Noted: Mike Knetter, dean of the UW-Madison School of Business and a UW-Eau Claire graduate, was the event’s keynote speaker. He also has worked as senior staff economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors for former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Although Knetter acknowledged the damaging recession and an economy that’s been particularly hard-hit in the past five months, he said the previous 15 to 20 years were a period of favorable unemployment rates, solid gross domestic product growth, increased values for the Standard and Poor’s 500 and improvements in labor productivity.