5725JBPHOTOII ‘Silver Rights’ entrepreneur leads panel on Financial Literacy: An Issue of American Competitiveness

 

As the ongoing market turmoil has shown, there is a great need to improve Americans' understanding of financial issues. With the economic crisis expanding its impact from the broad-based levels of the poor to the middle class – here and around the world – the work to develop and improve financial education has never been more relevant. Issues of predatory lending, fraud, and investor speculation aside, too many people bought homes or took out loans they could not afford because they didn't fully grasp mortgages, interest rates and other critical issues. This lack of know-how prevents many households from keeping a budget, saving for the future or doing other basic financial tasks that would allow them to take part in the greater economy. Meanwhile, millions of the poor remain outside the economic mainstream.

 

Improving Americans' financial literacy will go a long way toward helping not only individuals, but the ov erall U.S. economy. This panel will examine how we can improve financial literacy in this country, starting with emphasizing to the corporate world that this is a business issue rather than a charitable endeavor. This panel will explain why it is in corporate America's own best interest to educate and empower financially literate employees, customers, shareholders and communities.

 

Moderator:

  • John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Operation HOPE

Panelists:

  • Sean Cleary, Chairman, Strategic Concepts (Pty) Ltd.
  • Richard Hartnack, Vice Chairman, U.S. Bancorp
  • Charlie Rahilly, President and CEO, Premiere Radio Networks
  • David S. Simon, Executive Vice President, Citigroup Inc.
  • Beverly Daniel Tatum, President, Spelman College

 

About the Milken Institute

The Milken Institute is an independent economic think tank, Whose mission is to improve the lives and economic conditions of diverse populations in the United States and around the world by helping business and public-policy leaders identify and implement innovative ideas for creating broad-based prosperity, by putting research to work with the goal of revitalizing regions and finding new ways to generate capital for people with original ideas.

 

About Operation HOPE, Inc.

Operation HOPE is America's leading nonprofit social investment banking and financial literacy empowerment organization. With more than 400 private sector partners, 1500 nonprofit organizations and schools, and 100 government partners in 68 major U.S. cities as well as South Africa, HOPE has raised more than $400 million in its pursuit of educating, assisting and inspiring the next generation of global stakeholders. Through international initiatives and its three principal programs, Banking on Our Future (teaching school children about money), HOPE Coalition America (Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline, 1-888-388-HOPE, financial emergency preparedness and disaster relief), and Walk-In HOPE Centers (loans, bill pay, computer literacy, understanding banking principles), Operation HOPE has assumed the responsibility of piloting the Silver Rights Movement towards making free enterprise and capitalism relevant to all underserved communities. To learn more about HOPE, visit our s ite at www.operationhope.org.

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