Varvares, Reaser Seek Top Offices for 2008-2009

Chris Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, has been nominated for president of NABE.  Lynn Reaser, chief economist of Bank of America’s Investment Strategies Group, has been nominated for vice president.

If elected, Varvares would succeed Ellen Hughes-Cromwick and Reaser would succeed Varvares to serve as NABE’s top officers for the 2008-2009 term.  Hughes-Cromwick, chief economist of Ford Motor Company, has served as president since last September and her term will end at the 50th Annual Meeting in October. By tradition, the new officers and board take office at the close of the annual meeting.

Past President Carl Tannenbaum, on behalf of the nominating committee he chaired, also announced that seven candidates are on the ballot for four seats on the Board of Directors.

Candidates for the four board seats are: Parul Jain, director of U.S. credit strategy at Standard & Poor’s; Kim Flood, economist at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa; Stuart Mackintosh, executive director of The Group of Thirty; Richard DeKaser, senior vice president and chief economist of the National City Corporation; Thomas Higgins, chief economist of Payden & Rygel Asset Management; Rajeev Dhawan, director of Georgia State University’s Economic Forecasting Center; and Paul Bennett, senior vice president and chief economist of the New York Stock Exchange.
 
Seven current board members will return for the 2008-2009 term.  Richard Brown, chief economist, FDIC, will serve the second year of the two-year term to which he was elected in 2007.  Four others will be in the second year of three-year terms:  Douglas G. Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist, Mortgage Bankers Association; Robert C. Fry, Jr., senior associate economist, DuPont; William A. Strauss, senior economist and economic adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; and Paul A. Thomas, chief economist, Intel Corporation.

In addition, Sara Johnson, managing director of global macroeconomics at Global Insight, Inc., and Charles Steindel, senior vice president of research and statistics group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will be in the third year of their three-year terms.  Leaving the board will be Catherine Mann, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; Ken Simonson, chief economist of the Associated General Contractors; Christopher Swann, Bureau of Economic Analysis; and Richard Wobbekind, associate dean at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Nominating committee chairman Tannenbaum, economic consultant, thanked members of the nominating committee: Richard Berner, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley; Kathleen Camilli, president, Camilli Economics LLC; Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, chief economist at Ford Motor Company; Stuart Hoffman, chief economist of PNC Financial Services; Gene Huang, chief economist of FedEx Corporation; and Diane Swonk, chief economist of Mesirow Financial.

Ballots and instructions, plus candidates’ statements, were mailed and e-mailed in early June. Vote no later than Monday, July 7, and include your name with the paper ballot, which should be returned in the special envelope mailed with the instructions. The URL for the electronic ballot can be found in the election message sent to you by NABE.