Thomas Hoenig, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, in a speech to the Women in Housing and Finance, just said it again: Separate risk taking from the safety net. If too big to fail organizations cannot be…
Monthly Archives: February 2011
adam smith on freedom and markets
by lawrence baxter • • 0 Comments
Adam Smith, the greatest icon of free market theorists, has as Amartya Sen observed “had much smallness thrust upon him.” Far from arguing that markets make people free, Smith knew full well how markets could be hijacked by powerful interests.…
targeting the “super spreaders”
by lawrence baxter • • 0 Comments
The best way for us to approach financial reform is to understand financial markets and the financial system itself as a series of highly complex adaptive systems–a rich and diverse ecology. These ecologies are continually evolving. They are inhabited by…
capture in financial (and any) regulation
by lawrence baxter • • 0 Comments
The idea that regulators can be captured by the industries they regulate, or even by other interest groups, is central to modern regulatory analysis. It is the foundation for the theory of regulatory failure, which itself is a response to…
whither financial globalization?
by lawrence baxter • • 0 Comments
Yogi Berra advised that “when you come to a fork in the road, take it.” This is where globalization is going. The full significance of globalization sometimes still eludes us. It takes events, such as the sudden near economic collapse…
mythbusters: telling the truth about the financial crisis, part iii
by jennifer taub • • 11 Comments
This post is the last installment in a three-part series harvesting the recent Financial Crisis Inquiry Report (FCIC Report) to debunk the top-ten urban myths about the Financial Crisis. To read about myths 1 – 5, click here. Myth 6: …
“mr. diamond: you pay up and the rest of us will shut up”
by lawrence baxter • • 0 Comments
I have been away so have only now been able to read this spectacular piece by Philip Stephens of the Financial Times. For those unlucky enough not to have a subscription to this splendid daily, I could not resist pushing…
mythbusters: telling the truth about the financial crisis, part ii
by jennifer taub • • 11 Comments
Last week, I began musing here, about mining the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report to confront the top ten urban myths about the Financial Crisis. Expecting to dash off a blog series in a day or so, I found that my…
regulatory capture symposium at fordham law
by lawrence baxter • • 1 Comment
The concept of capture is central to any discussion of regulation and its reform. Has a government agency that is set up to protect general interests fallen capture to a specific industry or some other interest group? Has the industry…
