on global development, poverty reduction and sustainability. Sachs is special adviser to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki–Moon and headed of the UN’s Millennium Development project. In the 1980s and 1990s he advised governments in Latin America on stabilisation, and in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union on how to transform their economies from socialism to capitalism. In the past decade his work has focused on public health, environmental sustainability, and ending extreme poverty in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Peter Scher, former United States Special Trade Ambassador

Peter Scher, former United States Special Trade Ambassador, delivered a lecture to guests of the United States Studies Centre on June 24.

Peter Scher served in senior US governmental positions for a decade. He was nominated by President Clinton as the US Special Trade Negotiator, with the rank of Ambassador, in the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In this capacity he was one of the lead US negotiators on China's entry into the World Trade Organization and negotiated the agreement by China to lift its twenty year ban on the exports of food and agricultural products from the United States.

Peter Scher has also been active in national Democratic political campaigns for more than twenty years, including the Clinton-Gore campaigns of 1992 and 1996 and the Gore-Lieberman campaign in 2000. In 2004, he was the Campaign Manager for the Vice Presidential Campaign of Senator John Edwards.

Peter Scher is currently the Executive Vice President for Global Government Relations and Public Policy for JP Morgan Chase and Co, one of the leading global financial services firms.

Professor Marvin Goodfriend, Chairman of The Gailliot Center for Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

Financial meltdown and recession in the US?

A US expert on central bank policy and monetary theory, Professor Marvin Goodfriend, was a guest of the Centre during the week of June 9 to 13. Professor Goodfriend spoke to CEO luncheons of the US Business Leadership Forum in Sydney and Melbourne, and to executive audiences at evening events in both cities.

Professor Goodfriend has an unusual blend of experience, as a Senior Vice President in the US Federal Reserve system coupled with academic research during his work with the Federal Reserve and as a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

In the executive forums, Professor Goodfriend spoke about the US economic outlook and the challenge the world’s central banks face in managing the recent surge in prices of fuel, food and other commodities. He noted that US productivity growth is strong, which coupled with sluggish demand has resulted in job losses, but without putting inflationary pressure on wages. He contended that the United States is not yet in a recession and consumers will soon gain the benefit of the tax rebates now being sent out to households. This should provide economic stimulus during the summer months, giving time for the current zero real interest rate environment to take effect.

Central bank policy is being constrained by the persistence of inflation in the non-core sectors of the world’s economies (fuel, food and commodities) as a result of an economic transformation on a scale greater than the world has ever seen before: the rapid rise of China and India, along with other developing countries. Since production of commodities responds slowly to demand, the increasing appetite of these countries is pushing up prices. Professor Goodfriend was clear that central banks need to continue to focus on inflation. He was concerned, however, that in the current low-interest rate environment, banks might fail to contain inflationary pressures, which might lead to the need for a heavy response and resultant recession.

Professor Goodfriend also gave seminars to staff of the Treasury in Canberra and the Reserve Bank in Sydney, in which we discussed his work on the evolution of a new policy consensus among central banks world-wide focused on inflation targeting (either explicitly or implicitly). Central banks, he said, now recognised that this was “the only game in town”. In an examination of the actions of the Federal Reserve during three periods of zero real interest rates since 1977, he concluded that success in emerging from such periods without recession was mixed. This would be increasingly difficult to achieve under the current circumstances of unusual pressure on commodity prices.

Read Professor Goodfriend's speech: Current Economic Conditions in the United States and Federal Reserve Policy.