Blog Profile / The Baseline Scenario
| URL : | http://baselinescenario.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Business & Finance / Economics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 409 | |
| Posts / Week: | 3.4 | |
| Archived Since: | February 8, 2011 | |
Blog Post Archive
Liberty for Whom?
By James Kwak I feel like I should have something deep and original to say about Corey Robin’s fascinating article on nineteenth-century European culture, Nietzsche, and the economic philosophy of Friedrich Hayek. In addition to the things I’m better known … Continue reading ?
If the Fed Knows Banks Are Too Big, Why Doesn’t It Make Them Smaller?
By James Kwak The Federal Reserve is serious—about something. On May 2, The Wall Street Journal reported that regulators were pushing to require “very large banks to hold higher levels of capital,” including minimum levels of unsecured long-term debt, as part … Continue reading ?
The Cost of (Equity) Capital
By James Kwak For years, the world’s largest banks have been up in arms over threats by regulators to increase their (equity) capital requirements. Making banks hold more capital, they argue, will force them to reduce lending and will increase … Continue reading ?
With Great Power . . .
By James Kwak A friend brought to my attention another example of how Excel may actually be a precursor of Skynet, after the London Whale trade and the Reinhart-Rogoff controversy. This comes to us in a research note from several … Continue reading ?
Can You Say “Bubble”?
By James Kwak Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an article titled “Foosball over Finance” about how people in finance have been switching to technology startups, for all the predictable reasons: The long hours in finance. “Technology is collaborative. In finance, it’s … Continue reading ?
Yet Another Proposal To Raise My Own Taxes
By James Kwak In chapter 7 of White House Burning, we proposed to eliminate or scale back a number of tax breaks that I benefit from directly, including the employer health care exclusion, the deduction for charitable contributions, and, most importantly, … Continue reading ?
Frat Boys and Tech Companies
By James Kwak Matt Bai’s recent article on how Curt Shilling’s gaming company, 38 Studios, managed to secure a $75 million loan from the State of Rhode Island and then flame out into bankruptcy is a reasonably fun read. Bai’s … Continue reading ?
Protecting Boards from Their Own Shareholders
By James Kwak I teach corporate law, and one of the topics in a typical introductory corporate law course is hostile takeovers. The central legal question is: to what extent is a board of directors allowed to undertake defenses against … Continue reading ?
Fatal Sensitivity
By James Kwak One more post on Reinhart-Rogoff, following one on Excel and one on interpretation of results. While the spreadsheet problems in Reinhart and Rogoff’s analysis are the most most obvious mistake, they are not as economically significant as … Continue reading ?
Are Reinhart and Rogoff Right Anyway?
By James Kwak One more thought: In their response, Reinhart and Rogoff make much of the fact that Herndon et al. end up with apparently similar results, at least to the medians reported in the original paper: So the relationship between … Continue reading ?
More Bad Excel
By James Kwak In 1975, Isaac Ehrlich published an empirical study purporting to show that the death penalty saved lives, since each execution deterred eight murders. The next year, Solicitor General Robert Bork cited this study to the Supreme Court, … Continue reading ?
“Gut Instinct Doesn’t Matter”
By James Kwak I’m no fan of the genre of CEO interviews published in the Sunday Times. But this past Sunday’s CEO-of-the-week column featured Marcus Ryu, a good friend and someone I’ve worked with at three different companies. Marcus is not … Continue reading ?
Memo to Employers: Stop Wasting Your Employees’ Money
By James Kwak Now that I’m a law professor, people expect me to write law review articles. There are some problems with the genre—not least its absurd citation formatting system and all the fetishism surrounding it—but it’s not a bad … Continue reading ?
Go For Gold
By Simon Johnson, April 1, 2013 In both 13 Bankers (2010) and White House Burning (published 2012, paperback just came out) James Kwak and I weighed the merits of going back on a global gold standard. In those books, we … Continue reading ?
Gee Whiz, Incentives Matter
By James Kwak Back in the heady days of the financial crisis, I used to recommend Planet Money as a good way for non-specialists to learn about some of the basic economic and financial issues involved. Over the years, I’ve … Continue reading ?
The Value of “Top Talent”
By James Kwak From a Wall Street Journal article about The Children’s Investment Fund: “[The fund] lost 43% in 2008, among the worst losses by a hedge-fund that year.” “Both investors and employees defected during the crisis, with top talent … Continue reading ?
Sir John Peace Should Resign As Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank
By Simon Johnson On Thursday, March 21, Sir John Peace conceded that he lied to investors on March 5, 2013 when he said of Standard Chartered Bank, “We had no willful act to avoid sanctions; you know, mistakes are made … Continue reading ?
Moving the Goalposts
By James Kwak Ezra Klein yesterday highlighted one of the underlying problems with even apparently informed discussions of deficits and the national debt: the CBO’s “alternative fiscal scenario.” As opposed to the (extended) baseline scenario, which simply projects the future … Continue reading ?
“Some Of These Institutions Have Become Too Large”
By Simon Johnson 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 … Continue reading ?
Lessons of the Sequester
By James Kwak The automatic sequester—the across-the-board cuts to discretionary programs that President Obama said “will not happen”—happened. The reason is simple and predictable: Republicans insist that the sequester be replaced entirely by spending cuts, while Democrats insist that tax … Continue reading ?