By Jeffrey Sparshott
WASHINGTON--Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sat down to
dinner Wednesday with university economists and Federal Reserve
officials as the Obama administration looks to avoid damaging the
economy by going over the so-called fiscal cliff.
Mr. Geithner, the White House's lead negotiator in the
deficit-reduction talks with Congress, and Deputy Treasury
Secretary Neal Wolin held the closed-press dinner to discuss the
state of the economy and financial markets, the Treasury said. The
meeting is the latest example of the administration's outreach as
it looks to sound out businesses, unions and others while holding
talks with congress to avert a potentially damaging mix of spending
cuts and tax increases set to begin in January.
The Treasury said the following people attended Wednesday's
dinner:
--Meg McConnell, a senior vice president at the New York Fed
--Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management
--John Campbell, an economics professor at Harvard
University
--Mark Van Der Weide, a senior associate director at the Fed
--Douglas Diamond, a professor of finance at the University of
Chicago Booth School of Business
--Jeremy Stein, a Fed governor
--Markus Brunnermeier, an economics professor at Princeton
University
--David Wilcox, a Fed economist
--David Scharfstein, a finance professor at Harvard Business
School
--Arvind Krishnamurthy, a finance professor at Northwestern
University's Kellogg School of Management
--Sam Hanson, a business administration professor at Harvard
Business School
--Adi Sunderam, a business administration professor at Harvard
Business School
Write to Jeffrey Sparshott at jeffrey.sparshott@dowjones.com