Jeff Speakes is Director of Financial Markets at California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting. Jeff is also president of Kern Economics, a firm specializing in economics consulting and market risk advisory services. He was formerly Senior Managing Director and Chief Economist at Countrywide Financial Corporation where he oversaw interest rate hedging, economic forecasting, and quantitative model development and validation. He was responsible for the design, development and ongoing management of Countrywide’s leading-edge servicing hedge operation. He also oversaw the implementation of an option adjusted spread (OAS) methodology for valuation of Countrywide’s portfolio of mortgage servicing rights (MSR).

Previous affiliations include the economics and finance faculties at the Claremont Graduate School. He was formerly head of U.S. forecasting for the Claremont Economics Institute and Chief Financial Officer for Union Federal Savings Bank.

He holds the degrees of Ph.D. in economics and M.A. in statistics from the University of California at Berkeley, and is a CFA charter holder