James Barth, PhD, Lowder Eminent Scholar in Finance at the Auburn University School of Business

• Coauthor of Rethinking Banking Regulation: Till Angels Govern (Cambridge University Press 2008)
• Senior Finance Fellow at the Milken Institute
• Former chief economist at the Office of Thrift Supervision

“The majority of evidence suggests that government-run banks are run less efficiently than private-sector banks, which have lower costs and allocate capital better. I think nationalizing banks and having the government run banks is certainly the last resort.”

Ballard Campbell, PhD, professor of history and public policy at Northeastern University

• Author of the revised version of American Presidential Campaigns and Elections (ME Sharp 2009) and author of American Disasters: 201 Calamities That Shook the Nation (Facts on File 2008)
• Scholar of the impact of financial depressions and panics on American politics, culture, and government

“Anger and anxiety are the crucible of financial depressions and recessions that stir up support for change and reform to put the wraps on some of the bad practices that people see happening. These significant economic instabilities have the capacity to shift society in new directions.”

Harry Dent Jr., CEO of HS Dent

• Author of The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History (Free Press 2009) and The Next Great Bubble Boom (Free Press 2006)
• Graduate of Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and elected to the Century Club for his excellence in leadership

“The financial institutions that will survive are the ones with cash, cash flow, and credit. If you’ve got these three things you are going to survive even if your earnings are down, even if your sales are down. You’re going to get market share and a market position you couldn’t have gotten anywhere near as early in a boom competing against strong companies.”

chad soriano

Morris Goldstein, Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics

• Author of Financial Regulation after the Subprime and Credit Crisis (Peterson Institute 2009) and The Case for an International Banking Standard (Peterson Institute 1997)
• Former deputy director of the research department at the International Monetary Fund

“I think there will be some streamlining of the US regulatory structure so you won’t have as many banking supervisors. Firms may find that it is not to their liking because they won’t be able to do so much regulatory shopping from one jurisdiction to another.”

Brian Hamburger, JD, founder and managing director of MarketCounsel

• Trains state securities examiners on behalf of the North American Securities Administrators Association
• Former law clerk in the enforcement division of the SEC
• Holds the Certified Regulatory and Compliance Professional™ designation from the Wharton School and the Accredited Investment Fiduciary Analyst® designation from the Center for Fiduciary Studies

“I think a lot of the recent banking transactions that have occurred, the business combinations, the mergers and acquisitions have really proven the theory that the whole growth-by-acquisition model is a failed model. Also, this one-stop shopping model, where banking customers are going to somehow rely on their banks for anything and everything they need has failed. This only makes sense if you are a trusted provider of services, and banks are suffering from major trust abuse.”

Iftekhar Hasan, PhD, Cary L. Wellington Professor of Finance, Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

• Coauthor of Quantitative Methods for Finance and Investment (Wiley–Blackwell 2002)
• Editor of the Journal of Financial Stability
• Visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

“During the process of working through this crisis, we foresee a large number of consolidations taking place. In these consolidations, in the end, there will be new banks coming up. Some of them will be match-made and even created by the influence of the government.”

rensselaer polytechnic institute

John Jackson, CEO of Lending Cycle, Inc.

• Author of articles on banking and finance system efficiencies
• Former executive vice president of First Bank

“More regulation is coming. The reality is, though, that bankers need to stop being so reactive and to do more to fix our own problems internally and change to a completely new model of doing business more efficiently.”

Michael Nichols, principal consultant and Six Sigma Senior Master Black Belt at Nichols Quality Associates

• Coauthor of Six Sigma for Financial Services: How Leading Companies Are Driving Results with Lean, Six Sigma, and Process Management (McGraw–Hill 2006) and What Is Six Sigma Process Management? (McGraw–Hill 2005)
• Chairman of the board of the American Society for Quality

“Banks need to start asking themselves about any potential strategy: not just ‘Is it a moneymaker?’ but ‘Is it consistent with our overall strategy as an organization?’ I think when people look back at the history lesson from this crisis, they are going to look at a lot of bad choices that weren’t very strategic—banks were following the market rather than looking at where they wanted to be in the market.”

Robert Pearce, JD, principal attorney at the Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce

• Mediator with the Florida Supreme Court and the National Association of Securities Dealers
• Former SEC staff attorney

“The root of this problem, in my opinion, was that the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act allowed institutions to become too big to fail. Because these institutions already exist I don’t see that legislation being undone, but I do think that all of these financial institutions will have to come under one regulator so that credit risk will be better managed.”

Jaime Peters, CFA, CPA, senior banking industry stock analyst with Morningstar

• Former equity analyst with State Farm Insurance Company
• Earned an MBA from the University of Chicago

“We are going to come out of this with a more consolidated banking market, one with less investment banking. Besides that, the massive changes are going to be more structural, such as that banks will be required to hold more capital. There will be more stringent rules associated with the risks they are allowed to take.”

David Thetford, securities compliance principal analyst at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services

• Former broker–dealer examiner for the National Association of Securities Dealers
• Former compliance manager and officer at Morgan Stanley and Advanced Equities

“Just like there was a push on firms to get a compliance structure in place, now I expect to see regulatory requirements that firms take more steps to manage their risks, to make sure that firms are looking at, recognizing, and acting in accordance with managing their own risks.”

Tim Yeager, PhD, associate professor of finance and holder of the Arkansas Bankers Association Chair at the Walton Business College of the University of Arkansas

• Research interests include the Arkansas banking industry, the Federal Reserve System, and universal banking
• Former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

“I believe our system will be better off and safer if we allow the universal banking model, but we regulate both pieces, not just the commercial banking side. If we can do that effectively then I think the synergies and the universal banking model will make our system stronger, not weaker.”