Roosevelt Institute Director and Senior Fellow Rob Johnson will lead Soros’ $50 Million Effort
Wednesday, 10/28/2009 - 12:25 pm by Ruthie Ackerman | 2 Comments
Rob Johnson, Director of the Economic Policy Initiative of the Roosevelt Institute, has been pegged to lead financier George Soros’ $50 million effort to create an “Institute for New Economic Thinking”, which will fund research, convene symposiums, and establish a journal — all in the name of promoting free market skeptics and creating a new economic paradigm.
To this end Soros is gathering market-skeptics this week, including Roosevelt Institute Braintruster and Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Sir James Mirrlees to start the conversation. “Economics has failed not only to predict and explain what happened but has also failed to protect society,” said Johnson in an article in Newsweek. “That’s what the crisis revealed. The paradigm has failed. There is no guidance.”
Johnson is former managing director at Soros Fund Management. He will lead this exciting new effort from his perch at the Roosevelt Institute. Good luck Rob!
Awesome.
Of course, the right-wingers are already attacking this. Glenn Beck was smearing Soros and everyone else involved with this, and had his favorite “economist”, WSJ’s Stephen Moore on, to fail to explain what it’s about.
Posted by Zach P | October 28th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I am a long time progressive activist most recently weighing in on single payer as one of 17 Aetna sit-in arrestees and an organizer of the Newark Horizon sit-in with seven arrests.
On the issue of financial regulation I have been very concerned that too little was being done and thrilled to hear Robert Johnson on Democracy Now this morning. I was Community Reinvestment Organizer for New Jersey Citizen Action among my long carer in eduaction, government and nonprofit research and activiism.
Would like to participate anyway I can in addressing the re-inflation of the bubble and the failure of Democrats to reform this country because of their addiction to campaign cash from those they bailout or “regulate”.
Posted by Mary Ellen Marino | November 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 am