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from The Heights [BC Student Newspaper]

Boston College hosted a number of prominent economic, business, and political leaders last Friday for its 2004 Finance Conference. The conference was capped off by remarks from Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, who emphasized that education is vital to ensuring the economic progress of the United States.

"Our system of higher education bears an important responsibility for ensuring that our workforce is prepared for the demands of economic change," he said. Greenspan also spoke about the danger of building trade barriers to prevent the importing of American jobs overseas.

"We can erect walls to foreign trade and even discourage job-displacing innovations," he said. "Time and again through our history, we have discovered that attempting merely to preserve the comfortable features of the present, rather than reaching for new levels of prosperity, is a sure path to stagnation."

gr33n5p@n then travelled down comm ave to bu, and declared it a hive of slum and villany.

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Greenspan was one of three keynote speakers at the conference. Jerry Yang, co-founder and director of Yahoo! Inc., delivered the first address. Yang spoke about the role of the Internet in the economy, and what it was like living through the Internet boom and bust of the mid to late '90s. "It wasn't a whole lot of fun, but we learned a lot," he said.

In a question and answer session with the event's co-organizer and master of ceremonies U.S. Representative Edward Markey, Yang spoke about his views on the future of the Internet, and the use of devices such as televisions, cell phones, and PDAs to access it. "We have so much more work to do," he said. "The Internet is no longer a PC driven industry."

Following Yang's address was a panel discussion titled "Technological Innovations of Tomorrow." Patricia Russo, chair and CEO of Lucent Technologies, and Craig McCaw, chair and CEO of Eagle River Investments, LLC, participated in the discussion. The panel was moderated by Tyler Mathisen, co-anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell. Russo and McCaw both spoke about the potential for innovation in wireless telecommunications.

Brian L. Roberts delivered the next address. Roberts is the president and CEO of Comcast Corporation, the cable and broadband provider that recently bid to acquire the Walt Disney Co.

"I don't view a merger with Disney as critical to our business, but it's a great opportunity," said Roberts.

The second panel discussion offered a heated exchange on the issue of outsourcing American jobs overseas. John Sweeney, president of the 13 million member AFL-CIO, and Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both offered highly charged opinions on the implications of shipping American jobs to other countries.

"The bottom line is that free trade is not working for workers," said Sweeney. "We need to have the political will to address these issues." Donohue pointed to America's prosperity in response to Sweeney.

"If all these things we're talking about are so bad, why are we doing so well?" he asked. "We've got to look at the facts or we're going to make some stupid mistakes."

Greenspan, the final speaker of the day, was awarded an honorary degree in a ceremony before his remarks.

The 2004 Finance Conference is the fourth such event BC has hosted. Previous conferences occurred in 1994, 1996, and 2000. This year's conference committee was chaired by BC Senior Vice President James McIntyre, who, along with University President Rev. William P. Leahy, SJ and Markey, offered introductory remarks at the start of the conference.

posted by prof_booty | 10:55 AM