MorganEnergy

I was up bright and early this morning for a breakfast meeting looking at plans for next year’s IAEE conference in San Francisco, which looks to be coming along nicely. More on that later.

The conference information sheet I got when I signed up said that the dress code was “business casual” and that the wearing of suits was strongly discouraged. This instruction has been almost universally ignored, which may say something about the attendees.

The opening address was by Dennis Lockhart, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, who stepped in at the last minute when his colleague from Dallas, Richard Fisher, fell ill. Most of his speech focused on doom and gloom in the economy, and hope for recovery, which was pretty much as expected. I happened to end up in an elevator with him afterward and we chatted briefly about risk and human nature. He noted that sometimes tail risks do play out, to which I could only add that perhaps next time I give a lecture on VaR and talk about the need for stress testing maybe some of the audience will listen.