Debt and Information Sensitivity
When the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis hit, PhD Economists went into overdrive inventing new theories to explain what happened.... Read More
The Financial Crisis and the End of Trusting Elites
The response in 2008 to the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis undermined trust not just in our technocratic elites, but... Read More
The Veil of Opacity Is Needed for Bank Scandals to Occur
Why is anyone surprised when bankers engage in misbehavior behind the veil of opacity? They shouldn’t be. In the 1930s, the Pecora... Read More
Deutsche Bank and a “New Era of Transparency”
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Is Deutsche Bank finally going to usher in the new era of transparency it promised investors over a year ago? Highly unlikely.... Read More
Regulation and Its Enforcement is NEVER a Good Substitute for Transparency
In the 1930s, policymakers had to make a choice. They could redesign the financial system so it was dependent on transparency or... Read More
Anna Schwartz: Saving Banks Won’t End Well
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In an October 2008 Wall Street Journal interview, Economist Anna Schwartz unloaded on the Committee to Save the Banks’ response to the... Read More
SEC Commissioner Stein Makes the Case for the Transparency Label Initiative
We live in the Information Age with easy access to experts. Unfortunately, SEC mandated financial disclosure requirements live in the pre-Information Age.... Read More
The Premature Demise of the Office of Financial Research
I was very surprised by how dramatically the Trump Administration has scaled backed the Office of Financial Research. Why? Doing so reduces... Read More
Disclosure is Today’s Biggest Challenge
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Since the process the SEC uses to set disclosure requirements was captured by Wall Street in the 1990s, issuers have not been... Read More
Volcker: A Hell of a Mess in Every Direction
In a recent interview, former Fed Chair Paul Volcker offered up his view we are in a “hell of a mess” a... Read More
Exaggerating What Bank Supervision Can Do Creates Systemic Risk
Former NY Fed bank examiner Carmen Segarra has once again shined a bright light on the gap between the narrative and reality... Read More
Bank Troubles: Liquidity or Solvency
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As the Committee to Save the Banks continues its tenth anniversary of the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis tour, they... Read More
Disclosure Gaps: Environmental, Social and Governance
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The SEC has been looking for a private market solution like the Transparency Label Initiative to take over its public role of... Read More
Why We Need to Update Financial Reporting
The idea investors need to get together so they can get the information they need to “know what they own” has managed... Read More
ECB Relies on BlackRock to Assess EU Banks
A frequent objection raised by the banks to having to disclose their current exposure details is investors won’t be able to assess... Read More