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In RealTime posts, PIIE senior staff and colleagues discuss the fast-moving economic news, financial developments, and public policy choices confronting the United States and the world.
In a recent interview with PBS’s Frontline, Lanny Breuer—head of the criminal division at the Department of Justice—appeared to admit that some financial institutions were too big to prosecute. In the “too big to fail is too big to jail” controversy that ensued, lobbyists and other supporters of big Wall Street firms tried all kinds [...]
Note: This essay was also posted on Mr. Johnson’s blog Baseline Scenario. Two diametrically opposed views of Wall Street and the dangers posed by global megabanks came more clearly into focus last week. On the one hand, William B. Harrison, Jr.—former chairman of JP Morgan Chase—argued in the New York Times that today’s massive banks [...]
Editor’s Note: On April 16 the Executive Directors of the World Bank selected Dr. Jim Yong Kim as President for a five-year term beginning on July 1, 2012. A decision on choosing the next president of the World Bank is expected this week—perhaps as early as Monday. The Obama administration nominated Jim Yong Kim, president [...]
For everyone struggling to get their arms around the debt crisis in Europe, Bill Marsh in the New York Times on Sunday (October 23) offers a compelling picture, literally, with graphic illustration for the key issues. The picture is big, 18×21 inches. Either you need a very large computer screen or a hard copy of [...]
On the fringes of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last week, there was plenty of substantive discussion—including about the dangers posed by our "too big to fail" and/or "too big to save" banks, the consequences of widening inequality (reinforced by persistent unemployment in some countries), and why the jobs picture in the United [...]
Early Friday I went through the G-20 communiqué for the Wall Street Journal; a marked up copy is available online. It is hard to imagine how the summit could have gone any worse for the US Treasury and the president. The spin machine is now working overtime—and you’ll see big efforts to get more positive [...]
Campaign contributions by noncitizens are a huge issue lurking behind the midterm elections; they will be even more important in 2012. Think about the economic dynamics: Americans have a long-standing and well-founded aversion to foreign involvement in their politics, and it is well established that this can happen in part through corporate “commercial” structures. Thomas [...]
The bank lobbyists, it turns out, missed one. They and their congressional allies were able to gut the Volcker Rule, the Lincoln Amendment, and almost everything else that could have had a meaningful effect on the industry. But, as I point out in a Bloomberg column on July 9, they couldn’t get at (or didn’t [...]
The House-Senate reconciliation process is still underway and some details will still change. But the broad contours of “financial reform” are already completely clear; there are no last minute miracles at this level of politics. The new consumer protection agency for financial products is a good idea and worth supporting—assuming someone sensible is appointed by [...]
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, has long been a proponent of serious financial sector reform. As a former commercial banker, he sees quite clearly that the legislation now headed into “reconciliation” between House and Senate versions amounts to very little. He also knows that pounding away repeatedly on this theme is the best [...]