Some years ago I published a paper on the banking theory and policy views of the important twentieth-century economist Friedrich A. Hayek, entitled “Why Didn't Hayek Favor Laissez Faire in Banking?”[1] Very recently, working on a new paper on Hayek’s changing views of the gold standard, I…
The majority of federally insured savings and loans failed in the 1980s, wiping out the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation in 1989. The fiasco ultimately cost taxpayers around $150 billion to make savings depositors whole. Two years later, the failures of hundreds of commercial banks put…
Last week I attended a talk and panel discussion at Brookings, in which Roger Lowenstein discussed his new book on the Fed's origins. I have much to say about that book, and I eventually plan to say some of it here. But for the moment my concern…