“It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.”
Professor John Harvey uses this quote from John Maynard Keynes in a must read post. It captures the essence of Nobel prize... Read More
Restoring Trust
In 2008, trust in the financial markets, the reporting of news and our political system was shattered. There is only one proven... Read More
Serious Economics and the Nobel Prize
Nobel prize winning Economist Paul Krugman once again trotted out his “serious economics” meme. This time in reference to an American Economics... Read More
When Hindsight into the Great Financial Crisis is 20/20
///
Wow! The architects of the policy response to the Great Financial Crisis cannot stop themselves from showing how unfit they were for... Read More
Economics Profession: Continually Admired, Chronically Mistaken
I would like to expand on Gene Epstein’s article on Joseph Stiglitz and show how it really applies to much of the... Read More
How and Why did Economics Fail, Anyway?
As I was reading Noah Smith’s excellent review of Richard Bookstaber’s The End of Theory, I realized every shortfall he finds with the... Read More
Getting the Financial Crisis Narrative Right
///
By now, everyone has their favorite narrative to explain the financial crisis and the effectiveness of the policy response to it. It... Read More
Media Proves Its Worth to Wall Street’s Opacity Protection Team
The tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers highlighted why the media is a valuable member of Wall Street’s Opacity Protection... Read More
Bernanke Discovers the Information Matrix
In his ongoing analysis of the earthquake that struck the global financial system’s opacity fault line in 2008, Ben Bernanke discovered the... Read More
Can We Regulate Systemic Risk?
In 2010, Michael Spence asked the question can we regulated systemic risk. No, but we can prevent systemic risks from reaching a... Read More
What Kind of Financial System Do We Want?
///
As journalists and columnists continue to churn out articles on the tenth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, it is worth pointing out... Read More
The Battle for Financial Stability
///
You cannot win the battle for financial stability until you know what causes financial instability (aka financial crises). But not knowing hasn’t... Read More
Debunking the Committee to Save the Banks’ Narrative
Ten years ago the Committee to Save the Banks (Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner) began offering up a false, self-serving narrative to justify... Read More
Lehman Collapse Highlights Role of Opacity in Bank Runs
Opacity is a necessary condition for a bank run. In the case of Lehman Brothers, not only was the investment bank opaque,... Read More
Capitalism’s Near-Death Experience Is Still a Golden Opportunity
The tenth anniversary of the Committee to Save the Banks’ decision to put Wall Street ahead of Main Street has unleashed a... Read More