Bert Ely is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and a principal of Ely & Company Inc., where he monitors conditions in the banking and thrift industries, monetary policy, the payments system, and the growing federalization of credit risk.
Ely is an expert on monetary policy, the regulation of banking and financial services, and deposit insurance. Previously he served as chief financial officer of a pubic company, a management consultant with Touche, Ross & Co., and as an auditor with Ernst & Ernst.
Ely has published articles and papers on a broad range of financial services topics and is frequently cited in the popular press, including in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, American Banker, and Bloomberg Businessweek. Ely has given expert testimony before Congress as well as in litigation proceedings on a number of banking issues, including regulatory negligence and deposit insurance reform. In the 1990s, he developed, and helped draft legislation to enact, the cross‐guarantee concept for privatizing banking regulation and deposit insurance.
Ely received his MBA from the Harvard Business School and his BBA in economics and accounting from Case Western Reserve University.