Dr. John Rutledge

Dr. Rutledge is Chief Investment Strategist and a member of the Investment Committee at Safanad, a global principal investment firm in New York, London, and Dubai. He is Economics Contributor for CNBC, and Senior Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University where he teaches and chairs dissertations in the economics and finance PhD program. He sits on a number of boards of directors for public and private companies.

Dr. Rutledge was one of the architects of the Reagan Economic plan and has advised the Bush administration on both tax policy and the reconstruction of Iraq. Dr. Rutledge is Honorary Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is Chairman of Tara’s Kids, a non-profit organization that builds libraries for schools in remote villages in China and Tibet.

Dr. Rutledge has an active lecture practice, giving talks on global economics, capital flows, financial markets, investment strategies, the impact of technology on the economy, and strategies for owning and growing the value of a business. After tours of duty in both academics and government policy, he has started, run, chaired, owned and harvested dozens of companies, and has managed money in marketable securities, private equity, and real estate.

Dr. Rutledge first published his Asset Market Shift framework for analyzing capital markets in the Wall Street Journal in the 1980s. The framework, in which interest rates and other asset prices are determined by private arbitrage behavior between financial and tangible assets, applies theoretical work drawn from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to portfolio management. Dr. Rutledge uses the framework to track asset market shifts and develop strategies that protect and grow wealth, bridging the gap between macroeconomic analysis and portfolio management. Over the past forty years, he has used this framework on economic analysis, asset allocation, portfolio selection, business strategy, restructuring, acquisitions and divestitures. His many advisory and speaking clients have included governments, corporations, and financial institutions around the world.

When not traveling the globe, Dr. Rutledge appears weekly on CNBC shows including Squawk Box, Squawk on the Street, Fast Money, Closing Bell, and CNBC Asia. Dr. Rutledge wrote the Business Strategy column for Forbes for more than a decade and writes for Forbes.com. He also authors the Rutledge Blog on economic and investment issues at www.drjohnrutledge.com. Dr. Rutledge is the author of the 2007 U.S. Chamber of Commerce study on the economic impact of the proposed carried interest tax and one of the principal authors of the 2005 U.S. Chamber of Commerce study on telecom reform. He has also written three books—Rust to Riches, A Monetarist Model of Inflationary Expectations, and Lessons from a Road Warrior—and hundreds of articles for the Wall Street Journal, the American Spectator, China Daily, Barron’s, Forbes, Fortune, the National Review, the Financial Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other publications. He testifies frequently before Congressional Committees and has advised government officials in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and North Korea.

Dr. Rutledge began his career as a professor of monetary economics, international finance and econometrics at Tulane University and Claremont McKenna College. In 1978, Dr. Rutledge founded the Claremont Economics Institute, an economic advisory business in Claremont, California. In 1990, he founded Rutledge Capital, a middle market private equity firm in Greenwich, CT. He holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a PhD from the University of Virginia, and a number of Honorary degrees from universities in the U.S. and China. He divides his time between New York, Newport Beach, Dubai, and Beijing.

Email: John Rutledge jrutledge@safanad.com