In early January Harald B. Malmgren joined Middleburg's Bluemont Capital Advisors as their chief Global Economic Strategist. Ambassador Malmgren, is currently Chairman and CEO of Malmgren Global LLC, a consultancy specializing in global business-planning, trade, and financial advisory services.

"Both the economic difficulties we face and the opportunities those difficulties sometimes present are driven by global events," says Bluemont co-founder Mark Stys. "Harald will bring to Bluemont the global insight and perspectives all too often reserved for heads of state and Fortune 50 CEOs."

Malmgren's advice has been in high demand since the early 1960's.

Born in midst of the great depression, he was the first member of his immediate family to go to college, to Yale, on a full scholarship.

By 1961 he had taken his D.Phil at Oxford, where he did ground-breaking work on the structure and behavior of business organizations. His first job: a full professorship at Cornell. Since then he's taught economics at Georgetown, George Washington and Johns Hopkins, and lectured around the world.

From Cornell, Malmgren was recruited to serve in the Kennedy administration. After Kennedy's assassination, he continued to serve under Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford.

As Deputy U. S. Trade Representative in the early 1970's, Ambassador Malmgren helped draft the legislation that still gives the President of the United States "fast-track" negotiating authority for certain key international trade agreements. He has provided advice and counsel for administrations of both parties, and senior executives in the private sector ever since.

Highly honored and constantly in demand, he's served as a member of the advisory board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the G-7 Council, the Council on Foreign Relations Committee on the Future of the World Trading System, and as Chairman of the Cordell Hull Institute's Board of Directors.

"The US financial market is now just one part of a global marketplace. The key to successful capital management in this century is research and analysis," he says, "with strong emphasis on the latter." In order to optimize one's portfolio, whether you're a head of state or of a high-net-worth household, you must understand the global economy."

A firm believer in the power of technology and modern quantitative analysis, Malmgren smiles when he talks about the "human" side of economics.

"There is a critical element to pattern recognition that comes only with experience," he says. "Good data is critical," he notes, "but without a good sense of people, and institutions, and the global ebb and flow of events and behavior, past experience is increasingly inadequate to successful anticipation of events to come. Just look at the continuing shocks to financial markets in the last two or three years, not only here at home but throughout Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world."

Eyeing a Corgi-chewed pawn on a chessboard, Malmgren mused that people still give IBM's Big Blue chess computer a run for its money. Asked if he played, he smiles again. "Some," he said modestly. His uncle, it seems, was a grand master.

Asked about the "end of the American Century" he notes that, "Globally, the United States remains the refuge of choice for those holding assets even vaguely threatened . . .When disappointments come in Europe, China, or the emerging markets, capital will fly to the US for safe parking."

Malmgren's ancestors were Swedes, perhaps accounting, in part, for his ongoing love for sailing and the sea. He and his wife, twin daughters and son now live on a working farm in Northern Fauquier. "The Blue Ridge and horse country," he says, "worked their magic" on his family.