Littman

DAVID L. LITTMANN

interviewed in
January 1991

David L. Littmann received his M.A. degree in economics from the University of Michigan in 1967. He also holds an M.S. degree from M.I.T., a B.A. degree from Antioch College, and completed a year of study at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He joined Manufacturers National Bank of Detroit in 1970 and is First Vice President and Senior Economist in charge of the Economics Department. He is author of the Bank's monthly business brochure entitled Business Briefs and has developed a variety of business activity indexes for the regional economy along with a tourism index for the State of Michigan. He compiles and reports monthly on the results of the Southeast Michigan survey of the Purchasing Management Association of Detroit. In 1989, the prestigious Blue Chip Economic and Financial Forecast services selected for inclusion on their outlook panels, the GNP and interest rate forecasts of Manufacturers Bank's Economics Department.

Mr. Littmann is author of several research articles on the causes of inflation, published in Business Economics, the professional journal of the National Association of Business Economists. He writes a monthly business column appearing in The Detroiter, published by the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce. He is a frequent book reviewer and OP-ED writer for the Detroit News and is a columnist and a regular commentator in other national publications, local and national radio and TV media as well.

He is President of Heartland Michigan, a nonpartisan public policy research center located in Detroit. He frequently consults with Michigan's legislators, providing testimony on economic and financial issues of concern to policymakers. From 1986 to 1989, he served on the Economic Advisory Committee of the American Bankers Association in Washington and the external advisory committee of the Michigan Travel, Tourism and Recreation Resource Center in Lansing. He is also the past president of the Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Business Economists and member of the Detroit Area Economic Forum, and the Economic Club of Detroit. He has served as a Bank representative to the Task Force on City of Detroit Finances in 1975 and the Michigan Efficiency Task Force in 1976. Mr. Littmann served as a director of Nixdorff-Krein Industries located in St. Louis, Missouri, between 1982 and 1985 and was elected to the Bloomfield Hills School Board in 1982 were he served as trustee, treasurer, and then vice-president until 1986. He resides in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan with his wife and three children.