Glenn Hubbard (economist)

Early life

Born September 4, 1958, Hubbard was raised in Apopka, Florida, a suburb of Orlando, Florida. His father taught at a local community college and his mother taught at a high school. Hubbard's younger brother, Gregg, is a member of the country-pop band Sawyer Brown.

Hubbard is an Eagle Scout. A member of the chess team, he was a stellar student who graduated at the top of his class. He scored well enough on his College Level Examination Program to enter the University of Central Florida with enough credits to graduate with two degrees in three years. He obtained his B.A. and B.S. degrees summa cum laude from the University of Central Florida in 1979, and his masters and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1983.

Academic

Hubbard has been at Columbia University since 1988, being Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics since 1994.

He was named Dean of Columbia Business School on July 1, 2004.

Government

Hubbard was Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1991 to 1993.

From February 2001 until March 2003, Hubbard was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush. A supply-side economist, he was instrumental in the design of the 2003 Bush Tax cuts—an issue which split the economics profession on ideological lines, with those leaning left opposed and those leaning right supportive. See Economists' statement opposing the Bush tax cuts.

He was tipped by some media outlets to be a candidate for the position of Chairman of the Federal Reserve when Alan Greenspan retired, although he was not nominated for the position.

Political advisor

Hubbard served as economic advisor to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, a position he also held during Romney's 2008 presidential campaign. In August 2012, Politico identified Hubbard as "a likely Romney appointee as Federal Reserve chairman or Treasury secretary".

Hubbard was an economic advisor for Bush'16. After Trump became the presumptive nominee, Hubbard was mentioned as a potential Treasury secretary (which eventually went to Steven Mnuchin), and also as a potential Fed chair, a role expected to become open in February 2018. Hubbard had been critical of both Trump and Clinton, including after Bush had suspended. In August 2016, Hubbard declined say which candidate he supported in the general election, but did say that Trump's taxation plans and their impact on economic growth were in a "direction" somewhat better than Clinton's plans. Hubbard criticized Trump's plans on trade and immigration for their predicted economic impact.

Other

Hubbard serves as co-chair of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation.

Hubbard is a member of the Board of Directors of Automatic Data Processing, Inc., BlackRock Closed-End Funds, Capmark Financial Corporation, Duke Realty Corporation, KKR Financial Corporation and Ripplewood Holdings. He is also a Director or Trustee of the Economic Club of New York, Tax Foundation, Resources for the Future, Manhattan Council and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, and a member of the Advisory Board of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse... Director of MetLife and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company since February 2007.

Hubbard is currently a board member of:

Inside Job interview and aftermath

Hubbard was interviewed in Charles Ferguson's Oscar-winning documentary film, Inside Job (2010), discussing his advocacy, as chief economic advisor to the Bush Administration, of deregulation. Ferguson argues that deregulation led to the 2008 international banking crisis sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch. In the interview, Ferguson asks Hubbard to enumerate the firms from whom he receives outside income as an advisory board member in the context of possible conflict of interest. Hubbard, hitherto cooperative, declines to answer and threatens to end the interview with the remark, "You have three more minutes; give it your best shot." After the release of the film, Columbia ramped up ongoing efforts to strengthen and clarify their conflict of interest disclosure requirements. (Columbia Business School professor Michael Feiner, a member of the faculty committee of Columbia's Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics, has recommended that the film be shown to all business school students.) One of Hubbard's consulting contracts was examined in a deposition in 2012. His work for Countrywide Financial for $1200/hr, attesting that the lender's loans were no worse than a control group of mortgages and not fraudulent, was examined by an attorney for MBIA. MBIA was suing Countrywide over its mortgage practices.

Columbia Business School (CBS) Follies

Hubbard is also frequently featured in skits by Columbia Business School's "Follies" group, ranging from videos of him monitoring students on classroom video cameras to songs about his relationship with Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Hubbard has also publicized his dissatisfaction with Ben Bernanke's nomination as Chair of the Federal Reserve with his comedic YouTube parody of "Every Breath You Take", "Every Breath Bernanke Takes".