Sebastian Mallaby, author of More Money than God and director of the Council on Foreign Relations Center for Geoeconomic Studies, will explore how hedge funds got their start and what role they’ve played during the economic ebb and flow of the last 50 years. Hedge funds have survived in spite of various financial crises, remaining remarkably stable through the stock market collapse of the early 1970s, the bond market downturn of the 1990s and the dot-com crash in 2000. As the cornerstones of the American economy—from Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers to AIG and Citigroup—have faced bankruptcy and bailouts, the hedge fund industry has survived the test of 2008 far better than its rivals. Sebastian Mallaby will offer explanations as to why the future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.