Crisis Academy

• Author: Chris Wellisz

Crisis Academy Veterans of the global financial crisis pass their wisdom on to the next generation

Chris Wellisz

It happened again and again in a career punctuated by upheavals: the peso crisis of 1994, the Asian crisis of 1997, and finally, the big one—the global financial crisis of 2008.

Each time he started a new government job, Timothy Geithner hoped to find a letter from his predecessor, explaining what to do and whom to call if things fell apart. The desk drawer was always empty.

"Financial crises are probably the most devastating economic events that can happen to a country," says Geithner, who fought the last conflagration as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and later US Treasury secretary. "I’d like our successors to have a better base of knowledge."

So every summer, Geithner takes time off from his job as president of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm, to help teach a two-week crisis management workshop for regulators from around the world. It’s one part of the Yale Program on Financial...