Category Archives: Financial Crisis

Five years ago this month the Great Moderation ended. To be precise December 2007 is the month that the NBER business cycle dating committee designated as the peak of the third and final expansion of the Great Moderation and the … Continue reading →

In a recent blog Paul Krugman, borrowing from the Economics of Contempt, takes on John Cochrane and me for our interpretations of the events leading up to the panic of 2008, and in particular my point that it was not the … Continue reading →

Asgeir Jonsson’s interesting and perceptive article in today’s Wall Street Journal provides a clear lesson for students and policymakers alike about the harm that comes from bailouts and the good that comes from avoiding them. If a government recognizes the … Continue reading →

Title II of the Dodd-Frank bill, which creates a new orderly liquidation authority for financial institutions, has recently come under fierce attacks from a variety of perspectives. Paul Ryan writing in the Wall Street Journal on April 5 argues that … Continue reading →

In a hearing today, the Senate Budget Committee reopened the debate about whether the stimulus packages and other federal interventions have been effective. Here is the written testimony of Alan Blinder, Mark Zandi, and me, the three economists who were … Continue reading →

Two years ago, on Friday Sept 12, 2008, the Lehman Weekend began. Many people are still trying to figure out why the bailout of Lehman was aborted or what would have happened if there were a special bankruptcy chapter for … Continue reading →

A common criticism of the Dodd-Frank bill keeps coming up as more people wade through the several hundred sections, or at least summaries of them. This common criticism is that the bill contains many false remedies and errors of omission. … Continue reading →

My column published last Monday May 3 in the Wall Street Journal “How to Avoid a ‘Bailout Bill’” generated a lot of questions about the idea of a “Chapter 11F,” which I argued is a needed alternative to bailouts. Chapter … Continue reading →

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) will meet with more economists on February 26-27 to delve into causes of the crisis, considering in particular: monetary policy, derivatives, shadow banking, GSEs, and bailouts of “too big too fail” institutions. The forum … Continue reading →

America is sick of bailouts. As President Obama called out in the State of the Union “we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. I hated it. You hated it.” But the bailout mentality continues, and hate alone will … Continue reading →