Harvard thinking about the financial crisis AccMan

If you have 96 minutes to spare then the Harvard Business School discussion about the US financial crisis is worth the time investment. It was recorded last Friday. The panel members:

Jay Light – Dean of HBS

Robert Kaplan – board member Harvard Management Company

Elizabeth Warren – law professor, specializing in bankruptcy

Greg Mankiw – professor of economics

Kenneth Rogoff – professor of economics and public policy

Robert Merton – 1997 Nobel prize winner for economics based on work on a new method of pricing derivatives

While each provided cogent insights into causal factors and possible solutions, which varied according to their perspective, only Liz Warren critiqued the executive compensation element of the rescue package. It was the only segment that received spontaneous applause.

No-one dealt with the greed issue that Al Wood so eloquently discussed in my last piece.