Vernon P. "Vern" McKinley, born in East Chicago, Indiana advises governments on financial sector policy and legal issues. He is a visiting scholar at the George Washington University Law School and the co-author with the Wall Street Journal's James Freeman of Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi published by HarperCollins in 2018. He is also the author of Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts, published by the Independent Institute in 2012. He was a primary election challenger to 28-year incumbent Congressman Frank Wolf in northern Virginia's in the 2008 elections, the only one to ever challenge Wolf in a primary during his long tenure. McKinley lives with his family in Ashburn, Virginia and they have also lived in Kyiv and Yerevan. Early life McKinley was born in East Chicago, Indiana and grew up in East Side, Chicago. He attended George Washington High School and Downers Grove South High School. He went on to graduate from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1985 with degrees in Economics and Finance, graduating with honors. In 1984, Mr. McKinley worked on the re-election campaign of President Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Senate campaign of Representative Tom Corcoran in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois. That year he also worked at the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, which was chaired by Senator John G. Tower of Texas. Professional career From 1985 to 1999 Mr. McKinley worked with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Resolution Trust Corporation and the Department of the Treasury's Office of Thrift Supervision. In 1995, McKinley graduated with honors from the evening program of the George Washington University School of Law. Since 1999 he has applied his expertise as a legal advisor and regulatory policy expert to work as an advisor to governments on financial sector issues in the U.S., China, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Latvia, the Philippines, Kuwait, West Bank, Yugoslavia (now Montenegro), Kenya, the Bahamas, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Belize, Guyana, Turks and Caicos Islands, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Mozambique, Belarus, Moldova, Morocco, South Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Armenia, Kosovo, Tajikistan, Nepal and Myanmar. McKinley is the co-author with James Freeman of Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi which traces the instability at