crisis

Michael Pettis argues that Reserve currency status is a global public good that comes with a cost, and people often forget that cost.

George Soros makes the case for economics as a social science using his theory of reflexivity. Here are some additional thoughts to help understand why markets fail.

By William K. Black cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives In the Savings and Loan (S&L) debacle Speaker Wright became enraged at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Department of Justice when he learned that the FBI was…

This is really motivated by being incredibly frustrated with what happened a couple of years ago. Obviously there was a financial crisis; that's not what frustrated me. I am one of the naysayers who was not at all surprised there was a…

In September 2008, the Federal Reserve let banks turn more than $118 billion in junk bonds, defaulted debt, and other securities into cash. The role of a central bank in a crisis is to act as a lender of last resort by helping market…

Here is a good video from Bill Black on the origins of the Savings & Loan crisis in the U.S. The roots of the crisis go back to the stagflation of the 1970s when interest rates spiked under Paul Volcker. As S&L's borrowed short and…

Frederick J. Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009) and "The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond…

By Jeffrey Somers and Michael Hudson A spectre is haunting Europe: the illusion that Latvia’s financial and fiscal austerity is a model for other countries to emulate. Bankers and the financial press are asking governments from Greece to…

On Monday I first learned that Spain was to partially nationalise its banking system via the Financial Times Deutschland. The title of this article is the most appropriate I have seen discussing the issue, "Madrid riskiert für Cajas…

by Michael Pettis Once again I am starting to hear investors tell me that they have been advised by bank analysts not to worry too much about the impact of a banking crisis in China.  According to this argument, China has developed a…