Robert David "Bob" Hormats[1] (born April 13, 1943, in Baltimore, Maryland)[2] is Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates.[3] Immediately prior he served as Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment (at the time, entitled Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs) from 2009 to 2013. Hormats was formerly Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs (International), which he joined in 1982. He served as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary, from 1977 to 1979, and Assistant Secretary of State, from 1981 to 1982, at the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (formerly Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs). He was Ambassador and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981. He served as a senior staff member for International Economic Affairs on the United States National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, where he was senior economic adviser to Henry Kissinger, General Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. He helped to manage the Nixon administration's opening of diplomatic relations with China's communist government. He was a recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 1982 and the Arthur S. Flemming Award in 1974.[4][5]
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Hormats has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and served on the Board of Visitors of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Dean’s Council of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.[4]
Hormats is also a member of the Atlantic Council' s[6] Board of Directors.
Hormats is Jewish. On November 16, 2009, Hormats received the Executive Leadership Award from the Aish Center.[14] Hormats was married in 2015 to Catherine Azmoodeh.[15]
Hormats has been a supporter of legislation that would increase investments in infrastructure in America through a national bank that would develop public-private partnerships for large transportation projects. "It's a high national priority," Hormats told Congressional Quarterly in March 2008. "Public-private cooperation is a really critical part. The needs are urgent."[16] He and others argue that U.S. transportation infrastructure has lagged behind foreign competitors. Unless the country picks up the pace, it will not be able to support its growing trade and population.[17]
He is an advocate of enhancing intelligence capabilities, modernizing military equipment and spending more money on preparing first-responders like firemen and emergency medical technicians for crises.[18] He worries that future presidential administrations will spend less than they should on homeland security because to do so will require raising taxes or cutting non-defense programs. He also worries that the unpopularity of the Iraq war will cause the country to reduce its military presence overseas.[19]
Hormats has argued that China and America are financially intertwined. It would not be in China’s financial interest, he argued, to destabilize the dollar by recalling the country’s vast loans to the U.S. Doing so would result in a shrunken export market for China. Hormats calls this MAD—mutually assured depression. In 2004, the government fined Goldman Sachs $2 million for illegally and selectively promoting the stock of four Asian companies that were about to go public. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Hormats and others "made illegal offerings of securities to select customers in 1999 and 2000 and made inappropriate statements to the press." Hormats told four media outlets that PetroChina, a Chinese-based oil producer, was not invested in Darfur. The disclosure was illegal under SEC rules, because the company had not yet gone public, and Hormats would not have been allowed to comment until it had done so.[20][21]
- Bernard Schwartz Forum on Economic Policy, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4052021436850786520&ei=foITS72KBMeclAe469C2Dg&q=bob+hormats&hl=en&client=firefox-a, 2007
- The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars (Audio), Council of Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/publication/13774/price_of_liberty.doc, May 16, 2007
- A Conversation with Robert Hormats, Charlie Rose Show, http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8588, July 10, 2007
- Speech at The Common Good, http://www.thecommongood.net/?p=264, April 10, 2008
- 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival, http://www.plumtv.com/videos/aspen-bob-hormats-goldman-sachs/index.doc, July 9, 2008
- Financial Challenges Facing the Next President, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) Associates Meeting, http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/news/SIEPRHormats10708full.wmv, October 6, 2008
- Q&A at bigthink.com http://bigthink.com/roberthormats, 2008
- Inside Look – Clinton's Trip to Asia – Bloomberg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl1JxpI7t74, February 14, 2009
- Nomination hearing, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjbyfJqiZuA, September 10, 2009 (excerpt)
- Interview at event co-hosted by AmCham China and the US-China Business Council (USCBC), http://www.amchamchina.org/article/5280, Beijing, November 20, 2009
Wolfe, Murray, ed. (1961). The 1961 Green Bag.
Itkowitz, Colby, “Pelosi Wants House to Consider Infrastructure Bank Bill,” Congressional Quarterly, March 12, 2008
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