James B Stewart

ISU Announces Speaker Series Line-Up

August 12, 2011

News Release

Watergate figure John Dean heads the line-up for this year�s Indiana State University Speakers Series which will also feature noted professionals in education, climatology, finance and the media.

Dean recounted his 1,000 days as Richard Nixon�s White House lawyer in two books, �Blind Ambition� and �Lost Honor.� He has authored several other best sellers including �Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush,� �Conservatives Without Conscience,� and �Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches.� He recently re-issued �Blind Ambition� to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Watergate. He is currently working on his eleventh book, while also regularly providing television and radio commentary. Dean will discuss the 40th anniversary of Watergate during his presentation on Oct. 4.

Heidi Cullen is interim CEO and director of communications for Climate Central, a non-profit science journalism organization where she also serves as a research scientist and correspondent. She was The Weather Channel�s first on-air climate expert and helped create �Forecast Earth,� a weekly series focused on climate change and the environment. She is a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration�s Science Advisory Board and is the author of �The Weather of the Future.� Cullen will speak at Indiana State on Nov. 2.

Erin Gruwell landed her first job at a Long Beach, Calif. high school only to discover many of her students had been written off by the education system and deemed �unteachable.� She encouraged them to rethink rigid beliefs about themselves and others and they proceeded to shatter stereotypes to become critical thinkers, aspiring college students and citizens for change. They dubbed themselves �Freedom Writers� and published a book which in 2007 was made into a movie starring Hilary Swank. Gruwell is now president of the Freedom Writers Foundation. Gruwell�s visit in Nov. 30 is made possible by many of Indiana State�s colleges and academic departments in conjunction with the Fall Read.

James B. Stewart, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who serves as editor-at-large of SmartMoney magazine offers insights into business and investing trends in his weekly column, �Common Sense,� which also runs in The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller �Disney War: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom� and �Heart of a Soldier,� which Time magazine named �Best Book about 9/11.� His new book, �Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff ,� is a revealing investigation of perjury epidemic in America, which he suggests is symptomatic of a breakdown of ethics that compromises the judicial system business, government, academia and medicine. Stewart�s presentation on Feb. 2, 2012, is sponsored by the Scott College of Business and Inside Indiana Business.

Financial Aftershocks With Precedent in History By JAMES B ...

 The events of the last few weeks — gridlock in Washington, brinksmanship over raising the debt ceiling , Standard & Poor’s downgrade of long-term Treasuries, renewed fears about European debt and a dizzying plunge in the stock market — bear an intriguing resemblance to some of the events of 1937-38, the so-called recession within the Depression, with a major caveat: it was a lot worse back then. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 49 percent from its peak in 1937. Manufacturing output fell by 37 percent, a steeper decline than in 1929-33. Unemployment, which had been slowly declining, to 14 percent from 25 percent, surged to 19 percent. Price declines led to deflation .

 “The parallels to what is happening now are very strong,” Robert McElvaine, author of “ The Great Depression : America, 1929-1941” and a professor of history at Millsaps College, said this week. Then as now, policy makers were struggling with how and when to turn off the fiscal stimulus and monetary easing that had been used to combat the initial crisis.

Are we at similar risk today? David Bianco, chief investment strategist for Merrill Lynch Bank of America, told me this week that “the market is collapsing faster than any fundamentals would warrant.” The possibility that the United States faces a recession as bad as 1937’s seems far-fetched. Nonetheless, the risk of another recession has soared, by Mr. Bianco’s estimate, to an 80 percent probability, one that would be worse than the 1991 recession. He noted that there had been only three instances when such a steep market decline was not followed by recession: 1966, 1987 (after the October stock market crash) and 1998 (after the implosion of Long Term Capital Management.) “Confidence is shaken and rapidly falling,” he said, a problem worsened by falling stock prices.

By 1937 an economic recovery seemed to be in full swing, giving policy makers every reason to believe the economy was strong enough to withdraw government stimulus. Growth from 1933 to 1936 averaged a booming 9 percent a year (rivaling modern-day China’s), albeit from a very low base. The federal debt had swelled to 40 percent of gross domestic product in 1936 (from 16 percent in 1929.). Faced with strident calls from both Republicans and members of his own party to balance the federal budget , President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress raised income taxes, levied a Social Security tax (which preceded by several years any payments of benefits) and slashed federal spending in an effort to balance the federal budget. Income-tax revenue grew by 66 percent between 1936 and 1937 and the marginal tax rate on incomes over $4,000 nearly doubled, to 11.6 percent from an average marginal rate of 6.4 percent. (The marginal tax rate on the rich — those making over $1 million — went to 75 percent, from 59 percent.

Den of thieves

Disney war

Tangled Webs, How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff

Heart of a Soldier

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