Media Alert: Jan. 18, 2012 - UMD Business Experts Available to Comment on Insourcing Jobs; Federal Reserve Call for Action on Housing

Media Alert: Jan. 18, 2012
Attention: Financial and Economic Reporters/Editors

UMD Business Experts Available to Comment on Insourcing Jobs; Federal Reserve Call for Action on Housing

College Park, MD - Finance and management faculty experts at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business weigh in on developments from recent proposals by the Federal Reserve and Obama Administration to boost the national economy. The Smith School has an in-house facility for live or taped interviews via fiber-optic line for television or multimedia content.

Dissecting the Federal Reserve's Call to Congress to Fix Housing

Clifford Rossi, executive-in-residence and Tyser Teaching Fellow
crossi@rhsmith.umd.edu, 301-908-2536

Finance professor Cliff Rossi, with 25-plus years in the banking and regulatory industries, including senior risk management positions at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and with live-interview experience on CNN, C-SPAN and others, addressed the Federal Reserve's recent call for Congressional action to improve the struggling housing market Jan. 17 on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

"The Fed white paper provides a number of tantalizing ideas regarding ways to reinvigorate the moribund housing market, and while this renewed interest in housing is welcome, any significant short-term relief to markets is unlikely to occur," he says in his recent blog, "Dissecting the Federal Reserve's White Paper".

Moreover, Rossi can elaborate on:

• What such actions are possible and why they may or may not work
• The election year political implications and how they weigh against the potential reward for home owners.
• A likely outcome

Insourcing American Jobs

Curt Grimm, dean's professor of supply chain and strategy
cgrimm@rhsmith.umd.edu, 301-405-2235

Anil K. Gupta, Michael A. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship
agupta@rhsmith.umd.edu, 301-537-6738

The Obama Administration's recent "Insourcing American Jobs” forum brought together business leaders who have shifted employment back to the United States. The president had promoted the event as a means to discuss ways business leaders can return more jobs to the country.

Grimm, who teaches a "Global Economic Environment," can discuss factors which could lead companies to move jobs back to the United States. “With about 13 million people unemployed, companies have a deep labor pool they can tap,” Grimm recently told a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires. “And with high fuel prices and increasing wages in China and India, the cost advantages for outsourcing are thinning.”

Gupta does joint research and writing (e.g. a Business Week column and Wall Street Journal op-eds) with Smith School MBA alumna Haiyan Wang in the domain of globalization and can address the related topic “made in the USA vs. made in China.” Wang also has added industry insight, having worked as a senior executive for a manufacturer with factories in China, Vietnam and a new factory in Maryland.