Finance and Philosophy

Alex J. Pollock is a distinguished senior fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. Before joining R Street, he was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute from 2004 to 2015, and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. Mr. Pollock focuses on financial policy issues, including financial cycles, housing finance, banking systems, central banking, government-sponsored enterprises, uncertainty and risk, retirement finance, corporate governance, and financial crises with their ensuing political responses. He is the author of Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity, as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony. Mr. Pollock is a director of CME Group; Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation; and the Great Books Foundation, where he was Chairman of the Board 2006-2014; and is a past-president of the International Union for Housing Finance. He is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.