About the speaker:

Robert D. Hormats is Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1982 and became a Managing Director in 1998.

Mr. Hormats served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs from 1981 to 1982, Ambassador and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981, and Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs at the Department of State from 1977 to 1979. He served as a Senior Staff Member for International Economic Affairs on the National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, where he was Senior Economic Advisor to Dr. Henry Kissinger, General Brent Scowcroft, and Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. Mr. Hormats was a recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 1982 and Arthur Fleming Award in 1974.

Mr. Hormats has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and is a member of the Board of Visitors of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Dean's Council of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Irvington Institute for Immunological Research, Engelhard Hanovia, Inc., The Economic Club of New York, and Freedom House.

Mr. Hormats' latest book is entitled The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars and was featured in Thomas Friedman's March 7, 2007, New York Times column "Don't Ask, Don't Know, Don't Help." Hormats' other publications include Abraham Lincoln and the Global Economy; American Albatross: The Foreign Debt Dilemma; and Reforming the International Monetary System.

Mr. Hormats earned a B.A. from Tufts University in 1965 with a concentration in economics and political science. In 1966 he earned an M.A. and, in 1970, a Ph.D. in international economics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

About the moderator:

Professor David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War (1999) recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II. In 2000, the book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ambassador's Prize, and the California Gold Medal for Literature.

Professor Kennedy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of the twentieth-century United States, American political and social thought, American foreign policy, American literature, and the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America.

About The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars:

In a bracing work of history, a leading international finance expert reveals how our national security depends on our financial security

More than two centuries ago, America's first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, identified the Revolutionary War debt as a threat to the nation's creditworthiness and its very existence. In response, he established financial principles for securing the country--principles that endure to this day. In this provocative history, Robert D. Hormats, one of America's leading experts on international finance, shows how leaders from Madison and Lincoln to FDR and Reagan have followed Hamilton's ideals, from the greenback and a progressive income tax to the Victory Bond and Victory Garden campaigns and cost-sharing with allies.

Drawing on these historical lessons, Hormats argues that the rampant borrowing to pay for the war in Iraq and the short-sighted tax cuts in the face of a long-term war on terrorism run counter to American tradition and place our country's security in peril. To meet the threats facing us, Hormats contends, we must significantly realign our economic policies--on taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and oil dependency--to safeguard our liberty and our future.

Quotes in praise of The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars:

"Bob Hormats has taken on the impossible: making lively history of the fiscal side of America's wars. Taxes and spending, economics and politics, all mixed up together in times of national crisis, from the Revolution and Alexander Hamilton to Iraq and both George Bushes. There are lessons to be learned and too often forgotten, even for the financing of the new 'War on Terror.'"--Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve

"The Price of Liberty is both a superb history and an urgent call for appropriate fiscal policy in the current campaign against terrorism. Hormats shows that, time and again, how wars were paid for determined how wars were fought--and won or lost. An important and timely book."--David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom from Fear

"Robert Hormats mounts a compelling argument that America faces large-scale economic catastrophe due to lack of a long-term, fiscally sound strategy for meeting military and security needs as well as domestic obligations. The Price of Liberty is a fascinating book and its message is hard to ignore."--Henry Kissinger