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Nov. 8, 2023: UPDATE: This event has been postponed and has been rescheduled for March 14, 2024.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Financial journalist and author Diana B. Henriques will speak about why financial history matters Nov. 8 at Oregon State University’s Corvallis campus as part of the Provost’s Lecture Series.

Her lecture, “Why Financial History Matters: From Coolidge to Cryptocurrency,” is a look at the road America has traveled since the “wild west” markets of the Jazz Age to reforms of the 1930s to the newest court cases confronting Wall Street’s watchdogs.

The talk is based on her latest book, “Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal and FDR’s Fight to Regulate American Capitalism,” which was published last month.

The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. at the LaSells Stewart Center. It is free to attend but registration is required. It will also be livestreamed at live.oregonstate.edu.

Following her talk, Henriques will be joined by Tim Carroll, dean of Oregon State’s College of Business, who will moderate a question-and-answer discussion.

Henriques, who has written for the New York Times since 1989, investigates topics including investment and securities regulation, white-collar crime, corporate governance and market volatility.

Her investigation into financier Bernie Madoff, perpetrator of history’s biggest Ponzi scheme, an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors, led her to write the New York Times bestseller “The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.”

The book became the basis for the HBO film by the same name and the Netflix docuseries “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street.” Detailing Madoff's rise and fall during his decades-long $65 billion investment scam, the Netflix series jumped to a Top 10 most watched TV show upon release in January 2023.

Henriques has received multiple Pulitzer Prize nominations as well as top awards for business and finance journalism. An authority in historical precedents and investment behavior, she is regarded as a go-to expert on the effects of Sept. 11, 2001, on the financial community, the 2008 bank crisis and resulting Great Recession, and more recent headlines centered on U.S. wealth markets including cryptocurrency.

This lecture is the first in the 2023-24 Provost’s Lecture Series, which brings renowned thinkers, writers, scientists, artists and leaders to OSU to engage, challenge and inspire. Author Michael Pollan will be the next speaker on April 2, 2024. The series is presented by the Office of the Provost and the OSU Foundation.