Alex Pollock
Alex Pollock is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, where he provides thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. Pollock has been the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury; a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC; a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; and President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. Pollock focuses on financial policy issues, including financial cycles, housing finance, banking, central banking, uncertainty and risk, retirement finance, corporate governance, and financial crises. His decades of banking experience include being a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He was also a long-serving Director of the CME Group and of Ascendium Education Group.
Alex Pollock Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
-
Senior Fellow
-
Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research
-
Distinguished Senior Fellow
-
Director
-
Resident Fellow
-
Visiting Scholar
RESEARCH & EXPERTISE
Pollock's work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, and risk and uncertainty.
He also works on central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
His interests include political finance, policy, history, ideas, management, music, and the pursuit of clarity.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
He re-joined R Street Institute in 2021, after serving as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the United States Department of the Treasury.
He was president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, where he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997.
He is a Director and past-Chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past President of the International Union for Housing Finance.
At the American Enterprise Institute, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need to know what they are committing themselves to.
During his tenure on the CME Group, he has served as Chairman of the Compensation Committee and of the Nominating Committee as well as a member of the Executive, Finance, Governance, Clearing House Oversight and Market Regulation Oversight Committees.
PUBLICATIONS
Finance and Philosophy: Why We’re Always Surprised (2018)
Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011)
EDUCATION
B.A., Philosophy, Williams College
M.A., Philosophy, The University of Chicago