financial history

As we have said numerous times, economic growth following major credit crises is always slower than average, while recessions occur more often as consumers deleverage the vast amount of debt built up during the boom. In our view it will…

If you were reading the newspaper back in May, you might have seen a small reference to a statement from Treasury Secretary Geithner to the effect that he could delay the day of reckoning until August. You probably didn't see any specifics,…

This comes from the Washington post: Since 1980, the debt ceiling has been raised 39 times. It was raised 17 times under Ronald Reagan, four times under Bill Clinton and seven times under George W. Bush. Congress is currently in a…

It is not clear that there is a political consensus for a stand-alone tax holiday. There may be support for the stand-alone tax holiday as part of a larger corporate tax reform effort. If it is enacted, job growth and capital investment is…

As a result of the two great wars in the 20th century, the UK’s national debt soared such that by the end of World War II, public net debt was well over 200% of GDP.

Last week I showed you one way to look at the jobs crisis in graphical form. Here’s another from Calculated Risk.

This blurb from Paul Krugman and Robin Wells' review of Jeff Madrick's book on the credit crisis sums up why the busts keep getting bigger

This article was published in the NYT more than 20 years ago, forecasting precisely what has happened in Russia

This is the first in a two-part essay on the origins of the sovereign debt crisis. Here the emphasis is on Germany’s central role in the last century and a half of European history and in the formation of the euro

For my part, I am with Richard Koo. Monetary policy reflation will not work in a balance sheet recession when fiscal policy is contractionary. But at some point, the Fed will be compelled to act anyway.