Richard Vague

Involvement

Richard Vague is the author of The Paradox of Debt, which presents a new view of macroeconomics and will be released in July of 2023. He is also author of The Case for a Debt Jubilee, a policy exploration of debt relief, An Illustrated Business History of the United States, the story of our nation’s business progress, A Brief History of Doom, a chronicle of major world financial crises, and The Next Economic Disaster, a book with a new approach for predicting and preventing financial crises.

Richard also serves as managing partner of Gabriel Investments, an early-stage venture capital company.

He previously served Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as Chair of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, and as board trustee for Pennsylvania’s two largest pension funds, the Public School Employees’ Retirement System and the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System.

He was also co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas supply company, and co-founder and CEO of two consumer credit card banks, First USA and Juniper Bank.

Richard currently serves on the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees and the Penn Medicine Board of Trustees, and on a number of business boards. He is chair of the University of Pennsylvania Press, and chair of the Innovation Advisory Board of the Abramson Cancer Center. He also serves on the Governing Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the board of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia. He is the founder of the economic data service Tychos (tychosgroup.org), which specializes in analyzing private debt trends, and the email newsletter service Delanceyplace.com, which focuses on non-fiction literature.

By this expert

The Private Debt Crisis

Article | Sep 21, 2016

China is drowning in it. The whole world has too much of it. History suggests: This won’t end well.

The Coming China Crisis

Article | Mar 18, 2015

Rapid private-debt growth threw Japan into crisis in 1991 and did the same to the United States and Europe in 2008. China may be next.

Featuring this expert

NextGen

Private Debt Initiative

Event Conference | Hosted by Private Debt | Jun 20–21, 2019

Shaped by the 2008 financial crisis, a new generation of economists is expanding the boundaries of economic thinking on credit cycles, private debt, and financial stability.

INET Welcomes Two Governing Board Members

News Aug 7, 2018

Arminio Fraga and Richard Vague bring their economic expertise to INET

The Debt We Don't Talk About

Video | Mar 28, 2018

Mainstream economists have ignored private debt to our peril

World Economic Roundtable

Explaining a Decade of Stagnation: Where Do We Go From Here?

Event Discussion | Dec 14, 2017

The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.