White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You

Simon Johnson, senior fellow, presented the findings of his latest book, White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You, at an event hosted by the Peterson Institute on April 9, 2012. Coauthored with James Kwak, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the current US fiscal problem and offers proposals for effective policy response.

Simon Johnson has been a senior fellow at the Institute since leaving his post as economic counsellor and director of the research department at the International Monetary Fund in 2008. He is also professor of entrepreneurship at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. His previous book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, reached number 5 on the New York Times best seller list and has sold over 100,000 copies. His coauthor James Kwak is an associate professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law and a fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance.