August 2008 Conference

Conference Program

Cancellation Policy: To cancel your registration and be eligible for a refund, call the Economic Forecasting Center at 404-413-7260 before 4pm the day before the conference. A stop payment of a check does not constitute a formal cancellation. Registrants who do not attend the conference and have not cancelled one day prior to the conference are liable for the entire registration fee but will be mailed conference materials.

Substitution Policy: If an annual subscriber cannot attend the conference, another person from the same company can substitute in the subscriber's place.

Industry Speakers

Dennis P. Lockhart took office March 1, 2007, as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In this role, Lockhart has responsibility for all Bank activities, including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. He also chairs the Bank's Management Committee. In addition, he serves on the Federal Reserve's chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

Before joining the Atlanta Fed, Lockhart served on the faculty of Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching in the master's program from 2003 to 2007. In this role, he chaired the program's concentrations in international business–government relations and global commerce and finance, teaching courses in international investment, global business strategy and other subjects. He also was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

From 2001 to 2003, Lockhart was managing partner at the private equity firm Zephyr Management, L.P., based in New York. Prior to joining Zephyr, Lockhart worked for 13 years at Heller Financial, where he served as executive vice president and director of the parent company and as president of Heller International Group. Lockhart held various positions, both domestic and international, with Citicorp/Citibank (now Citigroup) between 1971 and 1988. With Citicorp/Citibank, Lockhart worked in the Middle East, served as the bank's senior corporate officer of the Southeast office in Atlanta, and was head of the firm's Latin American debt-to-equity swap investment program, designed to restructure sovereign debt.

Lockhart serves on the board of directors and the executive committee for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the board of directors of St. Joseph's Health System, an Atlanta-area hospital, and the board of trustees of the Southern Center for International Studies. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Lockhart was born on Feb. 1, 1947, in Bakersfield, Calif. He earned a B.A. in political science and economics from Stanford University in 1968 and an M.A. in international economics and American foreign policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1971. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from 1968 to 1974.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which covers Alabama, Florida and Georgia, and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Bank has branches in Birmingham, Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville and New Orleans.

Duncan Meldrum is the chief economist for Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., a $7 billion industrial gas and chemicals company serving customers in more than 30 countries. With a staff of two economists, he assesses the impact of the economic environment on the company's performance for the executive management team and develops global economic assumptions for the company's operating and strategic plans. He provides operating groups with pricing assistance, contract support and market analyses. He oversees the operational aspects of the company's global price escalation process, providing daily updates of indicators, guidance on formulation, training and recommendations to operating group staff around the world. He also serves as the company's economics spokesperson and frequently presents the company's views of the economic environment to policy makers, customers, suppliers, trade shows, and professional associations.

Meldrum joined the company in 1979. He assumed his current position in the Corporate Development Office in 1992. Prior to joining Air Products, Meldrum served on active duty in the U.S. Navy as an aviator and operations research specialist.

He received a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1973, a M.S. degree in Operations Research from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1974, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Lehigh University in 1992.

He advises the U.S. Census Bureau as a member of the Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations. He serves as a Director of the APCI Federal Credit Union where he also is a member of the Asset and Liability Committee responsible for setting savings and loan interest rates. He also serves as Director of the nonprofit Parkette National Gymnastics Training Center.

Meldrum served as President of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) in 2003-2004 and a director of the Association from 1999 to 2006. He instituted the NABE Professional Development Seminars (PDS) program in 2004 to train business professionals in practical economics, and will co-chair his fifth PDS seminar in 2008. He has published a number of articles in Business Economics concerning country risk analysis and the practice of economics in an industrial firm. For his service to the association, he was elected a Fellow of NABE in 2004.

In addition to NABE, Meldrum's other professional associations include the American Economics Association, the Conference of Business Economists, the National Business Economic Issues Council, and the Global Interdepence Center. Through his professional associations, he has given annual or more frequent briefings to the Chairman and Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and given a number of presentations to the Director of the Congressional Budget Office and met with members of the President's Council of Economic Advisors.

Meldrum is married with four grown children and one grandchild. He enjoys participating in family fitness activities including hiking, swimming and running, and recently completed a full-ironman distance triathlon with one of his daughters.

John is Co-Head of electricity and associated fuels, emissions and dry freight business for Europe and Asia for Morgan Stanley's Commodities Group.

John started his career in Power Plant Operations at a mine-mouth 3,600 MW coal-fired power plant in South Africa. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 1994, he had filled various positions in marketing, planning and finance over a ten-year period with The Southern Company based in Atlanta. His last position at Southern was with Southern Electric International, Southern's IPP subsidiary. In that position he was responsible for identifying, quantifying and helping manage market related risk for domestic and international projects. This gave John extensive exposure to the structures of competitive electric markets in Argentina, Chile, England and Wales, Norway, Australia and New Zealand in the early 1990's.

In August 1994, John Woodley became the first US electric industry employee hired by a Wall Street firm and helped to establish electricity trading at Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley is now a leading provider of price risk management to participants in the rapidly evolving electric and energy markets worldwide.

John has a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, an MBA from Valdosta State University in Valdosta and a Masters Degree in Finance from Georgia State University in Atlanta.