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Finance
A Category Archive (36 entries)
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February 7, 2012
Regulators are completing a controversial proposal to shore up the $2.7 trillion money-market fund industry, more than three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sparked a panic that threatened the savings of millions of investors and forced... MORE
December 29, 2011
On my list of potential topics to blog about in the last few days was Megan McArdle's excellent post in which she advises people to save more. I've gone after her here, here, and here and so I like to... MORE
December 4, 2011
As I noted yesterday, in his Friday talk at the Hoover Institution, Alan Greenspan advocated two policies. The second is to scrap the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law and start over. The law, said Greenspan, "is unimplementable." He went on to... MORE
October 6, 2011
How did Fannie Mae get such political clout? This is one of the best-told stories in the book. McLean and Nocera tell how a well-connected Democrat named Jim Johnson made Fannie Mae almost invulnerable politically. Johnson, who had been Vice... MORE
September 23, 2011
The global sovereign debt crises, and the Greek fiscal crisis, are bad enough on their own. Basel III is just making things worse. If I may summarize past comments, under the purview of Basel III banks in the United States... MORE
June 15, 2011
Incentives Matter Christopher J. Mayer, Edward Morrison, Tomasz Pikorski, and Arpit Gupta of Columbia University (variously Business School and Law School) find that a mortgage modification program that Countrywide Financial agreed to implement as part of a settlement with U.S.... MORE
June 8, 2011
My review of Jeff Friedman's edited book, What Caused the Financial Crisis?, was published in Policy Review last week. Some excerpts from my review: The most important chapter is the first. This 66-page segment is editor Jeff Friedman's overview of... MORE
May 30, 2011
Politics and Economics
David Henderson
Last week, NPR did a great interview with Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times in which she discusses highlights of her recent book, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. It's co-authored with Joshua... MORE
April 29, 2011
Examples of clearcut ad hominems, I've found, are rarer than I thought before I started looking for them. On closer inspection, most ad hominem arguments have a trace of logic or reason, however weak, that accompany them. But William Greider's... MORE
April 15, 2011
In his post yesterday, Arnold stated, "I want to know what his [Greenspan's] great deregulatory accomplishments were." He also sees Brooksley Born as "a typical bureaucratic empire-builder." Greenspan did deregulate something--more on that in a minute--but on the issue Arnold... MORE
March 14, 2011
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Summarizing an IMF conference, Olivier Blanchard lists nine points. I will make extended comments below the fold. Here is a crucial sentence: Monetary policy has to go beyond inflation stability, adding output and financial stability to the list of targets,... MORE
March 7, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
One might think that the ideal regulations would be those that find the right numbers for these portfolios, not too small and not too large--the Goldilocks of risk. Surprisingly enough, it is not possible. It turns out that no algorithm... MORE
January 22, 2011
I'm in the midst of a refinance of my mortgage, a very straightforward one because our equity in the house is over 80 percent of even a low-ball estimate of value. I was talking to the bank representative early in... MORE
December 29, 2010
Payday lenders like Advance America are pushing hard to lure away customers from traditional banks. The effort is getting a boost from the industry's loan crunch, especially for borrowers with blemished credit, and toughened regulation of fees and interest rates... MORE
December 15, 2010
The latest issue of Regulation magazine carries my joint review of Fault Lines by Raghuram Rajan and Jimmy Stewart is Dead by Larry Kotlikoff. Excerpts from the section on Rajan's Fault Lines: When he sticks to what he knows best--international... MORE
December 8, 2010
Scott Sumner's posted a striking challenge: Name the famous bubble deniers.In economics people notice bubbles bursting, but fail to pay much attention to bubbles not bursting. But I admit I might be wrong, so I'll give my opponents one more... MORE
July 9, 2010
Suppose you see an individual, a bank, or a corporation sitting on a big pile of money. What should you conclude?Theory #1: The actor has nothing good to spend it on. The individual is satiated, at least relative to existing... MORE
January 23, 2010
Indeed, one of the major contributors to bank failures during the Great Depression was the National Banking Act of 1864. That law, according to monetary historian Jeff Hummel, an economist at San Jose State University, banned any branching (interstate or... MORE
December 8, 2009
Last week, I blasted CBS's show 60 Minutes. This week I've come to praise it. 60 Minutes's long segment was with referee Tim Donaghy. I thought it would be a standard story about a guy betting on one side and... MORE
December 7, 2009
I posted last month on one part of Russ Roberts' interview with Charles Calomiris. Some of the commenters highly recommended the whole podcast and I agree. I've listened to it twice all the way through and taken notes. Calomiris often... MORE
November 28, 2009
Ever since I was an assistant professor at the University of Rochester's B-school (now called the Simon School) in the late 1970s, I have believed in the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. The basic idea is that market prices reflect all available... MORE
November 8, 2009
The paper concludes that the probability of default by the GSEs is extremely small. Given this, the expected monetary costs of exposure to GSE insolvency are relatively small -- even given very large levels of outstanding GSE debt and even... MORE
November 1, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Am I too weak to resist financial crisis porn? The latest example of my shameful indulgence is The Greatest Trade Ever, by Gregory Zuckerman. As with Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail, I could not put it down. Even... MORE
August 29, 2009
Bryan writes, Suppose for example that you've got $100,000 in assets. You know with virtual certainty that the market will eventually fall from its present level of 100 down to its fundamental value of 50. The catch: You don't know... MORE
August 28, 2009
How often have you heard the quip, "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"? The idea: Even if the market is ridiculously overvalued, you won't make money by shorting it. You'll probably go bankrupt instead of... MORE
May 13, 2009
In today's Wall Street Journal, Todd Zywicki lays out how President Obama attacked holders of Chrysler debt. A key paragraph: The Obama administration's behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors --... MORE
April 8, 2009
Last week, Arnold approvingly quoted Tyler's one-sentence explanation of "systemic risk": If your banks are less risky, often something else is more risky, and vice versa. This morning it just occured to me that this is precisely the opposite of... MORE
April 5, 2009
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
David Henderson
It isn't that common any more to find evidence of one of the bailed-out banks making a good decision with its money in the face of government pressure. But the weekend Wall Street Journal reported on such a case. J.P.... MORE
March 25, 2009
My book review of John Taylor's latest book, Getting Off Track, appeared on Forbes.com yesterday. Two excerpts from my review: Throughout 2007 and 2008, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others in policy-making positions assumed that the problem was that the... MORE
March 20, 2009
I just finished watching my DVR of President Obama on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." There were some interesting highlights. Of course, Obama was charming: he does that very well. If I judged him only by looks, tone,... MORE
March 11, 2009
My favorite Wall Street Journal writer, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., has an excellent piece today on Buffett's views of Mark-to-Market. It seconds what I quoted Less Antman saying last week and what commenter Patrick Sullivan pointed out. Sullivan linked to... MORE
March 4, 2009
Economist Jeff Hummel sent out the following to a large e-mail list. I'm reprinting the whole thing here and appending my comments. Jeff's e-mail: Mark-to-market accounting has received a lot of criticism during the current financial crisis. But a recent... MORE
January 8, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
David Henderson
Joe Nocera has a nice piece on risk management in last Sunday's New York Times magazine. A great line: "The old adage, 'garbage in, garbage out' certainly applies," Groz said. "When you realize that VaR is using tame historical data... MORE
November 18, 2008
The news that the feds are charging Mark Cuban with "insider trading" raises an interesting issue: what's wrong with insider trading? You might think it's obvious. If so, read the articles on insider trading in the 1st and 2nd editions... MORE
October 28, 2008
"Rescue Plan Faces Delay in Hiring Asset Managers." So reads the headline of a news story in today's Wall Street Journal. The story goes on to say: Treasury won congressional approval for the program on Oct. 3. It said at... MORE
October 24, 2008
First, thank you, Bryan, for your warm welcome. And thank you also to the commenters. Before I get to my first topic, I want to appreciate Bryan back. I'm a big fan of his work. My favorite is his piece... MORE
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