Special Briefing: The Road Ahead for the Economy, States, and Localities as Donald Trump and the GOP Take Charge

Major policy shifts in immigration, taxes, trade, energy, health care, and pandemic-era programs passed under the Biden Administration look increasingly likely with Donald Trump capturing the White House and his fellow Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress for the first time in two years. Our panel of experts will share their views on what this sea change may mean for the economy and Federal Reserve, as well as the impact on states, localities, and the $4 trillion municipal bond market, including the possible elimination of the federal tax exemption on most muni bond interest.

Our panel of experts will include Torsten Slok, Partner and Chief Economist, Apollo Global Management; Annie Linskey, Wall Street Journal White House Reporter; Former US Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-GA), and Eric Kazatsky, Head of Municipal Strategy, Bloomberg LP.

Moderated by William Glasgall, Volcker Alliance senior director, public finance and Penn IUR fellow, and Susan Wachter, co-director of Penn IUR, this briefing is the fifty-sixth in a series of sixty-minute online conversations featuring experts from the national research networks of the Volcker Alliance and Penn IUR, along with other leading academics, economists, and federal, state, and local leaders. 

Special Briefings are made possible by the Volcker Alliance and members of the Penn IUR Advisory Board.

Recordings of the entire Special Briefings series are available on the Volcker Alliance website: SPECIAL BRIEFING SERIES ARCHIVE.

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Torsten Slok is chief economist at Apollo Global Management’s executive office in New York. Prior to joining the firm in August 2020, he worked for 15 years on the sell-side, where his team was top-ranked by Institutional Investor in fixed income and equities for ten years, including No. 1 in 2019. Previously he worked at the OECD in Paris, in the Money and Finance Division and the Structural Policy Analysis Division. Before joining the OECD he worked for four years at the IMF in the division responsible for writing the World Economic Outlook and the division responsible for China, Hong Kong, and Mongolia.

Torsten studied at University of Copenhagen and Princeton University. He frequently appears in the media (CNBC, Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT, FT), and has published numerous journal articles and reviews on economics and policy analysis, including in the Journal of International Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, and The Econometric Journal. 

Annie Linskey is a Wall Street Journal White House reporter. Previously, she was a national reporter covering the White House for the Washington Post and covered Democrats in the 2020 presidential campaign as a national political reporter for the newspaper. Linskey was also the lead reporter on Democrats for the Boston Globe Washington bureau during the 2016 campaign. She reported on the Obama White House for Bloomberg News and BusinessWeek. Linskey's first nine years in journalism were spent at the Baltimore Sun, where she covered crime, City Hall and the Maryland State House. 

Carolyn Bourdeaux has built a career at the intersection of policy, politics, and governance. She served as a Democratic Member of Congress from Georgia’s 7th from 2021-2022 after becoming the only Democrat in the country to flip a Congressional seat in 2020. She ran the closest race in the country in the same district in 2018. During her time in Congress, she focused on health care, small business and infrastructure and worked extensively with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus to help pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, one of the most significant investments in infrastructure in US history.

Prior to entering politics, Dr. Bourdeaux built a career as a noted state and local public finance expert and professor of public policy at Georgia State University. During her time there, she often served as a consultant to state and local governments and to elected officials in both parties. Among her many accomplishments, she served as Director of Georgia’s Senate Budget and Evaluation Office during the Great Recession, where she received special recognition by the Senate for her service (S.Res. 1598). She was elected by her peers to the National Academy for Public Administration, served as Chair of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, founded the Center for State and Local Finance at Georgia State and wrote an award-winning dissertation on the use of special purpose governments to finance critical community infrastructure. 

Eric Kazatsky is the Head of Municipal Strategy for Bloomberg Intelligence. He is responsible for creating municipal-focused research for the general market as well as Bloomberg Terminal clients. He has 23 years successful experience involving municipal bonds and has spent his career in various aspects of the industry including sell side, buy side and a large municipal issuer. Prior to Bloomberg, Eric served as an institutional desk strategist and municipal portfolio manager. Eric has a B.A. in finance and economics from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.B.A. in finance from St. Joseph’s University, and an M.S. in investment management from Temple University.