Henry Kaufman

Henry Kaufman (born October 20, 1927) is president of Henry Kaufman & Company, Inc., a firm established in April 1988, specializing in economic and financial consulting, and is known by the nickname "Dr. Doom." Early life Kaufman was born on October 20, 1927, in Gedern, Germany. He was the son of a kosher butcher in a small village in Germany. In 1937, the then-9-year-old Kaufman fled Wenings, Germany and the Nazis with his family. He attended high school in Washington Heights, where Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan preceded him by a year or two. In 1948, he received a B.A. in economics from New York University, followed by an M.S. in finance from Columbia University in 1949, and a Ph.D. in banking and finance from New York University Graduate School of Business Administration in 1958. Career Kaufman worked in commercial banking and served as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. After the Federal Reserve, he spent 26 years with Salomon Brothers, where he was managing director, member of the executive committee, and in charge of the firm's four research departments. He was also a vice chairman of the parent company, Salomon Inc. He also served as a director of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and as chairman of the Lehman board's finance and risk committee. Nickname In the 1970s, Kaufman earned the sobriquet "Dr. Doom" when he was the chief economist at Salomon Brothers due to his frequent criticisms of government policies. On the morning of August 17, 1982, he accurately predicted the market had bottomed out which led to a huge rally that day in both stocks and bonds that was to be the beginning of the longest bull market in history.