Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of delivering some remarks to the New York League of Independent Bankers. I spoke about how and why financial regulation often has consequences that are very different from the ones that policymakers intend. What follows are my written remarks—I hope…
"… equally efficacious, and equally a hoax." – Benjamin Disraeli, 1848[1] One of the highlights of the U.S. summer for Fed watchers is the annual ritual in which the Fed's economic soothsayers peer into their crystal balls, a.k.a. their stress tests, to reassure us that the U.S. banking system…
The title of this post, apart from alluding to Milton Friedman's famous quip about Keynesian economics, is the title of a recent speech by Klaas Knot, President of the Netherlands Bank. Answering his own question, Knot says, … Yes – as long as we stay eclectic, pragmatic…
A few weeks ago, Citi published a quite fascinating 100-page report on financial innovations, from blockchain to P2P lending, in various regions of the world. It's a highly recommended and very comprehensive reading that I won't be able to summarize in a short blog post. From this…
One of the most important elements of contemporary financial regulation is bank capital adequacy regulation — the regulation of banks' minimum capital requirements. Capital adequacy regulation has been around since at the least the 19th century, but whereas its previous incarnations were relatively simple, and usually not very…