John Rutledge was one of the principal architects of the Ronald Reagan economic plan in 1980-81 and was an advisor to the George W. Bush White House on tax policy in the United States. Rutledge is the Chairman of Rutledge Capital, a private equity investment firm that has invested more than $150 million in middle market manufacturing, distribution, and service companies. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of venture capital firms, hedge funds, and real estate investment firms. Rutledge is a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chief Advisor for Finance and Investment to the Governor of the Haidian District in Beijing. He is a board member of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Heartland Institute, and a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. 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 real money in both mutual funds and private equity. Rutledge first introduced his Asset Market Shift framework for analyzing capital markets in The Wall Street Journal in the 1980s. Initially controversial, the framework, in which interest rates and other asset prices are determined by private arbitrage behavior, applies a rigorous foundation from thermodynamics to portfolio management. Rutledge uses the framework to track asset market shifts and develop strategies that attract capital and build wealth, bridging the gap between macroeconomic analysis and portfolio management. Over the past twenty years he has used this framework on economic analysis, asset allocation, portfolio selection, business strategy, restructuring, acquisitions, and divestitures. Rutledge advises institutional and individual investors how to structure portfolios to take advantage of opportunities created by a temporary divergence of prices from Intrinsic Value. His advisory and speaking clients include governments, corporations, and financial institutions around the world. Rutledge appears weekly on Fox News' Saturday morning business shows Forbes on Fox. He also appears on CNBC's Kudlow & Company. He has been a frequent guest on PBS' Wall $treet Week with Fortune, and CNN's In the Money. Rutledge wrote the Business Strategy column for Forbes for more than a decade and writes for Forbes.com and TheStreet.com. He also authors the Rutledge Blog on economic and technology issues. Rutledge is the author of the 2007 US Chamber of Commerce study on the economic impact of the proposed carried interest tax entitled "Analysis of the Impact of Increasing Carried Interest Tax Rates on the US Economy" and one of the principal authors of the 2005 US Chamber of Commerce study on telecom reform entitled “Sending the Right Signals: Promoting Competition through Telecommunications Reform”. He has written three books: Rust to Riches: The Coming of the Second Industrial Revolution with co-author Deborah Allen Hewitt, and A Monetarist Model of Inflationary Expectations, and Lessons from a Road Warrior; and has written hundreds of articles for the Wall Street Journal, the American Spectator, China Weekly, Barron's, Forbes, Fortune, the National Review, the Financial Times, US News & World Report, Business Week, and other publications. He testifies frequently before Congressional Committees and has advised government officials in the US, UK, Ireland, China, and Kuwait. Rutledge began his career as a professor of monetary economics, international finance, and econometrics at Tulane University and Claremont McKenna College. In 1978, Rutledge founded the Claremont Economics Institute, an economic advisory business in Claremont, California. He holds a BA from Lake Forest College and a PhD from the University of Virginia.
