Answering Thaler’s Calls for Good Nudges
At a banquet prior to accepting his Economics Nobel Prize, Richard Thaler observed: So what did I discover to get up here?... Read More
Regulators and Economists Continue to Block Transparency
McKinsey, the large international consulting firm, provide one of my favorite quotes to emerge from the financial crisis: After Lehman’s demise, participants... Read More
Banks’ Seduction of Their Regulators to Continue
For years, I have made the deliberately exaggerated statement: if banks disclosed their current exposure details, bank examiners would never have to... Read More
What is the Most Efficient Way to Regulate Wall Street?
According to the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chairman in charge of bank supervision, Efficiency has to be equally important with safety and soundness... Read More
Gary Gorton and the Panic of 2007
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As I was reading Professor Gorton’s article for the 2008 Jackson Hole conference, I realized it confirms everything I have said about... Read More
Is Transparency Too Complex for Economists to Understand?
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Over the last couple of decades, it has become increasingly apparent to me the concept of transparency is too complex for Economists.... Read More
ECB Discovers Markets Need Transparency to Work
The ECB resorts to transparency in an effort to get the market for bad loans the EU banks would like to sell... Read More
Economists Struggle with Facts versus Model Assumptions?
Do Economists actually have any idea of what is a fact in the real world versus what is an assumption in one... Read More
Those Who Helped Break the Economy Cannot Fix It
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Over a decade after the beginning of the Great Financial Crisis, the global economy has still not found its footing and moved... Read More
Office of Financial Research: Doesn’t Even Work in Theory
Since it was created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the Office of Financial Research has shown why it shouldn’t exist... Read More
How Safe are Tim Geithner’s Central Counter-parties?
The Office of Financial Research recently published a working paper on the question of how safe are the derivative clearinghouses that regulators set... Read More
Wall Street’s latest opaque product: nonlinear finance
In its ongoing quest to sell opaque securities that investors cannot assess the risk of, Wall Street has rolled out ‘nonlinear finance‘.... Read More
Shadow Banking Comes Under Fire
In a recently released report, the US Treasury confirmed its membership in the Opacity Protection Team and attacked the use of the term... Read More
Gordon Brown: I save the world, except …
In what appears to be an endless stream of books by financial crisis policymakers, the UK’s Gordon Brown trots out his memoir.... Read More
Does Size Alone Matter?
The Office of Financial Research looked into the question of does bank size alone tell the whole story in measuring systemic importance.... Read More