Peter G. Peterson is the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also senior chairman and cofounder of The Blackstone Group, a private investment banking firm. Mr. Peterson is founding president of The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan citizens group dedicated to fiscal responsibility, chairman of the Institute for International Economics, and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In government, he served as assistant to the president for International Economic Affairs, secretary of commerce, and headed several commissions concerned with U.S. productivity and U.S.-Soviet economic relations. Mr. Peterson has had extensive experience in the private sector, including as chairman and chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers and its successor company from 1973 to 1984, and chief executive officer of Bell and Howell from 1963 to 1971. He is the author of several books, including Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It and Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America and the World.