Peter Peterson

Peter Peterson, whose career straddles both business and politics, is senior chairman and co-founder of US investment giant The Blackstone Group. In politics his most prominent position was as US Secretary of Commerce in 1972, in the Nixon administration. He is chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, founding chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2000 to 2004. He is also the author of several definitive books, including Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting our Future.