4 January, 2010
CaPRI Senior Fellow, Avinash Persaud Receives Silver Medal as Public Intellectual on the Financial Crisis in 2009.
Professor Avinash Persaud, Senior Fellow at the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI), and head of the institute’s Barbados office was recently named among the world’s top three most important contributors to financial reform.
Persaud, who was previously the Economic Expert Member of the UK Governments Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information, received Prospect Magazine’s 2009 Silver Medal as public intellectual on the financial crisis.
According to the 14-year-old magazine which is the best selling general interest magazine in Britain, Persaud was chosen by a panel of experts who shortlisted 25 top intellectuals whose ideas either influenced policies or who contributed significantly to the public discourse on the financial crisis in 2009.
As Prospect saw it, Persaud was among the top three who led an informed debate geared at making finance safer. The magazine, also hailed Persaud for identifying the “dangerous interaction between firms “herding” and new risk management techniques” as early as nine years ago.
Prospect also lauds Persaud, a financial analyst who advises governments worldwide and who chairs the financial advisory firm – Intelligence Capital Limited, for being at the forefront of fixing the problem of ‘herding’ through his recommendation of new ‘macro prudential’ regulations.
Of note, the Barbadian-born Persaud, who is also a Member of the UN Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform, and who won the Jacques de Larosiere Award in Global Finance in 2000, outranked an Ivy League professor, a Nobel laureate, a minister of economic affairs, economists, a political advisor, and others, to be named the second best intellectual thinker on the financial crisis in 2009. And amidst all this, Persaud’s focus remains the development of the Caribbean.
“I hope we may be able to use these accomplishments and those of our colleagues to encourage more of our impressive Diaspora to return to at least engage with us more,” said Persaud of his latest accomplishment. While noting that the silver medal which was awarded in mid-December was a “nice Christmas gift”, Persaud made the point that in 2010 he will be turning his efforts to more local (regional) matters. And for this, Dr. John Rapley, his CaPRI colleague is certainly appreciative.
“It is a tremendous honour, and reflects extremely well on CaPRI that he is one of our own,” CaPRI president, Dr. John Rapley said.
Bronze went to Adair Turner, chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, who according to Prospect Magazine “bravely questioned the social usefulness of some financial activity, and called for regulators to force banks to hold more capital against risky trades, cutting their profitability”. And the gold went to Simon Johnson, an economist at the Peterson Institute in Washington, DC, and a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief economist, whose essay, “The Quiet Coup,” which appeared in the Atlantic last May is touted by Prospect as being “one of the great polemical essays of the crisis”.
CaPRI congratulates Professor Persaud on his latest achievement, and joins with him in inviting more of our impressive Diaspora to return and engage in the change toward more public involvement in policy decisions and implementation.
Read the full Prospect Magazine article at http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/issue/166