Daniel Alpert

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Daniel Alpert
Dan Alpert Headshot.jpg
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania
Years active1982-present [1]
EmployerWestwood Capital
Known forU.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index

Daniel Alpert is an American investment banker, adjunct professor at Cornell Law School, commentator, author, and bubble blowing expert who believes the Fed should cut rates and purchase MBS to fix a housing asset bubble. [2] He is a co-creator of the United States Private Sector Job Quality Index, an economic metric that measures of higher wage versus lower wage private sector jobs, and the author of The Age of Oversupply: Confronting the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy. [3] Alpert is a founding partner of Westwood Capital LLC, an investment firm based in New York, and an adviser to the Coalition for a Prosperous America. [4] [5] Alpert is a member of the World Economic Roundtable. [6]

Contents

Biography

Alpert received a Bachelor of Arts degree in public policy from the University of Pennsylvania, and started working in commercial real estate banking and finance in 1982. [1] He was a banker and partner at Oppenheimer & Co., Inc., before founding a New York-based investment firm, Westwood Capital, in 1995. [7] During that time, Alpert worked on international merchant banking, bankruptcy-related restructuring transactions, commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) and mortgage REITs. [8] [9]

In 2010, Alpert was a featured commentator on the story of the financial crisis of 2007–08 in the documentary film Inside Job . In January 2012, he was announced as a fellow of The Century Foundation. [10]

In February 2018, Cornell Law School announced that Alpert would be a senior fellow in financial macroeconomics and an adjunct professor of law within the Clarke Program. [8] He was also named to the advisory board of the Cornell Research Academy of Development, Law and Economics (CRADLE). [11]

Authorship

Following the financial crisis of 2007–08, Alpert became a cited author on economic policy and the credit bubble. He started writing for Business Insider in 2011. [1] That same year, Alpert conceived of, and co-authored along with Nouriel Roubini, New York University Professor of Economics, and Robert Hockett, a Professor of Financial Law at Cornell University, a widely cited and debated white paper on behalf of the New America Foundation entitled The Way Forward that has been credited on most sides of the macroeconomic debate with providing a clear and concise explanation of the issues that gave rise to the global financial crisis. [12] [13] In 2013, he released The Age of Oversupply: Confronting the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy on the effect of macroeconomic imbalances on advanced economies. [12]

In 2016, he published the white paper GLUT: The U.S. Economy and the American Worker in the Age of Oversupply on the connection between global imbalances and United States employment, and co-authored The Debt Goes On: A Post-Crisis 'Progress' Report at Cornell. Alpert was a co-author of the U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index in 2019. [14]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vicious circle</span> Self-reinforcing sequence of events

A vicious circle is a complex chain of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop, with detrimental results. It is a system with no tendency toward equilibrium, at least in the short run. Each iteration of the cycle reinforces the previous one, in an example of positive feedback. A vicious circle will continue in the direction of its momentum until an external factor intervenes to break the cycle. A well-known example of a vicious circle in economics is hyperinflation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zero interest-rate policy</span> Macroeconomic concept describing conditions with a very low nominal interest rate

Zero interest-rate policy (ZIRP) is a macroeconomic concept describing conditions with a very low nominal interest rate, such as those in contemporary Japan and in the United States from December 2008 through December 2015 and again from March 2020 until March 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. ZIRP is considered to be an unconventional monetary policy instrument and can be associated with slow economic growth, deflation and deleverage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nouriel Roubini</span> Iranian-American economist

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Economic forecasting is the process of making predictions about the economy. Forecasts can be carried out at a high level of aggregation—for example for GDP, inflation, unemployment or the fiscal deficit—or at a more disaggregated level, for specific sectors of the economy or even specific firms. Economic forecasting is a measure to find out the future prosperity of a pattern of investment and is the key activity in economic analysis. Many institutions engage in economic forecasting: national governments, banks and central banks, consultants and private sector entities such as think-tanks, companies and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the OECD. A broad range of forecasts are collected and compiled by "Consensus Economics". Some forecasts are produced annually, but many are updated more frequently.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2000s United States housing bubble</span> Economic bubble

The 2000s United States housing bubble or house price boom or 2000shousing cycle was a sharp run up and subsequent collapse of house asset prices affecting over half of the U.S. states. In many regions a real estate bubble, it was the impetus for the subprime mortgage crisis. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and reached new lows in 2011. On December 30, 2008, the Case–Shiller home price index reported the largest price drop in its history. The credit crisis resulting from the bursting of the housing bubble is an important cause of the Great Recession in the United States.

In statistics, a forecast error is the difference between the actual or real and the predicted or forecast value of a time series or any other phenomenon of interest. Since the forecast error is derived from the same scale of data, comparisons between the forecast errors of different series can only be made when the series are on the same scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General glut</span>

In macroeconomics, a general glut is an excess of supply in relation to demand, specifically, when there is more production in all fields of production in comparison with what resources are available to consume (purchase) said production. This exhibits itself in a general recession or depression, with high and persistent underutilization of resources, notably unemployment and idle factories. The Great Depression is often cited as an archetypal example of a general glut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subprime mortgage crisis</span> 2007 mortgage crisis in the United States

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Roubini Global Economics (RGE), formerly RGE Monitor, was a small economic consultancy for financial analysis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Recession</span> Global economic decline from 2007 to 2009

The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline observed in national economies globally, i.e. a recession, that occurred in the late 2000s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression. One result was a serious disruption of normal international relations.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">2007–2008 financial crisis</span> Worldwide economic crisis

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "Daniel Alpert". Business Insider.
  2. Hiltzik, Michael (March 16, 2020). "Column: Some employers are doing the right thing in the coronavirus crisis. Some aren't". Los Angeles Times.
  3. "American jobs are getting worse, new economic index shows". CBS News.
  4. Goodheart, Jessica (February 27, 2020). "News analysis: Income growth declines for poor Americans under Trump". Fast Company.
  5. "DealBook Briefing: Blue Apron's Co-Founder Steps Down as C.E.O. (Published 2017)". The New York Times. November 30, 2017.
  6. "Institute for New Economic Thinking: Daniel Alpert". Institute for New Economic Thinking. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  7. "Our People: Dan Alpert". westwoodcapital.com. Westwood Capital. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  8. 1 2 "Daniel Alpert Joins Cornell Law School as Senior Fellow in Financial Macroeconomics". www.lawschool.cornell.edu (Press release). Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  9. "They're Ba-a-a-ck, Sort Of: Mortgage REITs". Wall Street Journal.
  10. McDuffee, Allen (January 18, 2012). "The Century Foundation to announce new fellows". The Washington Post.
  11. "Cornell Research Academy of Development, Law, and Economics (CRADLE)". Cornell University.
  12. 1 2 Lenzner, Robert (October 23, 2011). "A $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Creates 27 Million Jobs In 5 Years". Forbes.
  13. Nocera, Joe (October 10, 2011). "This Time, It Really Is Different". The New York Times.
  14. "Coronavirus has infected the economy, hitting hourly workers and small business owners the hardest". Penn Live. March 30, 2020.