financial history

I have written a post or two offering the opinion that Barack Obama faces an economy more akin to Herbert Hoover's than Franklin Roosevelt. See "Barack Obama as Herbert Hoover" where posited the following: My intent here is…

By William K. Black (cross-posted with Benzinga.com) Honest accounting is essential for effective regulation – and for integrity. It is also very helpful to prosecuting accounting fraud. The banking industry lobbyists, including the…

By William K. Black President Obama's Executive Order on regulatory review was originally set in motion by his February 3, 2009 direction to OMB to create an improved regulatory review process. The fundamental principles and structures…

By David Galland One of the memes among the sound-money community is that one day things will get so bad that the public will come to its senses and throw the bums out, and then things will get better. Recently I came across an article by…

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…

Good interview and interesting analysis of the personal history of Lord Keynes. Skidelsky does a good job of describing Keynesianism in 15 minutes. My main criticism is that I feel he failed to adequately address the malinvestment issue…

While today is a national holiday in the United States, in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is also the 50th anniversary of former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous farewell presidential address. Ike's speech warned…

by Edward Harrison The US post-bubble experience is often compared to the Japanese post-bubble experience. I have written a number of posts on the Japanese experience myself. Here are a number from 2008: A cautionary tale: story from…

Michael Hudson reviews the reasoning behind income tax policy in the 20th century, a good lesson in financial history. Interestingly, he says that data show tax cuts have been followed by slow growth in the US.

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…