Tag: Governance
Freefall – Joseph Stiglitz
This is the best book so far on the financial crisis. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, is knowledgeable about the historical background, immersed...
The cause of our crises has not gone away
In the name of free markets, we created a monster that threatens to destroy the very free markets we extol.
Chaotic evolution defines the market economy
Markets are not a well-oiled machine: they are a constantly changing, adaptive biological system.
‘Too big to fail’ is too dumb an idea to keep
When the next crisis hits, and it will, the frustrated public is likely to turn, not just on politicians who have been negligently lavish with public funds, or on bankers, but on the market system. What is at stake now may not just be the future of finance, but the future of capitalism.
How the skies proved the limits of regulation
Regulation as supervision can be simultaneously extensive and intrusive, yet ineffective and prone to regulatory capture. History suggests that supervision is rarely a success.
Everyday banking with no bill to the taxpayer
Government underwriting of deposits should be matched by assets of comparable quality. Otherwise the mismatch of risk provides an unjustifiable public subsidy to the banking sector.
Narrow Banking
The Reform of Banking Regulation
We should spend less time trying to ensure that our regulators can regulate financial behemoths with turnovers bigger than the...
Banks brought down by new Peter Principle
It is particularly easy for those who work in financial institutions to make the mistake of believing that their success is the result of exceptional skill rather than good fortune. Until vanity is vanquished, I anticipate that diversification to the level of incompetence will continue to be a powerful element in business behaviour.
George Eliot wrote the book on moral hazard
Do not waste any time on sermons and the prohibition. Even if the Good Lord himself were to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, He would be ignored. Hardened gamblers only give up when they have made the resolution to quit themselves.
What a carve up – Book review
If you want to understand how the City came to play such a central role in British economic and political life, why a crash was inevitable, and why the crisis is being resolved on terms which give so much and ask so little of the financial sector, this is the most important thing you need to understand: the influence of investment banks on modern politics and policy.
