The Great Financial Crisis and the Glass-Steagall Myth
One of the most pernicious myths to emerge from the Great Financial Crisis is the myth had the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial... Read More
Does Deposit Insurance Promote Excessive Risk-Taking?
The EU is contemplating adopting a European-wide deposit insurance program. The deposit insurance program opponents acknowledge it ends bank runs, but argue... Read More
Can Society Make Finance Servant, Not Master of the Economy?
Since the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis erupted in September 2008, the response by policymakers has been to save the... Read More
Contagion: A Product of Opacity on Wall Street
Bankers are great story tellers. Perhaps their greatest self-serving story is the one they tell about contagion. By definition, contagion occurs when... Read More
Transparency: Missing from Econ 101 and Finance 101
Since the beginning of the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis, people like the Pope have championed restoring transparency across the... Read More
“Transparency: a Necessary, but Not Sufficient Condition…”
Late last week, the Pope cited the need for ethical behavior in finance. To achieve this, he called for restoring transparency across... Read More
The Pope, the Information Matrix and Transparency
In a 10,000 word papal encyclical on the global financial system, the Pope looks at who is doing God’s work. He sides with... Read More
Who Do Auditors Serve: Shareholders or Company Executives?
The collapse of Carillion revealed the extent to which the entire system of checks and balances on a public company failed yet... Read More
Saving the Volcker Rule
To no one’s surprise, Wall Street is about to finish off the Volcker Rule as a constraint on its business practices. The... Read More
Yale Professor: Basically You Don’t Understand the Crisis
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Yale professor Gary Gorton is the gift that keeps on giving. His latest gift was to inform a Wall Street journal reporter... Read More
Trivializing Their Inability to Predict a Financial Crisis
Clearly the Queen of England hit a nerve when she asked in 2008 why the economics profession had not seen the crisis... Read More
How Much Influence Should Central Banks Have in a Democracy?
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Paul Tucker asks the question “how much influence should central banks have in a democracy”. My answer is central banks should have... Read More
Paul Krugman and the Myth Economists Open to New Ideas
Despite their protests to the contrary, Economists and therefore Economics is not open to new ideas. Here is a classic example: @paulkrugman God... Read More
Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Bank Regulatory Titanic
In the aftermath of the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis, the roles and responsibilities of the bank regulators were dramatically... Read More
How to Spot Fraudulent Economic Arguments
Macro Economist Simon Wren-Lewis provided five signs to identify fraudulent economic arguments. It is amazing what happens when you apply these five... Read More