Category Archives: Financial Crisis

Today’s letter from Ben Bernanke to the GAO stating that the Fed would “welcome a full review by GAO of all aspects of our involvement in the extension of credit to AIG” is a step in the right direction. Importantly, … Continue reading →

Today the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission announced its first public hearing, which will start at 9 am on January 13 and continue through January 14. The topic: Causes and Current State of the Financial Crisis. That public hearings are about … Continue reading →

This past week we held a conference on Ending Government Bailouts As We Know Them. One of the biggest surprises coming out of the conference was the growing recognition that the bankruptcy process–perhaps amended with a new Chapter 11F–is quite … Continue reading →

Fears of potential damage from the failure of a large financial institution has created a bailout mentality in which the U.S. government has committed many billions of dollars, intervened in the operations of scores of private firms, and caused excessive … Continue reading →

Two weekends ago the big news was the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the ensuing panic. But when you look at the data, the real one-year anniversary of the panic is closer to now. In the four … Continue reading →

Today was the first lecture of thirty-five or so lectures I will give this fall in Stanford’s Economics 1, the namesake of this Blog. Enrollment is way up. The financial crisis is naturally generating a great deal of interest in … Continue reading →