Economic Forecast Project to Host 30th Annual Santa Barbara County Economic Summit

UC Santa Barbara's Economic Forecast Project, with support from 102 private, public, and nonprofit sponsors, will present the 30th Annual Santa Barbara County Economic Summit on Thursday, May 5, from 8 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. at the Granada Theater in downtown Santa Barbara.

The summit will feature Andrew Ross Sorkin, the chief mergers and acquisitions reporter for The New York Times and author of The New York Times best-seller, "Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System –– and Themselves." Sorkin will speak on "How to Fix the Financial System."

Sorkin, who is also a columnist for The New York Times, has been awarded the Gerald Loeb Award, one of the highest honors in business journalism, and two Society of American Business Editors and Writers awards. Sorkin's appearance is part of the UCSB Arts & Lecture Series. He will speak at 9 a.m., following a continental breakfast at 8 a.m.

At 10:15 a.m., Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, will speak on "Some Contingent Planning for Monetary Policy." Kocherlakota serves on the Federal Open Market Committee, the policymaking arm of the Federal Reserve System. Prior to his current appointment, Kocherlakota was chair of the economics department at the University of Minnesota and a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank.

The summit also includes a presentation at 11:15 a.m. by Peter Rupert, the new director of the UCSB Economic Forecast Project. Rupert will be presenting the economic forecast that covers Santa Barbara County and the tri-counties as a whole.

Rupert is a professor of economics at UCSB and was formerly the senior economics adviser for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland for 13 years. Rupert's areas of expertise include macroeconomics, monetary economics, labor economics, and family economics. He is vice chair of UCSB's Department of Economics, as well as associate director of the Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance.

The UCSB Economic Forecast Project was established in 1981 by the Department of Economics to provide the community with information on economic, demographic, and regional business trends in the Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo county areas.

The summit is open to the public and admission is $125 per person for the half-day event. Admission for UCSB students is $25. For tickets and information, go to www.artsandlectures.ucsb.edu, or call (805) 893-3535.