DUBAI: Wharton financial professor and author of “The Stocks for the Long Run,” Professor Jeremy Siegel predicts the global economy will turn around by the second half of 2009. The most significant cause of the downturn, according to Siegel, is that financial firms bought, held and insured large quantities of risky, mortgage-related assets on borrowed money.
Due to deliver a keynote address at the first Wharton Global Alumni Forum to be held March 11-12 in Dubai, Siegel is an expert on macroeconomics, financial markets, long-run asset returns and demographics.
The Wharton Global Alumni Forum in Dubai organized by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the world’s first collegiate business school, is expected to attract over 300 Wharton graduates from all over the world. Speakers include some of the prominent Wharton alumni from the region such as Mohammed Alshaya, executive chairman of M.H. Alshaya Co, and chairman of the organizing committee for Wharton Global Alumni Forum; Sami Baroum, MD, Savola Group; Aladdin Saba, chairman, Beltone Financial; Tarek Sultan, chairman and MD, Agility Logistics; and Ghassan Barrage, senior executive advisor, Booz & Company.
According to Siegel, the US economy is not nearly as battered as it was during the early 1980s, when unemployment, inflation, and interest rates were all considerably higher than they are today. Stocks, as evaluated by their price-to-earnings ratios, are undervalued to the point where they could draw enough investors to spark a recovery before the end of 2009.
