Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium

In The World Is Curved, David Smick picks up where Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat left off, taking readers on an insider's tour through the private offices of central bankers, finance ministers, and even prime ministers.  He reveals how today's risky environment came to be and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble.  He wrestles with the two questions on everyone's mind: How bad could things really get in today's volatile economy? And what can we do about it?  Confronting the ever-increasing challenges of globalism and the economic problems that plague the United States from a downward spiraling value of the dollar to the subprime mortgage crisis, Smick argues that the solution to the problem is deregulation and encouraging entrepreneurship.

David M. Smick is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson Smick International, Inc., a financial market advisory firm based in Washington, DC.  He is also the founder, editor, and publisher of The International Economy, an acclaimed quarterly.  He has served as an adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates and has written for such publications as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.