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April 24, 2009
This week, the Senate responded to the growing demand for a new Pecora Hearing, the 1930s investigation into the causes and effects of the Great Depression. ring, the 1930s investigation into the causes and effects of the Great Depression. A 92-4 vote in Senate supported the creation of a bipartisan and independent commission to investigate wrong doing in the lead-up to the economic crisis. For context, Bill Moyers speaks with economist Simon Johnson and Ferdinand Pecora biographer and legal scholar Michael Perino. Johnson is a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, and Perino is a professor of law at St. John's University and has been an advisor to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
>Learn more about the Pecora Hearings.
Simon Johnson 
Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management, a position he has held since 2004. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., and co-founder of a Web site on the global economic and financial crisis, THE BASELINE SCENARIO and "The Hearing," a new economics blog at washingtonpost.com. He is co-director of the NBER project on Africa and President of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies (term of office 2008-09).
From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, Professor Johnson was the International Monetary Fund's Economic Counsellor (chief economist) and Director of its Research Department. At the IMF, Professor Johnson led the global economic outlook team, helped formulate innovative responses to worldwide financial turmoil, and was among the earliest to propose new forms of engagement for sovereign wealth funds. He was also the first IMF chief economist to have a blog.
In 2000-2001 Professor Johnson was a member of the US Securities and Exchange Commissions Advisory Committee on Market Information. His assessment of the need for continuing strong market regulation is published as part of the final report from that committee.
Johnson is an expert on financial and economic crises. As an academic, in policy roles, and with the private sector, over the past 20 years he has worked on crisis prevention, amelioration, and recovery around the world, in both relatively rich and relatively poor countries. His work focuses on how policymakers can limit the impact of negative shocks and manage the risks faced by their countries.
Johnson has worked with most of the leading research organizations focused on global economic stability. He remains a Research Associate at the NBER, a CEPR Research Fellow, a BREAD affiliate, a member of the Advisory Group at the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington D.C., a member of the International Advisory Board of CASE in Warsaw, and a non-resident Research Fellow at the Asian Institute for Corporate Governance of Korea University. In 2006-07, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington D.C.
Recent papers have appeared or are forthcoming in THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, THE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, THE JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS, and THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE. He is on the editorial board of THE JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS, THE REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS, THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE ECONOMICS, and CLIOMETRICA (a new Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History).
His PhD is in economics from MIT, while his MA is from the University of Manchester and his BA is from the University of Oxford.
Michael Perino 
Michael A. Perino is currently the Dean George W. Matheson Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law in New York. Professor Perino's primary areas of scholarly interest are securities regulation and litigation, corporations, and judicial decision-making. Professor Perino has also been a Visiting Professor at Cornell Law School (2005), the Justin W. D'Atri Visiting Professor of Law, Business and Society at Columbia Law School (2002), and a Lecturer and Co-Director of the Roberts Program in Law, Business, and Corporate Governance at Stanford Law School (1995-1998).
Professor Perino has authored numerous articles and monographs on securities regulation, securities fraud, and class action litigation. He is the author of the leading treatise on the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Securities Litigation After the Reform Act (CCH 2000). He has testified in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives and is frequently quoted in the media on securities and corporate matters. Professor Perino's comments have appeared and his research has been profiled in the NEW YORK TIMES, the WALL STREET JOURNAL, the ECONOMIST, BUSINESS WEEK, FORBES, FORTUNE, the WASHINGTON POST, the LOS ANGELES TIMES, and many others. Professor Perino has also appeared on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Marketplace on National Public Radio and on CNBC.
The SEC has retained Professor Perino to provide it with a report and recommendations on the adequacy of arbitrator conflict disclosure requirements in securities arbitration. Professor Perino was also one of the principal developers of Stanford Law School's Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which was nominated by the Smithsonian Institution for the 1997 Computerworld-Smithsonian Award as one of the five most important applications of information technology created by an educational institution. In 2008, he received the U.S Chamber of Commerce's award for outstanding research on legal reform issues.
Professor Perino received his LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School, where he was valedictorian, a James Kent Scholar, and the recipient of the Walter Gellhorn Prize for outstanding proficiency in legal studies. He received his J.D. from Boston College Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. In 2008, he received the U.S Chamber of Commerce's award for outstanding research on legal reform issues.
Published February 24, 2009.
Guest photos by Robin Holland
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Simon Johnson
"Inside the Meltdown
