Veteran financial journalist to speak on the Federal Reserve in a time of crisis
Journalist John Berry, whose stories about the Federal Reserve “frequently moved financial markets,” will give a talk, “The Fed in a Time of Economic and Political Crisis,” on Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 3:30 p.m. at the Inn at Virginia Tech’s Latham Ballroom as the BB&T Distinguished Speaker, hosted by the Pamplin College of Business.
The talk, part of the BB&T Distinguished Lecture Series on Capitalism, is free and open to the public, no tickets required. Free parking is available at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center. Find more parking information online, or call 540-231-3200.
Berry covered the Federal Reserve and the U.S. economy for the Washington Post for 25 years before joining Bloomberg News in 2004 as a columnist. He left Bloomberg in 2009 for freelance work, including column writing for Thomson Reuters and The Fiscal Times, an online paper reporting on fiscal, budgetary, health care, and economic issues.
“Over the years, his stories about the Fed frequently moved financial markets, because he is widely recognized for his ability to interpret and explain the thinking of Federal Reserve officials and for his knowledge of the American economy,” Berry’s bio notes.
Before joining the Washington Post, he wrote for Business Week, Time, and Forbes magazine, for which he was Washington bureau chief.
Berry began his journalism career with his hometown newspaper, the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press-Chronicle, after attending Wesleyan University, where he majored in economics. He was a reporter and editor at the Providence (R.I.) Journal in the early 1960s. His work has also appeared in the International Herald-Tribune, Fortune, International Economy, and other publications.
Featuring two speakers each year, the BB&T lectures discuss current issues in business management and government policy, in addition to topics related to capitalism. The series is part of a Pamplin College teaching program to explore the foundations of capitalism and freedom. The program’s courses, undergraduate and graduate, examine alternative economic systems, including socialism and communism, and compare them with the economic solutions offered by free markets. For more information, please contact finance professor and program director Douglas Patterson.
Previous BB&T speakers include Greg Ip of The Economist, syndicated columnist Robert J. Samuelson, Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan, and Pamplin alumnus and Forbes newsletter editor Vahan Janjigian. The program was established in 2007 in the college’s finance department with a $1 million gift from BB&T Charitable Foundation.
