Chairman of Atlanta Fed to Speak at UA’s 2008 Economic Outlook Conference

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dennis Lockhart, the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, will be the keynote speaker at the 2008 Economic Outlook Conference scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 17 and presented by The University of Alabama’s Center for Business and Economic Research.

The conference will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Montgomery.

Lockhart was named president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta last March. He came to the position from the faculty at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he chaired the program’s concentrations in international business–government relations and global commerce and finance.

Welcomes by Dr. Barry Mason, dean of the UA Culverhouse College of Commerce, and Dr. Michael Hardin, associate dean for research for the UA business school, will open the conference. Dr. Nigel Gault, managing director of Global Insight’s North American Macroeconomic Service, will present the United States economic outlook. Dr. Samuel Addy, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research, will cover the Alabama economic outlook.

Conference sponsors this year include Alabama Industrial Development Training; Alabama Power; Alabama Small Business Development Consortium; BlueCross BlueShield of Alabama; Boeing Co.; Business Council of Alabama; Compass Bank; Honda Manufacturing of Alabama; Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama; Mercedes-Benz U.S. International; Sterne, Agee & Leach Inc.; and Vulcan Materials Co.

The conference registration fee is $125, which includes the Alabama Economic Outlook 2008, conference materials, and lunch. The registration deadline is Jan. 10. A conference brochure is available for downloading at http://cber.cba.ua.edu/2008Conference_brochure.pdf

For more information, call 205/348-6191 or e-mail uacber@cba.ua.edu.

UA’s Center for Business and Economic Research is Alabama’s source for business, economic, and demographic data. Since its creation in 1930, CBER has engaged in research programs to promote economic development in the state, while continuously expanding and refining its broad base of socioeconomic information. To forecast the level of activity in Alabama, CBER developed an econometric model of the state. Beginning in 1980, output from the model has been published in the annual Alabama Economic Outlook series.

Visit CBER on the web at: http://cber.cba.ua.edu