Glass-Steagall Act

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pages: 257 words: 64,763

The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street by Robert Scheer

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, business cycle, California energy crisis, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, do well by doing good, facts on the ground, financial deregulation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, invisible hand, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mega-rich, mortgage debt, new economy, old-boy network, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, Ralph Nader, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, too big to fail, trickle-down economics

The concentrations of economic power—and the failures of our political system to protect the American economy from its worst excesses—have been a staple of our past, most famously in the 1920s, when such excesses ultimately plunged the country into the Great Depression. That is when government stepped in to create a series of regulatory structures—from the FDIC to the Glass-Steagall Act—to serve as a corrective to protect the American people and American business. Instead of reasonable changes in regulation that protected the public interest while acknowledging the changes in trading and other aspects of doing business in a high-tech trading world, the reversal of the regulatory protections of Glass-Steagall took steps to wreck the economy rather than improve it.

For these so-called FIRE firms—Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate—this half-century-old regulatory system, modest as it was, was an irritant that limited their ability to gamble and leverage their dominant positions. While the companies just wanted to be free of restraint to profit at will, Reagan and Gramm were true believers, arguing that the regulatory status quo was outmoded and onerous—even socialist—hobbling business growth. The top target in their sights was the New Deal-enacted Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, signed into law by President Roosevelt, which regulated the financial services industry. Key to its effectiveness was the seemingly simple wall it erected between the commercial banks entrusted with depositors’ funds—and insured by the government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the agency created by Glass-Steagall—and the wilder antics of basically unregulated Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs.

The White House had hoped the bill would remove many of the governmental shackles that inhibit competition between banks, securities firms and other institutions in the burgeoning field of financial services. In fact, it does just the opposite. Reagan signed the bill, the Competitive Equality Banking Act of 1987, only after criticizing it for not only failing to tear down the Glass-Steagall walls but, worse, temporarily extending “the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act restrictions on securities activities to state-chartered, non-member banks for the first time.” He made it clear he was signing the bill despite his quite vociferous objections because it contained provisions for funding for local banks in trouble. It was at once a statement of the enormous importance he attached to decimating Glass-Steagall and an admission that he would come to the end of his last term without accomplishing that goal.


pages: 113 words: 37,885

Why Wall Street Matters by William D. Cohan

Alan Greenspan, Apple II, asset-backed security, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Blythe Masters, bonus culture, break the buck, buttonwood tree, Carl Icahn, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, Donald Trump, Exxon Valdez, financial innovation, financial repression, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, income inequality, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, margin call, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, Potemkin village, quantitative easing, secular stagnation, Snapchat, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tontine, too big to fail, WikiLeaks

We must tackle dangerous risks in big banks and elsewhere in the financial system.” And to do this, the Democrats advocated “breaking up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that pose a systemic risk to the stability of our economy” and an “updated and modernized” version of the so-called Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which forced the separation of investment banking from commercial banking for the next sixty-six years, until its repeal in 1999. Plugging his new book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In, after the election of Donald Trump, Senator Sanders continues to lambast Wall Street. Hell, Wall Street has grown so unpopular that even the 2016 Republican Party platform called for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.

For that reason, among others, in June 1933, in the wake of the Great Depression, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, was created to protect the savings of individual depositors—the insurance now covers losses up to $250,000 per person at a single bank—as a way of trying to prevent a panic. It doesn’t always work, of course, and banks still have a way of failing, but at least nowadays depositors have the confidence of knowing that all will not be lost. These days, in part because of the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that separated commercial banking from investment banking, big banks do lots of other things, too. They manage people’s money in order to try to increase their wealth. They manage money for other institutions, such as endowment and pension funds. They advise corporate CEOs on the buying and selling of companies—their own or others’—or various pieces of their businesses or others’ businesses.

On May 27, FDR signed the Securities Act of 1933, which required that investors receive important financial and other information from companies concerning securities offered for sale (hence the Apple IPO prospectus). Untruthful statements were a violation of the law. On June 16, FDR signed the Banking Act of 1933 (generally known as the Glass-Steagall Act), giving Wall Street banks one year to choose between commercial banking and investment banking. The law, barely thirty-seven pages long, was premised on the idea that in the years leading up to the Great Depression, commercial banks—which, as we learned earlier, are the institutions in the business of accumulating your deposits and then turning around and lending that money out—were taking way too many risks with their depositors’ money and had their collective fingers in way too many pies.


pages: 218 words: 62,889

Sabotage: The Financial System's Nasty Business by Anastasia Nesvetailova, Ronen Palan

Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bitcoin, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Blythe Masters, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business process, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, critique of consumerism, cryptocurrency, currency risk, democratizing finance, digital capitalism, distributed ledger, diversification, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, independent contractor, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, litecoin, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market fundamentalism, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer lending, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, price mechanism, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ross Ulbricht, shareholder value, short selling, smart contracts, sovereign wealth fund, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail

This is achieved by the issuer of the bonds insuring the buyer’s potential losses as part of the agreement. EMT: Efficient market theory. EPAs: Equity participation agreements. A type of contract. Glass–Steagall Act (1933): A major legislative piece of the regulatory foundations of the post-1929 economy in the US. Sponsored in Congress by Senator Carter Glass and Representative Carter Steagall, the Glass–Steagall Act separated commercial and investment banking functions in the financial system of the US. It was repealed in 1999. GRG: Global Restructuring Group. GRG was the former turnaround division of RBS/NatWest.

Many of the members of Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ administration in the early 1930s, such as Adolf A. Berle, Rexford G. Tugwell and other members of Roosevelt’s ‘Brain Trust’, adopted Veblenian theory of business and its commensurate philosophy of regulation. They were explicitly concerned with business sabotage. It is only dimly remembered today that the Glass–Steagall Act consisted of a set of regulations that were aimed at limiting the propensity towards sabotaging in finance and redirecting the financial system towards its functional purpose of mediation between savers and borrowers. The argument was presented by President Roosevelt in his first presidential address: ‘The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.

Some studies reported that a number of commercial banks underwrote securities they privately knew were questionable, and then used the proceeds from the issue to pay down the loans they had issued. In this way those banks could protect their own interests at the expense of outside investors in the newly issued securities.26 Some sixty years before, similar incidences were recorded in the US by the Pecora Committee hearings. The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 prohibited national banks from engaging in securities activities, either directly or through affiliates, precisely to avoid such practices. But in 1987 certain provisions of Glass–Steagall were relaxed, with some banks (for example, J. P. Morgan and Bankers Trust Co.) allowed to set up Section 20 subsidiaries that could underwrite securities.


pages: 726 words: 172,988

The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong With Banking and What to Do About It by Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Growth in a Time of Debt, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Larry Wall, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, open economy, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peer-to-peer lending, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Market for Lemons, the payments system, too big to fail, Upton Sinclair, Yogi Berra

In the movie George Bailey’s bank is a savings institution, taking deposits and lending to home owners and doing nothing else.2 In particular, George Bailey’s bank does not trade stocks or other securities, nor does it provide brokerage services for its customers. In the United States, between 1933 and 1999, under the so-called Glass-Steagall Act, an institution that obtained funding through deposits was actually forbidden from engaging in such activities. Anything to do with stocks or other securities was left for so-called investment banks and brokerage houses. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, U.S. banks have again been allowed to combine deposit taking and investment banking activities.3 Some nostalgia for the good old days is based on a sense that before the repeal of Glass-Steagall banking was better and safer.

George Bailey’s Balance Sheet As mentioned, George Bailey’s bank in the movie takes deposits and makes loans. Under the Glass-Steagall Act, commercial banks and savings banks focused on taking deposits and making loans. The differences between these institutions do not matter for this discussion, so we treat them as one type of institution and focus on deposit taking and lending, their main activities. Figure 4.1 describes the broad categories on the balance sheet of a typical commercial bank or savings bank in the United States under the Glass-Steagall Act. These categories, as well as several others, would also appear on the balance sheet of a so-called universal bank, which engages in all financial activities, including securities trading.

The distinction between checking accounts and savings accounts was eroded when in 1974 some savings banks in New England began to offer NOW accounts, savings accounts that allowed depositors to use “negotiable orders of withdrawal” to pay their bills. Before that, savings accounts could not be used directly for transactions. 6. Under the Glass-Steagall Act, until the early 1980s depository institutions were actually forbidden from paying interest on deposits that could be used for checking. This regulation allowed commercial banks to earn substantial net returns by investing a large part of the funds they received in deposits. They used these returns to cover the costs of services.


pages: 413 words: 117,782

What Happened to Goldman Sachs: An Insider's Story of Organizational Drift and Its Unintended Consequences by Steven G. Mandis

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, algorithmic trading, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Litterman, bonus culture, book value, BRICs, business process, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, disintermediation, diversification, eat what you kill, Emanuel Derman, financial innovation, fixed income, friendly fire, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, high net worth, housing crisis, junk bonds, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, merger arbitrage, Myron Scholes, new economy, passive investing, performance metric, proprietary trading, radical decentralization, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Satyajit Das, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, The Nature of the Firm, too big to fail, value at risk

The deal enables Travelers to market mutual funds and insurance to Citicorp’s retail customers while giving the banking divisions access to an expanded client base of investors and insurance buyers. The remaining provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act—enacted following the Great Depression—forbid banks to merge with insurance underwriters, and this means that Citigroup has two to five years to divest any prohibited assets. However, Weill states at the time of the merger that he believes that the legislation will change over time. (On CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in July 2012, Weill calls for a return of the Glass–Steagall Act.) Under pressure from competitors taking companies public that have no revenues or profits, Goldman starts to take companies like eToys and NetZero public, which have limited operating history and little to no profits (O, C). 1999: In January, Jon Corzine leaves Goldman to run for US Senate from New Jersey, leaving Paulson as sole chairman and CEO (O).

Part Two DRIFT Chapter 4 Under Pressure, Goldman Grows Quickly and Goes Public AT A GOLDMAN PARTNER MEETING, THE STORY GOES, A SENIOR partner asked the new partners to identify the two men who were most important to the firm’s business. The new partners responded with last names: Goldman, Sachs, and Weinberg. The senior partner then revealed the answer: Senator Carter Glass and Representative Henry Steagall.1 Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act (formally known as the Banking Act of 1933) to provide Depression-era deposit bank customers protection against the additional risks involved in trading and investing.2 Its intent was to separate the consumer deposit–based commercial banking industry from investment-banking activities by prohibiting well-capitalized commercial banks from getting involved in the securities business.

The rapid growth, combined with multiple, conflicting organizational goals, resulted in a series of many small everyday decisions happening so quickly that most people didn’t notice (or were too busy to notice, or didn’t care). Regulatory Pressures A great many rules and regulations govern banking in the United States: the Glass–Steagall Act, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, exchange rules, and so on.5 I focus here on the key regulatory changes that had a particularly strong influence on Goldman. Public Trading of Investment Banks in 1970 Even before the repeal of Glass–Steagall, Goldman was facing increasing competitive and other pressures, and those combined pressures led ultimately to the decision to go public, which the partners voted to do in 1998, before the act’s repeal (the IPO didn’t actually happen, though, until 1999).


pages: 236 words: 77,735

Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game by Lee Munson

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, backtesting, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, call centre, Credit Default Swap, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, fear index, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, follow your passion, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, High speed trading, housing crisis, index fund, joint-stock company, junk bonds, managed futures, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, National best bid and offer, off-the-grid, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, power law, price discovery process, proprietary trading, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Savings and loan crisis, short squeeze, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, too big to fail, trade route, Vanguard fund, walking around money

Well, up until about 2008, when they got a lesson in long-term delusions, mainly by thinking they had a solid winner in the banking sector. It’s fine to be hoodwinked into opaque leveraged games the first time around, especially when the entire system to prevent this garbage was destroyed by Congress with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. However, you know what they say, fool me twice. Or as I say, just give me a reason. Give me a reason to alert the bold and foolish lambs of the con that is about to take another turn. The bottom line—banks reinstating dividends is designed to do one thing: Assure the public that the banks are fine.

As you will see over the following pages, there was a fatal error at the House of Representatives that opened up a new ball game. Let me give you some background on a change in the law that seeded this new game and how you can play it. In 1999 a change was made which was possibly the worst mistake in financial history: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The most important part of our society is the banking system. Our entire way of life in America is based on our ability to print, borrow, and lend money. After the 1929 devastation, and more importantly the severe depression economy of the early 1930s, Congress established regulation that was intended to control speculation in the banking system.

After multiple runs on too many banks, people lost confidence in the dollar even though it was backed up by gold. Unlike 1907, things didn’t get better and a global depression followed in the years after the 1929 stock market crash. In order to restore confidence in the system, President Roosevelt signed into law The Banking Act of 1933 on June 16, 1933. We commonly refer to this as the Glass-Steagall Act. This came just six weeks after Roosevelt signed The Gold Confiscation Act. This act would be completely foreign to us today. Think about waking up one day to hear that all gold coins, gold bullion, and gold certificates were to be delivered to your nearest Federal Reserve Bank. Oh, and you had less than a month to do it.


pages: 405 words: 109,114

Unfinished Business by Tamim Bayoumi

Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, Doha Development Round, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, housing crisis, inflation targeting, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, Martin Wolf, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, value at risk

The large European banks, however, were increasingly expanding into investment banking and hence held increasing amounts of market assets such as equities and bonds. This involved a different type of “market” risk—losses coming from a fall in the price of these assets. This contrasted with the United States where the Depression Era Glass–Steagall Act continued to separate commercial banking from investment banking (other members of the Basel Committee fell between the wide universal banking model in Europe and the narrower commercial banking one in the United States). In response to the increase in investment banking activities in its banks, the European Union decided that it needed rules on capital buffers for market risk.

Banks were only allowed to operate within a single state, so that there were effectively fifty separate banking systems. Indeed, in many states banks were limited to operating out of a single branch. In addition, there were upper limits on interest rates banks could charge—deposits rates were limited by national regulations while charges on loans were constrained by individual state usury laws. Finally, the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 separated these banks from investment banks that operated outside of the federal safety net. The outcome was a large but highly splintered regulated banking sector as well as a small nationwide investment banking industry which handled other peoples’ money but had minimal assets of its own.

Over the same period, the strongly pro-deregulation Federal Reserve gradually reduced the restrictions on US regulated banks being involved in investment banking. These rules were initially motivated by concerns that banks could have inside information that could undermine the integrity of market transactions. They dated from the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act and had been reinforced in the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 and its amendment in 1970.10 The relaxation of these rules started in 1987 when the Federal Reserve determined that “Section 20” subsidiaries of three bank holding companies could underwrite some previously prohibited securities as long as the revenue from such activities did not exceed 5 percent of total revenue.


pages: 364 words: 99,613

Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class by Jeff Faux

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, back-to-the-land, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disruptive innovation, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, informal economy, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, McMansion, medical malpractice, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, new economy, oil shock, old-boy network, open immigration, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, price mechanism, price stability, private military company, public intellectual, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Solyndra, South China Sea, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, working poor, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, you are the product

Unregulated investment banks were now taking deposits in the form of money-market accounts and investing them in higher paying, riskier securities that were off-limits to regulated banks because of the Glass-Steagall Act. The reasonable response would have been to extend federal regulation to these new banklike arrangements. But the bankers demanded that they be deregulated. Rubin, Summers, and Green-span were in their corner, and so was Republican senator Phil Gramm, who chaired the Senate Finance Committee. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. Perhaps even more important, the bipartisan globalization of finance had created a massively complex set of cross-border credit relationships that by itself put the large U.S. banks, investment houses, hedge funds, and leveraged buyout firms beyond the reach of U.S. regulators.

The banks, the principal institutions of finance, were given a government safety net in the form of deposit insurance, which guaranteed bank customers that they would not lose the money they had deposited if their bank failed. In return, the banks were prohibited from making risky investments, and it was assumed that this prohibition would block the reappearance of the speculative Mr. Hyde. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 separated banking from the stock market, a Securities and Exchange Commission was set up to regulate security fraud and abuse, and a network of state and federal regulation was placed over insurance, savings institutions, and pension funds. The new system worked. The financial markets grew with the economy, but not much faster, and often slower.

There was no potential for mobilizing public opinion.”35 Rubin also claimed that as secretary of the treasury, he had had little real power: “Even if I’d taken a placard and walked up and down Pennsylvania Avenue saying the financial system would come to an end without strict regulation of derivatives, I would have had no traction.”36 But in a host of other issues, the lack of public support had not seemed to deter him. He led the fight for the unpopular NAFTA, the even more unpopular 1995 Mexican peso bailout, the unpopular opening up of the U.S. market to China, and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance,” said Citigroup CEO Charles Prince in 2007, suggesting that he knew the music would stop.37 Yet Prince was, in fact, just doing his job. He was being evaluated by his board on the performance of his stock, which in turn rested on his ability to turn short-term profits as least as much as his competitors were doing—which in turn depended on him trading in riskier and riskier markets.


pages: 1,335 words: 336,772

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow

Alan Greenspan, always be closing, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bolshevik threat, book value, Boycotts of Israel, Bretton Woods, British Empire, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital controls, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, death from overwork, Dutch auction, Etonian, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index arbitrage, interest rate swap, junk bonds, low interest rates, margin call, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, North Sea oil, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, paper trading, plutocrats, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, short selling, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, the market place, the payments system, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, Yom Kippur War, young professional

., 512, 582–88, 597, 598, 599, 602, 626, 668 changes at Morgan Stanley instigated by, 583, 585, 588, 592–93, 594, 622–23, 663 described, 582–83, 663 on ethical standards of Morgan Stanley, 628, 630, 631, 634 Rule 415 and, 661, 663 Baldwin, Stanley, 228, 265, 276, 277, 330, 333, 402 appeasement of Germany, 437, 438–39, 444 Ballets Russes, 271–72 Ballin, Albert, 101–102 Ballinger, Richard, 148 Banca d’Italia, 277, 280, 282, 402, 403, 549 Banker-government collaboration, 24–28, 131–38, 153, 205–206, 210, 216–17, 225–29, 461–68 Bankers, fall from grace of, 352, 355–57, 366, 369–84, 412–29 Bankers Trust, 123, 143, 152–53, 182, 364, 387, 527, 568, 644, 659, 696, 715, 716 Bank failures, 66, 326–27, 353, 357, 604, 656–60 European, 327–29 Glass-Steagall Act and, 375–76 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 311–12, 325, 434, 521 Bankhaus Herstatt, 604 Bank holidays, 353, 357 Banking Act of 1933, see Glass-Steagall Act Banking Act of 1935, 383, 384 Banking reform, 129–30; see also Glass-Steagall Act Bank Leu, 683, 684 Bank mergers, 152–54, 275, 496, 530, 532–36, 675, 703 Bank of America, 534, 551, 604, 609, 659 Bank of England, 11, 12, 71, 72, 104, 182, 385, 397, 476, 485, 489, 521, 525, 567, 569, 589, 613, 653–54, 671, 672, 675, 689 Catto as Governor of, 476–77, 519, 520 debt repayment and, 433–35 Euromarkets and, 548 gold standard and, 273–77, 329–34 Guinness scandal and, 676, 683, 686–87, 688 Norman and, 244–52, 273–77, 476 Takeover Panel and, 571, 572 World War I and, 196, 197, 200, 202 Bank of Japan, 233, 337, 437 Bank of Manhattan, 496, 530 Bank of New York, 701, 703 Bank of Tokyo, 552, 644 Bank of the United States, 326–27 Banque Commerciale pour l’Europe du Nord, 545 Banque de France, 274, 310, 329, 450, 451 Banque de l’lndochine, 615 Barclays Bank, 674, 695 Baring, House of, 3, 5, 6, 11, 19, 36, 57, 81, 99, 210, 304, 521, 607, 637 government financing and, 25, 26, 71, 225, 236, 238 merger talks with Pierpont, 103–104 Barkley, Alben W., 366 Barnes, Harry Elmer, 448–49 Barney, Charles T., 123 Barnum, P.

Pecora’s disclosure about the Morgan partners’ avoidance of income taxes made it impossible to delete this provision, so strong was public wrath.86 Adding to the pressure was Chase’s decision to disband its securities affiliate, whose refugees joined with renegades from the First National Bank of Boston to form First Boston, the first modern American investment bank. The Glass-Steagall Act took dead aim at the House of Morgan. After all, it was the bank that had most spectacularly fused the two forms of banking. It had, ironically, proved that the two types of services could be successfully combined; Kuhn, Loeb and Lehman Brothers did less deposit business, while National City and Chase had scandal-ridden securities affiliates. The House of Morgan was the active double threat, with its million-dollar corporate balances and blue-ribbon underwriting business. What was the theory behind the Glass-Steagall Act? Foremost, it was meant to restore a certain sobriety to American finance.

At a time when a parochial America looked inward, the bank’s ties abroad, especially those with the British Crown, gave it an ambiguous character and raised questions about its national loyalties. The old Morgan partners were financial ambassadors whose daily business was often closely intertwined with affairs of state. Even today, J. P. Morgan and Company is probably closer to the world’s central banks than any other bank. This empire was shattered by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which erected a high wall between commercial banking (making loans and accepting deposits) and investment banking (issuing stocks and bonds). In 1935, J. P. Morgan and Company chose to remain a commercial bank and spun off Morgan Stanley, an investment house. Seeded with J. P. Morgan capital and personnel, Morgan Stanley for decades clearly exhibited common ancestry with its Morgan brother down the block.


pages: 322 words: 77,341

I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, Celtic Tiger, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Greenspan put, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, intangible asset, interest rate swap, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, money market fund, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, negative equity, new economy, Nick Leeson, Norman Mailer, Northern Rock, off-the-grid, Own Your Own Home, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Right to Buy, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Great Moderation, the payments system, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, value at risk

Morgan was more like the man’s photograph than his reputation: it was a superrespectable old-school Wall Street firm with a long list of similarly respectable clients. It was also one of two firms to carry on J.P.’s legacy: the other was the financial services company Morgan Stanley. The first incarnation of J.P. Morgan was broken into two in 1933 by the Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Great Depression, which forced retail banks, that is, the ordinary sort of banks with which we’re all familiar, to split from investment banks, the sort which issue complex financial instruments, trade on capital markets, and run mergers and acquisitions. I call the two types the piggy bank and the casino; the idea behind Glass-Steagall was that the casino activities shouldn’t be allowed to endanger the banks which look after the deposits of the general public.

That is a generally applicable historic pattern: societies tend to regulate their financial systems only in the aftermath of a scary failure. Conversely, when markets are booming, legislation tends to loosen, and so does enforcement of the existing legislation. The centerpiece of the Depression-era legislation was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated investment banking (the casino, where the bank makes bets on its own behalf) and commercial banking (the piggy bank, where ordinary Joes deposit their savings and the bank lends it to other ordinary Joes to buy houses and cars and invest in their businesses). The idea was to let investment banks do their thing and blow themselves up without impacting on the general public.

Because of Britain’s imperial and colonial history, its banks had a broad geographical spread: just as British Airways is, in the words of its own advertising, “the world’s favourite airline” because of its proliferation of routes and destinations associated with the imperial past, so Britain’s banks have long been international in their scope. In addition, we in Britain didn’t have the wave of bank-taming legislation that America undertook in the 1930s, as a way of preventing a repeat of the Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression. The Glass-Steagall act was only the best known of a series of laws designed to limit the size and influence and, especially, the cross-state operation of the American banks. In Britain we never had a comparable set of laws targeting the size and activities of our banks. That was partly because we never had a moment of banker bashing to rival the one which took place during the Depression.


pages: 278 words: 82,069

Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, William Greider

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, carried interest, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Exxon Valdez, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, guns versus butter model, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, It's morning again in America, John Meriwether, junk bonds, kremlinology, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, McMansion, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, money market fund, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, payday loans, pets.com, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent control, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, union organizing, wage slave, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, working poor, Y2K

Reporters, for instance, might look into the initial deregulation of banking—enacted by the Democratic Congress and president in 1980—when interest-rate ceilings were repealed and the sin of usury was decriminalized, authorizing the predatory lending and sky-high rates that are now commonplace. Another bipartisan project worth investigating was ably assisted by the Federal Reserve—the repeal, in 1999, of the New Deal’s Glass-Steagall Act by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The latter measure allowed the merger of closely regulated commercial banks with unregulated investment houses and opened numerous trapdoors and escape hatches for bankers to game the differences between the two. At the time, leading newspapers led cheers for this stuff, but even the New York Times editorial page is revising its views.

Recently Greenspan—that trustworthy fellow who guaranteed the morality of Keating and was one of the chief boosters of junk-bond purchases by S&Ls—guided his Fed colleagues into a disastrous decision. They ruled that J.P. Morgan (Morgan Guaranty Trust) could trade and sell corporate stocks. With this cloven hoof in the door, other banks will follow, and that will be the death of the Glass-Steagall Act, which Congress passed in 1933 to separate commercial banks from investment banks and thereby control some of the outlawry that had caused thousands of banks to fail. Next they will probably be targeting the Bank Holding Act of 1956, which was intended to keep banking out of commerce, and the McFadden Act, which limits interstate banking.

Short of these reforms—which, it must be emphasized, would be taken by Wall Street as revolutionary—reform of the Fed alone would turn out to be little more than cosmetic. Breaking Glass-Steagall E D I T O R S O F T H E N AT I O N November 15, 1999 Although wall street has pushed for financial deregulation for two decades, it was last year’s merger of Citicorp and Travelers that set the stage for Congress’s effective revocation of the Glass-Steagall Act in late October. The merger was a violation of the longstanding laws separating banking and insurance companies, but Citicorp and Travelers, because they well knew their power to ram deregulation through Congress, exploited loopholes that gave them a temporary exemption. Indeed, further proving that Wall Street and Washington are two branches of the same firm, the newly formed Citigroup announced only days after the deal that it had hired recently departed Treasury secretary Robert Rubin as a member of its three-person office of the chairman.


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13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown by Simon Johnson, James Kwak

Alan Greenspan, American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, business cycle, business logic, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, Charles Lindbergh, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency risk, Edward Glaeser, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyman Minsky, income per capita, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, late fees, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, sovereign wealth fund, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Myth of the Rational Market, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, value at risk, yield curve

To be attacked as antisocial was bewildering; to be excluded from the formation of public policy was beyond endurance.”99 The new legislation of the 1930s—primarily the Banking Act of 1933, better known as the Glass-Steagall Act—reduced the riskiness of the financial system, with a particular emphasis on protecting ordinary citizens. The regulatory framework, however, was relatively simple. Commercial banks, which handled deposits made by ordinary households and businesses, needed to be protected from failure; investment banks and brokerages, which traded securities and raised money for companies, did not. The Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial banking from investment banking to prevent commercial banks from being “infected” by the risky activities of investment banks.

Ordinarily, low equity levels (high debt levels) should increase a bank’s riskiness by increasing the likelihood that it will not be able to pay off its debts in a crisis. Yet despite the increase in leverage, tighter regulation prevented any serious banking crises. As Figure 1-1 demonstrates, the half-century following the Glass-Steagall Act saw by far the fewest bank failures in American history.103 But once financial deregulation began in the 1970s, these low equity levels became increasingly dangerous.104 Figure 1-1: Bank Suspensions and Failures Per Year, 1864—Present * Actual values for 1930-33 are 1,352, 2,294, 1,456, and 4,004.

These new businesses helped blur the traditional line between commercial and investment banks, replacing it with a divide between small banks, which continued taking deposits and making loans, and big banks, which could branch out into securitization, proprietary trading, and derivatives. BIGGER BANKING At the same time, large banks were also growing by invading each other’s territories and acquiring smaller rivals. Banks had been trying to get around the restrictions on interstate banking and the constraints of the Glass-Steagall Act for decades. Congress responded repeatedly with legislation limiting bank activities, including the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, the Savings and Loan Holding Company Act of 1967, and the Bank Holding Company Act Amendments of 1970. Beginning in the 1970s, however, the banks became more aggressive, while Congress’s resolve waned.


pages: 526 words: 144,019

A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History by Diana B. Henriques

Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, break the buck, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, buy low sell high, call centre, Carl Icahn, centralized clearinghouse, computerized trading, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, Dennis Tito, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, friendly fire, Glass-Steagall Act, index arbitrage, index fund, intangible asset, interest rate swap, It's morning again in America, junk bonds, laissez-faire capitalism, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, Michael Milken, money market fund, Myron Scholes, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, Silicon Valley, stock buybacks, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, tulip mania, uptick rule, Vanguard fund, web of trust

It might have been just an academic concern, but the “snowball” scenario was a puzzle, and a warning. 9 CHICAGO RISING Thursday, June 16, 1983, was the fiftieth anniversary of the Glass-Steagall Act, the landmark Depression-era law that was intended to firmly separate the nation’s banking industry from the risky world of Wall Street. To mark the occasion, Congressman Timothy E. Wirth of Colorado opened a hearing that afternoon to examine how porous the Glass-Steagall wall had become and what, if anything, should be done about it. Wirth was specifically incensed by the FDIC’s approach to the issue. In a handful of cases since 1969, the FDIC’s lawyers had quietly determined that the Glass-Steagall Act applied only to banks in the Federal Reserve System.

Congressman Wirth, who opposed the cuts, had asked Shad’s colleagues on the commission for their views. Longstreth and his three fellow commissioners, in a private response to the congressman, said they thought staffing should in fact be increased by 4 percent. Wirth had promptly released the exchange of letters to the media. However, on the topic of the Glass-Steagall Act, John Shad and Timothy Wirth were almost allies. Shad had frequently argued, in congressional testimony and public speeches, that the banking industry’s forays into traditional Wall Street activities should be curbed until the regulatory borders could be more clearly drawn and rule books written.

Soon after the Boesky scandal broke, in fact, Regan was considering ways the president could publicly show his support for John Shad’s beleaguered enforcement staff—an insightful gesture that certainly would have been welcome at the SEC in those demoralizing weeks. But as the Iran-Contra scandal eclipsed the continuing coverage of the Boesky investigation, Regan’s days in the White House were numbered. Volcker, too, was facing an uncertain climb into 1987. The Federal Reserve voted in December 1986 to liberalize its interpretation of the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing national banks to expand into certain precincts of the securities business. Whatever Volcker’s misgivings, the Fed’s new majority apparently planned to continue chopping holes in the Glass-Steagall fence until Congress either shored up the barrier between the banks and Wall Street or tore it down entirely.


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How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy by Mehrsa Baradaran

access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, British Empire, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, credit crunch, David Graeber, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, diversification, failed state, fiat currency, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, income inequality, Internet Archive, invisible hand, junk bonds, Kickstarter, low interest rates, M-Pesa, McMansion, Michael Milken, microcredit, mobile money, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Own Your Own Home, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, the payments system, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, working poor

He also believed that it was the government’s role to limit the excesses of the banking sector, and he crafted banking policy, as other presidents had before him, to achieve his political objectives. He fought effectively to limit the power of “a small minority of business men and financiers” by enacting wide-reaching activity restrictions and antitrust rules. Roosevelt and key legislators like Carter Glass and Henry Steagall (of the Glass-Steagall Act) also passed reforms to prevent destructive bank runs and to separate riskier investment banking activity from deposit-taking and lending. The federal government would provide a banking safety net, or deposit insurance, contingent on federal oversight and certain restrictions. The bargain that was struck allowed unit banks to survive, even though most of the bank failures of the time were due to their concentrated investments and general instability.

The long-lasting and comprehensive reforms of the era included deposit insurance, a continuation of unit banking, and federal laws on activity restrictions. These rules imposed a separation of traditional banking activities, such as lending and deposit-taking, from commercial activities, such as securities underwriting and brokering. The Glass-Steagall Act, the pillar of the New Deal banking reforms, thus entrenched the doctrine of “separation of banking and commerce” in U.S. banking regulation.82 The act also contained interest rate limits—the amount a bank could offer for deposits—intended to deter competition among banks. Reduced competition, it was believed, would lead to a more dispersed banking sector and more credit availability.

At the time, deposit insurance represented just one side of the social contract in which the federal government imposed a framework of controls intended to minimize the moral hazard effects of such insurance and to protect the insurance fund from losses. Banks operated conservatively and bank regulators, unchallenged, enforced the Glass-Steagall Act and other New Deal regulatory mandates. During this time, the regulatory goal of bank stability and the policy goal of reducing bank size and influence motivated banking regulation. Accordingly, the Bank Holding Company Act (BHCA) of 1956 would be added to the New Deal measures to limit bank size and power.


Investment: A History by Norton Reamer, Jesse Downing

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, backtesting, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, book value, break the buck, Brownian motion, business cycle, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, colonial rule, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, dogs of the Dow, equity premium, estate planning, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial innovation, fixed income, flying shuttle, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Henri Poincaré, Henry Singleton, high net worth, impact investing, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of the telegraph, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Bogle, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, land tenure, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, means of production, Menlo Park, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical arbitrage, survivorship bias, tail risk, technology bubble, Teledyne, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, time value of money, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, two and twenty, underbanked, Vanguard fund, working poor, yield curve

Progress in Managing Cyclical Crises 31. Matthew P. Fink, The Rise of Mutual Funds: An Insider’s View, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 23–24. 32. SEC, “Laws That Govern the Securities Industry.” 33. “Topics: Glass-Steagall Act (1933),” New York Times, accessed January 2015, http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g /glass_steagall_act_1933/index.html. 34. Hyman P. Minsky, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986). 35. William Seyfried, “Monetary Policy and Housing Bubbles: A Multinational Perspective,” Research in Business and Economics Journal 2 (March 2010), http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/09351.pdf, 1–2. 36.

“The 2010 Institutional Investment Report: Trends in Asset Allocation and Portfolio Composition.” Research Report R-1468-10-RR, The Conference Board, New York, NY, 2010. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1707512. “Topics: Glass-Steagall Act (1933).” New York Times, accessed January 2015. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g /glass_steagall_act_1933/index.html. Toutain, Jules. The Economic Life of the Ancient World. Translated by M. R. Dobie. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1996. Towers Watson and Financial Times. “Global Alternatives Survey 2012.” Last modified July 2012. http://www.towerswatson.com/en-US/Insights /IC-Types/Sur vey-Research-Results/2012/07/Global-Alternatives -Survey-2012.

During the years leading up to the Great Recession of 2007–2009, there were widespread attitudes in various administrations and Congresses that led to relaxation of some of the more restrictive prohibitions that were the legacy of the Great Depression and subsequent financial crises such as the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, various international crises of the 1990s, and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. One notable example was the repeal of Glass-Steagall in the late 1990s. The Glass-Steagall Act passed by Congress in the 1930s prevented commercial banks from owning investment banks in a post-Depression attempt to prevent deposit-taking institutions from engaging in high-risk financial transactions.33 Throughout the period, competitive regulatory agencies were allowed to develop, gaps in regulatory coverage occurred and were not corrected, clarity in regulatory responsibilities was not established, and lapses in regulatory enforcement occurred.


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The Globalization of Inequality by François Bourguignon

Berlin Wall, Branko Milanovic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Edward Glaeser, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial intermediation, gender pay gap, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, income per capita, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, minimum wage unemployment, offshore financial centre, open economy, Pareto efficiency, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Robert Gordon, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, very high income, Washington Consensus

In particular, returning to a strict separation between managing savings and offering loans to individuals or companies, and investing in financial markets,15 would allow us to cease being held hostage to these giant banks whose risky investments threaten individual savings as well as the financing of the economy. It is in part this idea that some banks are “too big to fail” that has allowed them to extract the rents that make possible the astronomical remuneration they offer a portion of their employees. More generI.e., re-­establishing some form of the Glass-­Steagall Act in the United States, which was abolished in 1999. 15 Policies for a Fairer Globalization 175 ally, any regulation that would lower the probability of systemic risk and by extension decrease the pressure that the large financial institutions are able to exert on elected officials would have the same effect.

Index 9/11 attacks, 139 Abacha, 151 Abu Dhabi, 127 Africa: Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and, 156; evolution of inequality and, 46t, 54–55; fairer globalization and, 147, 151, 154–56, 179, 183; global inequality and, 16, 21, 23, 30–31, 34, 36; globalization and, 122–23, 126–27; population growth and, 183; rise in inequality and, 90, 109, 111–12, 185 African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), 155 agriculture, 12, 82, 84, 122–23, 127–28, 155 AIDS, 156 Alesina, Alberto, 134 Anand, Sudhir, 13n4 Argentina, 46t, 110, 172 artists, 86–87 Asian dragons, 34, 82 Bangladesh, 30, 46t, 54 Belgium, 46t, 53, 101–2, 169 Berlin Wall, 91 Big Bang, 95 Bolivia, 16, 24 Bolsa Familia, 166 bonuses, 87, 174 Bottom Billion, The (Collier), 23 Brazil, 110, 186; evolution of inequality and, 46t, 55, 59, 70; fairer globalization and, 150, 154, 166–68, 173; Gini coeffi- cient of, 22; global inequality and, 21–23; globalization and, 127, 133 Buffett, Warren, 5–6, 159–60 Cameroon, 46t, 54 Canada, 46t, 51f capital: developed/developing countries and, 5; evolution of inequality and, 55–58, 60, 73; fairer globalization and, 158–62, 167, 171, 175, 182; GDP measurement and, 13–15, 20–21, 23, 26, 27f, 29–30, 39, 41–45, 56–57, 94, 123, 127, 165–66, 176; globalization and, 117, 125–26, 132, 137; human, 74, 167, 175; labor and, 3–4, 55– 58, 60, 158, 161n7, 185; liberalization and, 96; mobility of, 3, 73–74, 93, 98–99, 115, 160, 162, 182, 185; rise in inequality and, 74, 76–80, 84–85, 89, 93, 95–99, 103, 109, 114–15; taxes and, 187, 189 (see also taxes) Card, David, 105–6 Caruso, Enrico, 86 Checchi, Daniele, 107 China: evolution of inequality and, 47, 53, 57–60; fairer globalization and, 150, 154, 165–66, 172, 178; geographical disequilibria and, 83; global inequality and, 16; globalization and, 120– 22, 128; Huajian and, 155; Human Development Report and, 25; international trade and, 75; Kuznets hypothesis and, 192 China (cont.) 113; protectionism and, 178; Revolution of, 26; rise in inequality and, 2, 11n2, 17, 25, 30, 36, 38, 46t, 75, 82–83, 112–13; standard of living and, 16, 120– 22; taxes and, 165 Cold War, 149, 153 Collier, Paul, 23 Colombia, 133 commodity prices, 147, 182 competition: Asian dragons and, 34, 82; deindustrialization and, 75–82; effect of new players and, 75–76; emerging economies and, 178, 187–88; fairer globalization and, 155, 169, 173, 176–79, 182; globalization and, 117–18, 130; markets and, 76– 77, 79–82, 84, 86, 94–98, 102, 104, 115–18, 130, 155, 169, 173, 176–79, 182, 186–88; offshoring and, 81–82; rents and, 102; rise in inequality and, 76– 77, 79–82, 84, 86, 94–96, 98, 102, 104, 115–16; Southern perspective on, 82–85; United Kingdom and, 78–79; United States and, 78–79; wage ladder effects and, 78–79 conditional cash transfers, 165–66 consumers: fairer globalization and, 177–78; spending of, 10, 12–13, 61; subsidies and, 109–10 consumption: evolution of inequality and, 42t, 44t; expenditure per capita and, 13, 15, 42t, 44t; fairer globalization and, 159, 177; globalization and, 137–39; growth and, 13–15, 42t, 44t, 80, 137–39, 159, 177; protection- Index ism and, 7, 147, 154, 157, 176– 79; rise in inequality and, 80 convergence: evolution of inequality and, 65, 69; fairer globalization and, 146–47, 157; globalization and, 120–22, 125; growth and, 16; income and, 16; poverty reduction and, 147–48; standard of living and, 7, 147–48 credit: default swaps and, 139; evolution of inequality and, 61; fairer globalization and, 164–65, 172, 180; globalization and, 131–32, 137–40; rise in inequality and, 96; taxes and, 164 credit cards, 165 criminal activity, 133–34, 152 crises: evolution of inequality and, 48, 50, 54, 57, 73–74; fairer globalization and, 163, 176; Glass-­ Steagall Act and, 174n15; global inequality and, 20, 38–41; globalization and, 119–22, 125, 135–39, 142; recent, 48, 110, 135, 142, 163, 188; rise in inequality and, 92, 94, 96, 99, 109–11; “too big to fail” concept and, 174–75 Current Population Survey, 21 debit cards, 165 deindustrialization, 1, 102, 188; effects on developed countries, 75–82; exports and, 76, 82; globalization and, 120; international trade and, 75–76, 78–79; manufacturing and, 75–82, 84, 123; North vs.

See also emerging economies development aid, 148–53, 157 development gap, 34–35, 83 Di Bao program, 166 discrimination: ghettos and, 66– 67; immigrants and, 64, 66, 127; labor and, 64–66, 69, 132, 142, 180–81; non-­material inequalites and, 64–66, 69; racial, 65; women and, 64–65, 103 disinflation, 95, 102, 110 distribution, 10n1, 186; capital-­ labor split and, 55–58, 60; efficiency and, 142–45; evolution of inequality and, 41, 42t, 44t, 45, 46t, 48–59, 64, 71–72; fairer globalization and, 148, 153, 156–73, 175, 178; geographical disequilibria and, 83; Gini coefficient and, 18 (see also Gini coefficient); global, 18–19, 25, 29, 39, 41, 46t, 121, 124–38, 141– 45, 156; growth and, 49–50, 188; international, 17–18, 30, 148; median of, 31; OECD countries and, 10–11, 12n3; policy and, 26, 72, 135, 188; range of, 16; real earnings loss and, 78; redistribution and, 4, 7, 37 (see also redistribution); rise in inequality and, 74, 77–79, 82, 85, 90–92, 94–96, 99, 103–4, 106–7, 112, 114–15; Southern perspective on, 82–85; standard of living and, 16, 18 (see also standard of living); taxes and, 37, 92–94 (see also taxes); Theil coefficient and, 18–19, 37–38, 194 distribution (cont.) 52; transfers and, 4, 14, 48, 105, 110, 130, 135–36, 142, 148, 153, 158–67, 170, 175, 181, 183, 187; wage, 3, 78–79, 107 Divided We Stand report, 52 Doha negotiations, 154 drugs, 66, 133 Dubai, 127 Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), 156 education, 34, 187; college, 132; evolution of inequality and, 61, 65–68; fairer globalization and, 149, 152, 167–73, 180–81; globalization and, 132, 140, 143; labor and, 168, 180; Millennium Development Goals and, 149– 50; national inequality and, 167–73; poverty and, 24; preschool, 169–70; redistribution and, 149, 152, 167–73; rise in inequality and, 111; taxes and, 167–73; tuition and, 170 efficiency: data transfer technology and, 78; deregulation and, 94, 96, 105, 108; economic, 1, 4, 6, 111, 116, 119, 129–33, 135, 140–45, 158, 164, 167, 171, 181; emerging economies and, 78; equality and, 116, 129–31; fairness and, 8, 129– 31; globalization and, 1, 4, 6, 8, 36, 78, 94, 96, 105, 108, 111, 116, 118–19, 129–35, 140–45, 157–58, 164, 167, 170–71, 175, 180–81, 188; human capital and, 175; import substitution and, 34, 180; inefficiency and, 105, 129–30, 132–33, 135, 140, 170–71, 180, 188; labor Index and, 175; loss of, 142, 164; opportunity and, 142–45; Pareto, 130n5; privatization and, 94, 96, 105, 108; redistribution and, 142–45; rents and, 180; social tensions and, 188; spontaneous redistribution and, 133; taxes and, 170; technology and, 78; weak institutions and, 36; wealth of nations and, 1 elitism, 182; fairer globalization and, 151, 165; globalization and, 127n4, 136, 138; rise in inequality and, 4, 6–7 emerging economies: Africa and, 122–23 (see also Africa); competition and, 178, 187–88; conditional cash transfers and, 165– 66; credit cards and, 165; domestic markets and, 120, 125; efficient data transfer and, 78; evolution of inequality and, 57; fairer globalization and, 147, 154, 158, 165–66, 177–78, 182; global inequality and, 40, 77– 80, 82, 109, 113, 115, 188–89; globalization and, 117, 119–22, 125–27; institutions and, 109– 12; Kuznets curve and, 113; labor and, 77; natural resources and, 127; profits and, 117; rise in inequality and, 109–12; structural adjustment and, 109– 12; taxes and, 165; trends in, 57; Washington consensus and, 109–10, 153 entrepreneurs, 83, 92, 96, 131–32, 135, 143, 170–71, 188 equality: efficiency and, 116, 129– 31; policy for, 184–89; relative gap and, 18, 28, 30, 31–32, 36 Ethiopia, 21–22, 46t, 155 Index195 European Union (EU), 24, 156, 174, 177 Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative, 155 evolution of inequality: Africa and, 46t, 54–55; Brazil and, 46t, 55, 59, 70; capital and, 55–58, 60, 73; China and, 47, 53, 57–60; consumption and, 42t, 44t; convergence and, 65, 69; credit and, 61; crises and, 48, 50, 54, 57, 73–74; developed countries and, 47, 52–53, 56, 59–64, 66; developing countries and, 47, 53–55, 57, 63, 68; distribution and, 41, 42t, 44t, 45, 46t, 48–59, 64, 71– 72; education and, 61, 65–68; elitism and, 4, 6–7, 46t; emerging economies and, 57; exceptions and, 52–53; France and, 46t, 51f, 52–53, 55, 58, 59n8, 62–63, 66, 70–71; ghettos and, 66–67; Gini coefficient and, 39, 42t, 44t, 48, 50, 51f, 53, 58–59; Great Depression and, 48; growth and, 33, 49–50, 54; India and, 54, 57, 59–60; institutions and, 55, 69; investment and, 56; labor and, 55–58, 60; markets and, 48–50, 53–54, 64, 69; national income inequality and, 48–52; non-­monetary inequalities and, 49, 60–70; normalization and, 41, 43–44; opportunity and, 61–62, 68, 70–71; perceptions of inequality and, 69–73; policy and, 55, 72; primary income and, 48–50, 58; production and, 57; productivity and, 63; profit and, 56; reform and, 54, 72; rise in inequality in, 48–52, 73, 77–80, 91–95, 97–98, 102–8; risk and, 63, 66; standard of living and, 41, 43– 45, 46t, 53–55, 58, 60–62, 67, 69, 73; surveys and, 42t, 43–45, 56, 68n17, 69–71; taxes and, 12–14, 37, 48, 50, 56n5; Theil coefficient and, 42; United Kingdom and, 46t, 50, 51f, 59, 67, 68n17; United States and, 2, 4–6, 9, 11, 21, 33, 46t, 47–50, 51f, 58, 59n9, 66–70, 73; wealth and, 58–60 executives, 73, 88–89, 97, 174 expenditure per capita, 13, 15, 42t, 44t exports: deindustrialization and, 76, 82; fairer globalization and, 147, 154–55, 176, 178; globalization and, 124, 128; rise in inequality and, 76, 82–84 fairer globalization: Africa and, 147, 151, 154–56, 179, 183; African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) and, 155; Bolsa Familia and, 166; Brazil and, 150, 154, 166–68, 173; capital and, 158–62, 167, 171, 175, 182; China and, 150, 154, 165–66, 172, 178; competition and, 155, 169, 173, 176–79, 182; consumers and, 177–78; consumption and, 159, 177; convergence and, 146–47, 157; correcting national inequalities and, 158–80; credit and, 164–65, 172, 180; crises and, 163, 176; deregulation and, 173; developed countries and, 150, 154–57, 160, 162, 164, 168–72, 176, 178–79, 181; developing countries and, 154, 166; development aid and, 196 fairer globalization (cont.) 148–53, 157; Di Bao program and, 166; distribution and, 148, 153, 156–73, 175, 178; Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and, 156; education and, 149, 152, 167–73; 180–81; elitism and, 151, 165; emerging economies and, 147, 154, 158, 165–66, 177–78, 182; Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative and, 155; exports and, 147, 154–55, 176, 178; France and, 147, 159–61, 164, 169, 175, 177; Gini coefficient and, 156, 166; goods and services sector and, 180; growth and, 147–52, 155, 162, 167–68, 171, 177, 180, 183; health issues and, 152, 166; imports and, 154, 177–78, 180; India and, 150, 154, 165– 66, 172; inheritance and, 170– 73; institutions and, 151, 168, 174–75; international trade and, 176–77; investment and, 150, 155, 157, 160, 170, 174, 179; liberalization and, 156, 179; markets and, 147–48, 154–58, 168, 173–75, 178–81; Millennium Development Goals and, 149–50; national inequality and, 147, 158; opportunity and, 155, 167, 170, 172; policy and, 147–53, 157, 167–73, 175, 177, 179–83; poverty and, 147–52, 164, 166, 175; prices and, 147– 48, 176, 178, 182; primary income and, 158, 163n10, 167, 173; production and, 155–57, 167, 176, 178–79; productivity and, 155, 177–78; profit and, 173, 176; Progresa program and, Index 166; protectionism and, 7, 147, 154, 157, 176–79; redistribution and, 148, 153, 156–73, 175, 178; reform and, 151, 161, 163, 168–69; regulation and, 152, 173–76, 181–82; risk and, 148, 154, 156, 159, 164, 171, 174–75, 178; standard of living and, 146–48, 154, 156–58, 160, 165, 168–69; surveys and, 169; taxes and, 148, 158–73, 175, 181–83; technology and, 156, 173; TRIPS and, 156; United Kingdom and, 163, 169; United States and, 155, 159–61, 163– 64, 169, 174–75, 182; wealth and, 162, 164, 167, 170–73 Fitoussi, Jean-­Paul, 14 France: evolution of inequality and, 46t, 51f, 52–53, 55, 58, 59n8, 62–63, 66, 70–71; fairer globalization and, 147, 159–61, 164, 169, 175, 177; Gini coefficient of, 20; global inequality and, 2, 9, 11, 20–21; offshoring and, 81; rise in inequality and, 80, 88, 92–93, 95, 97, 99, 103; soccer and, 87; wage deductions and, 159 G7 countries, 56 G20 countries, 182 Garcia-­Panalosa, Cecilia, 107 Gates, Bill, 5–6, 70, 150 Germany, 2, 21, 46t, 50, 51f, 80, 88, 92 Ghana, 46t, 54 ghettos, 66–67 Giertz, Seth, 160–61 Gini coefficient: Brazil and, 22; Current Population Survey and, 21; evolution of inequality and, Index197 39, 42t, 44t, 48, 50, 51f, 53, 58– 59; fairer globalization and, 156, 166; France and, 20; historical perspective on, 27–28; meaning of, 18–19; purchasing power parity and, 28; rise in inequality and, 110; United States and, 21; wealth inequality and, 58–60 Glass-­Steagall Act, 174n15 global distribution, 18–19, 25, 29, 39, 41, 46t, 121, 156 global inequality: Africa and, 16, 21, 23, 30–31, 34, 36; between countries, 2–3, 5, 7, 9, 16–19, 23, 33, 36, 38–39, 42–45, 47, 53, 58, 68, 90–91, 107, 117–19, 123, 128, 153; Brazil and, 21– 23; crises and, 20, 38–41; cross-­ country heterogeneity and, 13; definition of, 3–4, 9–10, 25–26, 30–32, 39; developed countries and, 10–11, 21, 34–39; developing countries and, 10–11, 13, 21, 32, 34–39; effects of, 38–40; emerging economies and, 40, 77–80, 82, 109, 113, 115, 188– 89; at the end of the 2000s, 20– 25; evolution of inequality and, 41 (see also evolution of inequality); expenditure per capita and, 13, 15, 42t, 44t; France and, 2, 9, 11, 20–21; globalization and, 117–18, 121–23, 128; great gap and, 33–36; historic turning point for, 25–32; Human Development Report and, 25; institutions and, 36; measuring, 10– 20; Millennium Development Goals and, 149–50, 185; normalization and, 13, 15, 22–23, 26, 29; OECD Database on Household Income Distribution and Poverty and, 11–12; policy and, 185–89; Povcal database and, 10, 12, 42t, 43, 44t; prices and, 27–28, 74, 80, 84, 91–92, 94, 97, 110; profit and, 13; reduction of, 2, 185–86; relative gap and, 18, 28, 30–32, 36; rise of, 2–4, 7; risk and, 20; standard of living and, 10–26, 29, 31–33, 36, 39; surveys on, 10, 12–15, 20n10, 21–22, 29, 42t, 43–45; technology and, 3–4, 34–35; trend reversal in, 37–38; within countries, 2, 5–7, 9, 16, 30, 33, 35–45, 47, 113–14, 118, 124– 29, 184–85, 189 globalization: Africa and, 122–23, 126–27; Asian dragons and, 34, 82; Brazil and, 127, 133; capital and, 117, 125–26, 132, 137; China and, 120–22, 128; competition and, 117–18, 130, 186 (see also competition); as complex historical phenomenon, 1–2; consumption and, 137–39; convergence and, 120–22, 125; credit and, 131–32, 137–40; crises and, 119–22, 125, 135–39, 142; debate over, 1; deindustrialization in developed countries and, 75–82; democratic societies and, 135–36; deregulation and, 95–99; developed countries and, 117, 119, 121, 127n4, 128, 133, 143; developing countries and, 121, 127n4, 128, 132, 143; education and, 132, 140, 143; efficiency and, 1, 4, 6, 8, 36, 78, 94, 96, 105, 108, 111, 116, 118–19, 129–35, 140–45, 157–58, 164, 167, 170–71, 175, 180–81, 188; elitism and, 127n4, 136, 138; 198 globalization (cont.) emerging economies and, 117, 119–22, 125–27; exports and, 124, 128; fairer, 146–83 (see also fairer globalization); future of inequality between countries and, 119–22; global inequality and, 117–18, 121–23, 128; goods and services sector and, 127, 130; growth and, 118–29, 134–39; health issues and, 140– 41, 144; Heckscher-­Ohlin model and, 76; imports and, 119, 124; inequality within countries and, 124–29; inheritance and, 144–45; institutions and, 124; as instrument for modernization, 1; international trade and, 3, 75–76, 78–79, 83, 112, 114, 176–77; investment and, 119, 130, 134–35, 143; laissez-­faire approach and, 118, 129; markets and, 118, 120–21, 124–37, 140, 143–44; as moral threat, 1; national inequality and, 119; negative consequences of inequality and, 131–42; opportunity and, 133–34, 139, 142–44; as panacea, 1; policy and, 118–19, 124, 126, 128–31, 139, 143–44; poverty and, 117, 123, 126–27, 134, 144; prices and, 118, 122, 126, 136–38; primary income and, 135, 143–44; production and, 119, 124, 126, 129, 131, 133, 137; productivity and, 120, 125, 127, 144; profit and, 117; redistribution and, 121, 124–38, 141–45; reform and, 124, 126–27, 138; regulation and, 136; rise in inequality and, 117–18; risk and, 127–28, Index 137–39, 144; shocks and, 38, 55, 91–92, 175; Southern perspective on, 82–85; standard of living and, 120–23, 126, 138, 143; surveys and, 127n4, 141n15; taxes and, 74, 89n10, 91–94, 104, 114–15, 129–30, 135–36, 142–45; technology and, 86–91, 118–20, 125; trends and, 118; United States and, 135–39; wealth and, 74, 95, 98, 125, 127, 129, 131–32, 139, 143–45 Great Depression, 48 Greece, 46t, 135 gross domestic product (GDP) measurement: Current Population Survey and, 21; evolution of inequality and, 41–45, 56–57; fairer globalization and, 123, 127, 165–66, 176; global inequality and, 13–15, 20–21, 23, 26, 27f, 29–30, 39; normalization and, 29, 41, 43–45; rise in inequality and, 94; Sen-­Stiglitz-­ Fitoussi report and, 14 Gross National Income (GNI), 148–49 Growing Unequal report, 52 growth, 4; African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) and, 155; constraints and, 35; consumption and, 13–15, 42t, 44t, 80, 137–39, 159, 177; convergence and, 16; determinants of, 34; distribution and, 49–50, 188; emerging economies and, 125 (see also emerging economies); evolution of inequality and, 33, 49–50, 54; fairer globalization and, 147–52, 155, 162, 167–68, 171, 177, 180, 183; GDP mea- Index199 surement of, 30, 39 (see also gross domestic product (GDP) measurement); globalization and, 118–29, 134–39; great gap in, 33–36; import substitution and, 34, 180; inflation and, 50, 95, 102, 110; negative, 31; political reversals and, 36; poverty and, 28–29; production and, 3, 34–35, 57, 74, 76–81, 84–86, 119, 124, 126, 129, 131, 133, 137, 155–57, 167, 176, 178–79; rate of, 15, 29–35, 79, 125, 185; recession and, 6, 31, 99, 120; relative gap and, 18, 20, 30–32, 36; rise in inequality and, 75, 79, 82, 84, 109–12; trends in, 40, 121 health issues, 24, 187; fairer globalization and, 152, 166; globalization and, 140–41, 144; public healthcare and, 37, 111, 140 Heckscher-­Ohlin model, 76 Hong Kong, 34, 82, 174 housing, 12, 61, 137 human capital, 74, 167, 175 Human Development Report, 25 Ibrahimovich, Zlata, 87 IKEA, 172 immigrants, 64, 66, 127 imports: fairer globalization and, 154, 177–78, 180; globalization and, 119, 124; import substitution and, 34, 180; rise in inequality and, 80 income: average, 9, 18, 21, 29–30, 43, 72; bonuses and, 87, 174; convergence and, 16; currency conversion and, 11; definition of, 45; deindustrialization and, 75–82; developed/developing countries and, 5, 36; disposable, 20, 22, 24, 48, 50, 51f, 74, 91, 163; distribution of, 3 (see also distribution); executives and, 73, 88–89, 97, 174; family, 10; financial operators and, 87–88, 90–91; gap in, 3, 5–6, 27f, 33– 36, 42t, 44t, 149; GDP measurement and, 13–15, 20–21, 23, 26, 27f, 29–30, 39, 41–45, 56–57, 94, 123, 127, 165–66, 176; high, 50, 52, 56, 85–93, 97–99, 140, 143, 158–62, 164, 189; household, 10–12, 43, 45, 50, 58, 105, 107, 137, 163, 177; inequality in, 2, 4, 41, 48–50, 56–64, 68, 70, 72–73, 83, 98, 102–3, 107–8, 114, 125, 132– 34, 137, 140–41, 143–44, 163; inflation and, 50, 95, 102, 110; international scale for, 17–18, 23, 30; lawyers and, 89–90; mean, 17, 20n10, 27f, 42t, 44t; median, 6, 49, 71, 102–3, 106; minimum wage and, 52–53, 100, 102–8, 175, 177; national, 7, 16–19, 30, 43, 48–52, 60, 73, 84n6, 125, 149, 153, 172; OECD Database on Household Income Distribution and Poverty and, 11; opportunity and, 5; payroll and, 53, 93, 100, 104, 107, 175; pension systems and, 167; per capita, 20, 25, 29–30, 42t, 45, 48, 55–56, 120; portfolios and, 88; poverty and, 1, 11, 15n6, 19–20, 22–25, 28–29, 32, 44t, 109, 117, 123, 126–27, 134, 144, 147–52, 164, 166, 175; primary, 48–50, 58, 135, 143–44, 158, 163n10, 167, 173; 200 income (cont.) purchasing power and, 11, 13, 19–24, 27f, 28, 50, 80, 144, 158, 178; real earnings loss and, 78; relative gap and, 18, 28, 30, 31– 32, 36; superstars and, 85–87, 89–90; taxes and, 37, 89n10, 92–93, 145, 159, 161–65, 170 (see also taxes); technology and, 34, 180; virtual, 12; wage inequality and, 51–53, 79, 101–3, 106, 108; wage ladder effects and, 78–79; wealth inequality and, 58–60; women and, 64– 65, 103 India: evolution of inequality and, 54, 57, 59–60; fairer globalization and, 150, 154, 165– 66, 172; household consumption and, 15; international trade and, 75; Kuznets hypothesis and, 113; rise in inequality and, 2, 15–16, 19, 30, 34, 46t, 75, 83, 90, 112–13; taxes and, 165 Indonesia, 30, 46t, 54, 111, 127 industrialization: deindustrialization and, 1, 75–82, 102, 120, 188; labor and, 1, 26, 29, 33, 35, 54, 82, 84, 102, 113, 120, 127, 179, 188 Industrial Revolution, 26, 29, 33, 35 inequality: between countries, 2–3, 5, 7, 9, 16–19, 23, 33, 36, 38– 39, 42–45, 47, 53, 58, 68, 90– 91, 107, 117–19, 123, 128, 153; efficiency and, 1, 4, 6, 8, 36, 78, 94, 96, 105, 108, 111, 116, 118– 19, 129–35, 140–45, 157–58, 164, 167, 170–71, 175, 180–81, 188; Gini coefficient and, 18 (see Index also Gini coefficient); income, 2, 4, 41, 48–50, 56–64, 68, 70, 72–73, 83, 98, 102–3, 107–8, 114, 125, 132–34, 137, 140–41, 143–44, 163; international, 17; inverted U curve and, 54, 113; measurement of, 18; negative consequences of, 131–42; non-­ monetary, 49, 60–70; perceptions of, 69–73; social tensions and, 188; standard of living and, 18 (see also standard of living); Theil coefficient and, 18–19, 37–38, 42; wealth, 58–60; within countries, 2, 5–7, 9, 16, 30, 33, 37–45, 47, 113–14, 118, 124–29, 184–85, 189 infant mortality, 150 inflation, 50, 95, 102, 110 inheritance: fairer globalization and, 170–73; globalization and, 144–45; rise in inequality and, 93 institutions: deregulation and, 91– 112 (see also deregulation); disinflation and, 95, 102, 110; emerging economies and, 109– 12; evolution of inequality and, 55, 69; fairer globalization and, 151, 168, 174–75; global inequality and, 36; globalization and, 124; markets and, 91–92; privatization and, 94–109; reform and, 91–112; rise in inequality and, 91–112, 114; structural adjustment and, 109– 12; taxes and, 92–94; “too big to fail” concept and, 174–75; Washington consensus and, 109–10, 153 International Development Association, 149 Index201 international income scale, 17–18, 23, 30 International Labor Organization, 51 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 54, 57, 84, 90, 109–10 international trade: capital mobility and, 74; China and, 75; de­ industrialization and, 75–76, 78–79; effect of new players, 75–76; Heckscher-­Ohlin model and, 76; India and, 75; offshoring and, 81–82; rise in inequality and, 75–76, 78–79, 83, 112, 114; Soviet Union and, 75; theory of, 76; wage ladder effects and, 78–79 inverted U curve, 54, 113 investment: direct, 76, 79; evolution of inequality and, 56; fairer globalization and, 150, 155, 157, 160, 170, 174, 179; foreign, 83, 85, 112, 155, 157, 160, 179; globalization and, 119, 130, 134– 35, 143; production and, 119; public services and, 143; re-­ investment and, 56; rise in inequality and, 76, 79, 82–83, 85, 92, 97–98, 112; taxes and, 92 Ivory Coast, 54 Japan, 34, 46t, 51f, 103 job training, 34, 181, 187 Kenya, 46t, 54 kidnapping, 133 Kuznets, Simon, 113, 126 labor: agriculture and, 12, 82, 84, 122–23, 127–28, 132, 155; artists and, 86–87; bonuses and, 87, 174; capital and, 3–4, 55– 58, 60, 158, 161n7, 185; capital mobility and, 3; cheap, 77, 117; costs of, 81, 100, 104–5, 117, 176, 187; decline in share of national income and, 73; deindustrialization and, 75–82; demand for, 168; deregulation and, 99– 109; discrimination and, 64–66, 69, 132, 142, 180–81; distribution of income and, 175 (see also distribution); education and, 168, 180; efficiency and, 96–97, 175; emerging economies and, 77; entrepreneurs and, 83, 92, 96, 131–32, 135, 143, 170–71, 188; evolution of inequality and, 55–58, 60; excess, 81, 83; executives and, 73, 88–89, 97, 174; goods and services sector and, 13, 73, 80, 85, 91, 102, 127, 130, 180; growth and, 154, 179; immigrant, 64, 66, 127; increased mobility and, 90–91; industrialization and, 1, 26, 29, 33, 35, 54, 80, 82, 84, 102, 113, 120, 127, 179, 188; inflation and, 50, 95, 102, 110; International Labor Organization and, 51; job training and, 34, 181, 187; manufacturing and, 57, 80–82, 84, 123, 154–55, 157; median wage and, 49, 71, 102– 3, 106; minimum wage and, 52– 53, 100, 102–8, 175, 177; mobility of, 185; offshoring and, 81–82; payroll and, 53, 93, 100, 104, 107, 175; pension systems and, 167; portfolios and, 88; poverty and, 1, 11, 15n6, 19– 20, 22–25, 28–29, 32, 44t, 109, 117, 123, 126–27, 134, 144, 147–52, 164, 166, 175; 202 labor (cont.) privatization and, 99–109; productivity and, 63, 79, 81–82, 89, 100, 102, 104, 114, 120, 125, 127, 144, 155, 177–78; protectionism and, 7, 147, 154, 157, 176–79; real earnings loss and, 78; reserve, 84; security and, 133; skilled, 76–78, 82–83, 86, 90, 114, 117, 126, 176; standard of living and, 69 (see also standard of living); superstars and, 85, 87, 89–90; supply of, 130– 31, 164; taxes and, 159–60, 171; technology and, 85–91 (see also technology); unemployment and, 37, 39, 53, 62–63, 66, 69, 77, 94, 100–108, 164, 175–76; unions and, 100–106, 108, 156, 179; unskilled, 3, 76–77, 79, 83, 105, 117, 154; wage inequality and, 51–53, 79, 101–3, 106, 108; wage ladder effects and, 78–79; women and, 64–65, 103, 114; writers and, 86–87 Lady Gaga, 5–6 laissez-­faire approach, 118, 129 Latin America, 9, 34, 36, 54–55, 58, 109–11, 155, 165–66, 168, 180 lawyers, 89–90 liberalization: capital and, 96; customs, 156; deregulation and, 96–99, 108–9, 112 (see also deregulation); fairer globalization and, 156, 179; mobility of capital and, 115; policy effects of, 97–99; Reagan administration and, 91; recession and, 6, 31, 99, 120; rise in inequality and, 76, 91, 93, 96–99, 108–9, 112, 115; tax rates and, 93 Luxembourg, 16, 19 Index Madonna, 71 Malaysia, 127 manufacturing: deindustrialization and, 75–82, 84, 123; emerging economies and, 57, 84; fairer globalization and, 154–55, 157; France and, 81; offshoring and, 81–82; United Kingdom and, 80; United States and, 80 markets: competition and, 76–77, 79–82, 84, 86, 94–98, 102, 104, 115–18, 130, 155, 169, 173, 176–79, 182, 186–88; credit, 131; deindustrialization and, 1, 75–82, 102, 120, 188; deregulation and, 91–92, 99–109 (see also deregulation); development gap and, 34–35, 83; Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and, 156; effect of new players, 75–76; emerging economies and, 120 (see also emerging economies); entrepreneurs and, 83, 92, 96, 131–32, 135, 143, 170–71, 188; evolution of inequality and, 48–50, 53–54, 64, 69; exports and, 76, 82–84, 124, 128, 147, 154–55, 176, 178; fairer globalization and, 147–48, 154–58, 168, 173–75, 178–81; GDP measurement and, 13–15, 20–21, 23, 26, 27f, 29–30, 39, 41–45, 56–57, 94, 123, 127, 165–66, 176; globalization and, 35, 118, 120–21, 124–37, 140, 143–44; Heckscher-­Ohlin model and, 76; housing, 12, 61, 137; imports and, 1, 34, 80, 119, 124, 154, 177–78, 180; institutions and, 91–112; international trade and, 3, 75–76, 78–79, 83, 112, 114, 176–77; labor and, Index203 144 (see also labor); liberalization and, 112 (see also liberalization); monopolies and, 94, 111, 127, 136; offshoring and, 81– 82; protectionism and, 7, 147, 154, 157, 176–79; purchasing power and, 11, 13, 19–24, 27f, 28, 50, 80, 144, 158, 178; reform and, 54 (see also reform); regulation and, 74 (see also regulation); rise in inequality and, 74, 76– 79, 83, 86, 90–112, 114; shocks and, 38, 55, 91–92, 175; single market and, 76; South-­South exchange and, 35; TRIPS and, 156 median wage, 49, 71, 102–3, 106 Mexico, 46t, 57, 59, 109–10, 133, 166, 172 middle class, 51, 71, 93, 109, 133– 34, 136, 140 Milanovic, Branko, 4–5, 17n8, 29n16 Millennium Development Goals, 149–50, 185 minerals, 84, 127 minimum wage, 52–53, 100, 102– 8, 175, 177 monopolies, 94, 111, 127, 136 Morocco, 173 Morrisson, Christian, 28 movies, 87 Murtin, Fabrice, 28 national inequality, 2–4; correcting, 158–80; education and, 167–73; fairer globalization and, 147, 158; Gini coefficient and, 27 (see also Gini coefficient); globalization and, 119; market regulation and, 173–75; protectionism and, 147, 157, 176–79; redistribution and, 158–73, 175, 178; rise in, 6, 48– 52, 115, 204; taxes and, 158–73, 175, 181–83 natural resources, 84–85, 92, 122, 126–28, 127, 151 Netherlands, 46t, 50, 66, 70, 102 Nigeria, 9, 46t, 54, 127, 151 non-­monetary inequalities: access and, 61, 67–68; capability and, 61; differences in environment and, 66–68; discrimination and, 64–66, 69; employment precariousness and, 63–64; evolution of inequality and, 49, 60–70; intergenerational mobility and, 68; opportunities and, 49, 60– 70; social justice and, 60, 70; unemployment and, 62–63 normalization: evolution of inequality and, 41, 43–44; GDP measurement and, 29, 41, 43– 45; global inequality and, 13, 15, 22–23, 26, 29 Occupy Wall Street movement, 6, 135 OECD countries, 27t; evolution of inequality and, 42t, 43, 44t, 50– 52, 64, 65n13; fairer globalization and, 149, 159, 162, 164– 65; Gini coefficient and, 51; income distribution and, 51; relaxation of regulation and, 99; restrictive, 64; rise in inequality and, 50–51, 94, 99, 102, 106n18, 107; social programs and, 94; standard of living and, 11–12, 43, 50–52, 64, 94, 99, 102, 107, 120, 149, 159, 162, 164–65; U-­shaped curve on income and, 50 OECD Database on Household 204 Income Distribution and Poverty, 11–12 offshoring, 81–82 oil, 92, 127 opportunity, 5; African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) and, 155; as capability, 61; efficiency and, 142–45; evolution of inequality and, 61–62, 68, 70–71; fairer globalization and, 155, 167, 170, 172; globalization and, 133–34, 139, 142–44; redistribution and, 142–45; rise in inequality and, 102 Pakistan, 46t, 111 Pareto efficiency, 130n5 Pavarotti, Luciano, 86–87 payroll, 53, 93, 100, 104, 107, 175 Pearson Commission, 149 pension systems, 167 Perotti, Roberto, 134 Philippines, 46t, 111 Pickett, Kate, 140 Piketty, Thomas, 4, 48, 59n8, 60, 89n10, 125, 160n4 PISA survey, 169–70 policy, 4; adjustment, 109, 153; Cold War and, 149, 153; convergence and, 147–48; development aid and, 148–53; distributive, 26, 72, 135, 188; educational, 149, 152, 167–73; evolution of inequality and, 55, 72; fairer globalization and, 147–53, 157–58, 167–73, 175–83; Glass-­Steagall Act and, 174n15; global inequality and, 185–89; globalization and, 118–19, 124, 126, 128–31, 139, 143–44; globalizing equality and, 184–89; import substi- Index tution and, 34; Millennium Development Goals and, 149– 50, 185; poverty reduction and, 147–48; protectionist, 7, 99– 100, 107–8, 147, 154, 157, 176–79; reform and, 74 (see also reform); rise in inequality and, 34, 74–75, 85, 94, 97, 99– 100, 104, 106–11, 114–16; social, 7; standard of living and, 147–48 population growth, 28–29, 110, 183 portfolios, 88 Povcal database, 10, 12, 42t, 43, 44t poverty, 1, 44t, 109; Collier on, 23; convergence and, 147–48; criminal activity and, 133–34; definition of, 24; development aid and, 147–52; fairer globalization and, 147–52, 164, 166, 175; ghettos and, 66–67; global inequality and, 11, 15n6, 19–20, 22–25, 28–29, 32; globalization and, 117, 123, 126–27, 134, 144; growth and, 28–29; measurement of, 23–24; Millennium Development Goals and, 149– 50, 185; OECD Database on Household Income Distribution and Poverty and, 11–12; reduction policies for, 147–48; traps of, 144, 150, 164 prices: commodity, 84, 182; exports and, 178; factor, 74, 126; fairer globalization and, 147–48, 176, 178, 182; global inequality and, 27–28, 74, 80, 84, 91–92, 94, 97, 110; globalization and, 118, 122, 126, 136–38; imports and, 80; international compari- Index205 sons of, 11; lower, 94, 137; oil, 92; rise in inequality and, 74, 80, 84, 91–92, 94, 97, 110; rising, 110, 122, 178; shocks and, 38, 55, 91–92, 175; statistics on, 11, 27; subsidies and, 109–10, 175 primary income: evolution of inequality and, 48–50, 58; fairer globalization and, 158, 163n10, 167, 173; globalization and, 135, 143–44 privatization: deregulation and, 94–112; efficiency and, 94, 96, 105, 108; globalization of finance and, 95–99; institutions and, 94–109; labor market and, 99–109; reform and, 94–109; telecommunications and, 111 production: deindustrialization and, 75–82; evolution of inequality and, 57; fairer globalization and, 155–57, 167, 176, 178–79; globalization and, 119, 124, 126, 129, 131, 133, 137; growth and, 3, 34–35, 57, 74, 76–81, 84–86, 119, 124, 126, 129, 131, 133, 137, 155–57, 167, 176, 178–79; material investment and, 119; North vs.


Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Sixth Edition by Kindleberger, Charles P., Robert Z., Aliber

active measures, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, break the buck, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, death of newspapers, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, edge city, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Herman Kahn, Honoré de Balzac, Hyman Minsky, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, junk bonds, large denomination, law of one price, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Mary Meeker, Michael Milken, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, price stability, railway mania, Richard Thaler, riskless arbitrage, Robert Shiller, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, telemarketer, The Chicago School, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, very high income, Washington Consensus, Y2K, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War

Investors may be increasingly aware of the approach to a limit, such as the ceiling on note issues by the Bank of England stipulated in the Bank Act of 1844, the $100 million gold minimum requirement of the US Treasury in 1893, the ceiling on advances from the Bank of France to the French Treasury in 1924, the gold reserve ratio of the Reichsbank under the Dawes Plan in June 1931, or the free gold available to the Federal Reserve System prior to the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act in February 1932. A ratio of external debt to GDP of 60 percent for a country has been viewed as a premonitory indicator by investors; the ‘ice is thin’ for a country when this ratio is much higher. Similarly a ratio of government debt to GDP of significantly more than 60 percent is viewed as too high.

Another German financier, the Hamburg banker Gustav Goddefroy, lost heavily in railroad and mining shares in 1873 and then bled his overseas trading company to support his position in the stock market.34 These incurable optimists, who know they are going to win the first time, but lose, frequently try again, often doubling their bets and increasing their risks by transactions that either are of dubious morality or clearly illegal. In the late 1920s, when US banks were still allowed to underwrite securities (before the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932), Albert Wiggins of the Chase Bank and Charles Mitchell of National City continued to sell Chilean and Peruvian bonds at the old prices even after they had learned by cable from those governments that they had stopped paying interest.35 Horace understood the position, if Sprague quotes and translates him accurately: ‘Make money; make it honestly if you can; at all events, make money.’36 Equally cynical is Jonathan Swift over the South Sea Bubble: Get money, money still And then let virtu follow, if she will.37 On this topic, Balzac has the last word: ‘The most virtuous merchants tell you with the most candid air this word of the most unrestrained immorality: “One gets out of a bad affair as one can”.’38 Noble gamblers The literature abounds in condemnation of noble gamblers and insiders, who might have been thought to regard financial obligations as debts of honor but are better at promising than at paying their subscriptions.39 The Austrian nobility was worse than the Junkers, who at least ostensibly disdained money.

The major investment banks had very high incomes from the fees associated with underwriting new issues of stocks and bonds, especially those of firms associated with information technologies and bio-genetics. The traditional ‘Chinese wall’ between the investment banking activities of these firms and their asset management activities was supposed to be retained after the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had become law in the early 1930s to force the separation of the traditional commercial banking activities of firms from their investment banking activities. The law had been adopted in response to the abuses of the 1920s. The firms ‘promised’ that they would maintain a Chinese wall and that the statements made by their security analysts would not be influenced by the desire of their investment bankers to sell more securities.


pages: 124 words: 39,011

Beyond Outrage: Expanded Edition: What Has Gone Wrong With Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It by Robert B. Reich

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, benefit corporation, business cycle, carried interest, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, desegregation, electricity market, Ford Model T, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, job automation, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, minimum wage unemployment, money market fund, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, single-payer health, special drawing rights, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

“We will admit it, we will fix it and move on.” Ever since the start of the banking crisis in 2008, Dimon had been arguing that more government regulation of Wall Street was unnecessary. In 2011 he vehemently and loudly opposed the so-called Volcker Rule, itself a watered-down version of the old Glass-Steagall Act—the Depression-era law that had separated investment banking (betting in the financial casino) from commercial banking (taking in deposits and lending them out). Glass-Steagall’s repeal in 1999 had allowed bankers to place large bets with other people’s money—and make huge windfalls for themselves.

Behind them—funding their activities but carefully remaining out of the spotlight—are the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the billionaires Charles and David Koch, and a coterie of other big-moneyed interests on and off Wall Street who view the regressive movement as their best means of maintaining their power and privilege and accumulating even more. Many of these people would like to return America to the 1920s—before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act. In the 1920s, Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants. These regressives also want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s—the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, so decorously put it).

Europe was in a debt crisis, many developing nations were gripped by fears the contagion would spread to them, the Japanese economy remained in poor condition, and China’s growth was slowing. These conditions won’t continue forever, of course, but the dollar will remain a safe haven for many years. It’s the ideal time to redevelop the public goods America desperately needs. RESURRECT THE GLASS-STEAGALL ACT There is no good reason that banks should ever be permitted to use people’s bank deposits, insured by the federal government, to place risky bets on the banks’ own behalf. Yet Wall Street lobbyists have made sure the new Dodd-Frank law has enough loopholes to allow financiers to continue to gamble with other people’s money.


pages: 151 words: 38,153

With Liberty and Dividends for All: How to Save Our Middle Class When Jobs Don't Pay Enough by Peter Barnes

adjacent possible, Alfred Russel Wallace, banks create money, basic income, Buckminster Fuller, carbon tax, collective bargaining, computerized trading, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, diversified portfolio, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, It's morning again in America, Jaron Lanier, Jevons paradox, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, Mark Zuckerberg, Money creation, Network effects, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, power law, profit maximization, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Stuart Kauffman, the map is not the territory, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy

For one, they charge hefty fees for taking private companies public, thus seizing part of the liquidity premium that public trading creates. For another, they make lofty sums by creating, and then manipulating, hyper-complex financial “products” that are, in effect, bets on bets. This pumps up the casino economy and extracts capital that could otherwise benefit the real economy. For many decades, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 prevented a single company from being both a commercial and an investment bank. The law’s reasoning was that since commercial banks are federally insured, they shouldn’t engage in the riskier activities of investment banks. In the 1980s and ’90s, however, banking regulations were trimmed, and New Deal laws, including Glass-Steagall, were repealed.

Williams and, 123–124 Alaska Permanent Fund, 69–77 The American Crisis (Paine), 8 Appleby, Joyce, 25 Apple Computers, 25–26 Atmospheric carbon fees, 94 Australia, carbon taxing in, 114 Average Is Over (Cowen), 135 Axtell, Robert, 31–33 B Baker v. Carr, 123 Banks co-owned wealth and, 88 fractional reserve banking and, 54, 90 Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and, 54–55 Barnes, Leo, 34–35 Bell curve, 30–31 Bernanke, Ben, 91–92 Biden, Joe, 21 Bismarck, Otto von, 37 Bollier, David, 62 Bonds. See Stocks and bonds Boucher, Rick, 109–110 Brazil, cash payment program in, 131 Bristol Bay, Inc., 70 Buffet, Warren, 49 Burtraw, Dallas, 64 Bush, George H.

See also Banks; Stocks and bonds as co-owned wealth, 61 rent from, 142–145 Financial leverage, 47–48 Financial Times (Kay), 53 Financial transaction taxes, 143 Fisher, Irving, 91 Ford, Henry, 8, 19 Ford Motor Company, 18 Foreign Affairs, 130–131 Foreign exchange transitions, value of, 57 Foreign manufacturing, 16 Fossil fuels, 115–116 401(k) plans, 123 Foxconn, 25 Fractional reserve banking, 54, 90 Friedman, Milton, 80–81, 85–87, 91, 119 Fuller, Buckminster, 66 Future scenarios, 135–136 G Galbraith, John Kenneth, 34, 80 Gates, Bill, 48–49, 84 General Motors, jobs at, 23 George, Henry, 4, 51, 66 Germany, 19, 37–38 GI Bill, 16 Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, 54–55 Globalization, 17 Global Warming Solutions, 117 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (Vonnegut), 45, 46 Google, 26 Gore, Al, 100 Gould, Stephen Jay, 120 Government. See also Social insurance nonlabor income and, 42 price-setting and, 63–64 recycled rent and, 66 sustainable purchasing by, 37 Green jobs, recommendations for, 21 Guaranteed minimum income, 80–81 H Hacker, Jacob, 125 Hammond, Jay, 69–77, 121–122 Hannity, Sean, 75 Hansen, James, 115 Health care.


pages: 354 words: 118,970

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream by Nicholas Lemann

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Black-Scholes formula, Blitzscaling, buy and hold, capital controls, Carl Icahn, computerized trading, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, dematerialisation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial deregulation, financial innovation, fixed income, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Irwin Jacobs, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norman Mailer, obamacare, PalmPilot, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Peter Thiel, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, public intellectual, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Snow Crash, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transaction costs, universal basic income, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

.; see also corporations; federal government; Organization Man insurance companies Intel Interest Equalization Tax interest groups; desire to eliminate; successes of; types of interest rates; deregulation and; Greenspan and; inflation and; on mortgages Internal Revenue Service International Nickel International Typographical Union Internet; bubble of 2000; early conceptions of; financial industry on; as predicted in fiction; regulation of; see also networks; Silicon Valley interstate banking Interstate Commerce Commission Investing in US investment banking; academic paradigm shift in; antitrust suit against; changes to in 1970s; commercial banking vs.; computerization of; deregulation of, see deregulation; diversified portfolios in; Glass-Steagall Act and, see Glass-Steagall Act; SEC and, see Securities and Exchange Commission; shifting clients of; see also Morgan Stanley; specific financial instruments Irish Americans Italian Americans Itô, Kiyosi ITT Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Jesse Jackson, Mahalia Jacobs, Irwin Japan; auto industry in Jdate Jefferson, Thomas Jensen, Michael; as advocate for free markets; background of; character of; corporations studied by; at Harvard; on integrity; in Landmark; mind shift of; at Rochester; at University of Chicago Jensen, Stephanie Jews; in finance Jhering, Rudolf von Jobs, Steve Johns Hopkins University Johnson, Earl Johnson, Jonathan Jones, Doug Journal of Applied Corporate Finance Journal of Financial Economics J.P.

., made him into the main public villain. These hearings—along with the Depression, Roosevelt’s political skill, and the ideas that Adolf Berle and other advisers to Roosevelt had been working up for years—prepared the ground for the new banking laws that sailed through Congress at the outset of the New Deal. The passage of the Glass-Steagall Act, which forbade banks that accepted deposits from underwriting stocks and bonds, forced the Morgan bank, previously private, nearly unregulated, and active in all forms of finance, to make a choice about its future. It chose to keep banking and stop underwriting. That was in 1934. In 1935 a small group of Morgan partners announced that they would move one block east on Wall Street and form the firm of Morgan Stanley to go into the underwriting business.

Taken together, they profoundly changed not only finance but American society and the world—both economically and politically. * * * The leaders of Morgan Stanley, like most of their peers, were for deregulation in a general way, though some of the specific changes felt like setbacks because they chipped away at the privileged position the Glass-Steagall Act had given the firm back in 1934. What all the changes, as they emerged from Washington one by one, noticed by bankers but not by the public, had in common was that they were expressions of the mood of the time: they loosened restrictions, they trusted markets, they favored consumer interests over institutional interests.


pages: 332 words: 89,668

Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of Inequality in America: A History of Inequality in America by Jamie Bronstein

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labor-force participation, land reform, land tenure, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, moral panic, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, obamacare, occupational segregation, Occupy movement, oil shock, plutocrats, price discrimination, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, scientific management, Scientific racism, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Strategic Defense Initiative, strikebreaker, the long tail, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, vertical integration, W. E. B. Du Bois, wage slave, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

To avoid some of the financial problems that had led up to the Great Crash, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were empowered to regulate savings bank deposits and the disclosures of public corporations, respectively. Some in Roosevelt’s cabinet advocated more radical plans, like bank nationalization or the establishment of post-office savings banks, which would allow small depositors to earn interest by depositing their funds at the post office. The Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited commercial banks from engaging in speculative investments, served to regulate the nation’s financial institutions well for the next six decades until its 1999 repeal.18 Roosevelt also instituted reforms to address concerns about corporate greed. While Hoover had not been concerned with income inequality, Roosevelt’s administration embedded rules in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to regulate executive compensation.

As this chapter has shown, the stock market crash and imploding economy of the early 1930s showed that an economy that valorized unlimited business growth without considering distributive justice was doomed. Hoover and the economy both floundered until Roosevelt’s victory and inauguration. Roosevelt introduced important regulation through the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Glass-Steagall Act. The federal government also assumed responsibility for relief and reform through major Keynesian spending programs, NIRA, the CCC, the AAA, and the TVA, among others; created the first national minimum wage; and began to construct a social safety net with social security. As had happened during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, the New Deal programs reflected the racial discrimination and political power of southern Democrats.95 This would set the stage for poverty and race to be linked concepts in subsequent decades.

The wealth distribution pattern that had been established in the 1980s remained steady, but only because, up to 2006, house prices were generally rising, and most of the wealth of those in the bottom four quintiles of wealth holders was in the form of home equity. Rising home prices even offset the tendency of the middle three quintiles of wealth holders to draw on their home equity for lines of credit.10 In a sense, most middle-class people had placed all of their wealth-earning eggs in the basket of home ownership. In 1999, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 removed federal oversight from large commercial banks that wished to branch out into speculative investments. During the Bush administration, mortgage lenders offered mortgages to many individuals who ordinarily would not have met income qualifications. Banks then packaged these “subprime” mortgages into instruments called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which were thought to be safe investments because generally, housing prices increased, and mortgage defaults were thought to be random.


pages: 435 words: 127,403

Panderer to Power by Frederick Sheehan

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, California energy crisis, call centre, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, diversification, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inventory management, Isaac Newton, John Meriwether, junk bonds, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Mary Meeker, McMansion, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Norman Mailer, Northern Rock, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, place-making, Ponzi scheme, price stability, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South Sea Bubble, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, VA Linux, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Morgan to underwrite Xerox debt, the first such issue from a commercial bank since 1933, the year of the Glass-Steagall Act. (That legislation had separated commercial from investment banking.) In what Time magazine called “the widest breach of Glass-Steagall yet,”21 the Federal Reserve permitted J. P. Morgan to underwrite stock in 1990.22 18 Ibid., p. 4. Today, Greenspan’s forbearance from regulating banks and derivatives is ascribed to his Ayn Rand–freemarket beliefs. Greenspan has no such beliefs. Senator Proxmire understood competitive banking. Competition was disappearing. After the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, the largest banks devoured the minnows until the supermarketmegabanks were so large that they did not compete.

Rubin acknowledged that even while he [was] negotiating his own job with Citigroup, he had helped broker the compromise agreement repealing Glass-Steagall.” Also “Rubin Calls for Modernization through Reform of Glass-Steagall Act,” Journal of Accountancy, May 1, 1995: “Robert E. Rubin, secretary of the Treasury, recommended that Congress pass legislation to reform or repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to modernize the country’s financial system. In testimony before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Rubin said Clinton administration proposals would permit affiliations between banks and other financial services companies, such as securities firms and insurance companies.” 57 “The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall.”

Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were among the first Wall Street firms to offer warehouse lines.50 In turn, the nonbank mortgage lenders promised the firms a percentage of their loans, which the brokerage houses bundled into securities and sold to the public.51 Was Alan Greenspan aware of the whirlwind? Whatever the case, he made his contribution to the GrammLeach-Bliley Act of 1999, which revoked the last vestiges of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1934. This was the legislation that had separated investment banking (dealing in securities) from commercial banking (lending). The distinction had blurred over the years. Greenspan’s Fed had stimulated the new era when it permitted J.P. Morgan to underwrite debt and equity issues early in his term.52 There were still encumbrances to unfettered financial dealings by banks, a specific case being Citicorp’s merger with Travelers.


pages: 154 words: 47,880

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, business cycle, Carl Icahn, clean water, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, financial deregulation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, job automation, junk bonds, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, peak TV, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, stock buybacks, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, WeWork, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Most had grown up during the Great Depression, when one out of four Americans was out of work and when Franklin D. Roosevelt had public backing to “try anything” to get the nation back on its feet—collaborating with big businesses in order to boost their profits (the National Recovery Administration); constraining them with tight regulations (the Securities and Exchange Acts, Glass-Steagall Act, Fair Labor Standards Act); making it easier for workers to unionize and forcing companies to negotiate (National Labor Relations Act). Many of these CEOs had served in World War II. Some had participated in the vast mobilization of American industry into war production. At that time, the privilege and status of being the CEO of a large public company was as much a reward as the pay that went with it.

In 1980, under pressure from financial entrepreneurs like Weill, Congress lifted that ban, and Weill quickly got to work merging banks. A related Depression-era rule erected a strict wall between commercial banking (collecting deposits and making loans) and investment banking (making bets), called the Glass-Steagall Act. By the mid-1980s, as the stock market took off courtesy of Carl Icahn and the other raiders, people like Weill and Dimon noted that huge money could be made by taking down that wall. In early 1985, three of the Street’s biggest banks—JPMorgan, Citicorp, and Bankers Trust—asked the Federal Reserve Board to remove a few bricks.

The rise, however, was propelled by an upturn in the business cycle rather than any enduring change in the system, so it turned out to be a blip. Once the economy cooled, most family incomes were barely higher than before. And when the bubble burst, all hell broke loose. In 1999, Weill and Dimon parted ways. “The problem was…he wanted to be C.E.O. and I didn’t want to retire,” Weill said of Dimon. A few months later, after the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed and Rubin stepped down as Clinton’s Treasury secretary, Weill recruited Rubin to be chair of Citgroup’s executive committee and, briefly, chair of its board of directors. * * * — Between 1980 and 2008, as Wall Street was deregulated and unleashed, more than $6.6 trillion of wealth was transferred to financial firms in the United States.


pages: 183 words: 17,571

Broken Markets: A User's Guide to the Post-Finance Economy by Kevin Mellyn

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, call centre, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, disintermediation, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial innovation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Home mortgage interest deduction, index fund, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, mobile money, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, seigniorage, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, Solyndra, statistical model, Steve Jobs, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, underbanked, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

The bank role was to “originate” assets such as credit card loans and mortgages through “channels” such as direct mail, home banking, and specialized sales forces (e.g., mortgage brokers). These assets would be “packaged” into securities investment banks and sold, held in portfolio, and traded. Increasingly, banks came to play more of these capital market roles themselves as the constraints of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act (which strictly separated commercial and investment banking) were allowed to lapse by degrees.The old core functions of the bank were relatively unremunerative compared to this “originate, manufacture, and distribute” model. Regulators were becoming increasingly comfortable with the “market-centric” model too, because the securities churned out had to be properly vetted and rated by the credit agencies under SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) rules.

The wholesale financial market trading of the company would have to fund itself instead of having use of customer deposits. Whether this can be made to work is a good question, but the principle of not gambling with deposits from the public is appealing. The United States tried something similar under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated investment and commercial banking in a more straightforward way. Under this system, banks can be very big without threatening the deposit money and payments system that Main Street relies on, at least in theory. The objection is that the so-called universal bank model, where commercial and market activities are under one roof, is better for clients (onestop shopping), but also safer since wholesale financial markets, retail banking, and commercial banking have different cycles and present different risks.

w 163 I Index A C Anglo-Saxon capitalism, 84 Card Act, 68, 70 Anglo-Saxon-type banking systems, 156 CHIPS.See Clearing House Interbank Payment System Asset securitization, 66 Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), 65 Austerity definition, 98 Euro, real unification, 99 Germany, 99–101 B BankAmericard, 29 Bankcard association/card scheme, 29 Bank-centric system, 110 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 108 Basel III process, 50–51 Basel process, 27–28 Basel standards, 61 Bipartisan government policy, 72 Boom optimistic entrepreneurs, 77 Bretton Woods system, 26, 111 Bureaucracies, 21 Civilization, 64 Clearing House Interbank Payment System (CHIPS), 106, 107 Committee of Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS), 108 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), 65–66 Consumer banking BankAmericard, 29 bankcard association/card scheme, 29 branch-based customer relationship, 29 credit card industry, 30 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, 33 “diseconomies of scale”, 35 FDIC, 34 four-party model, 29 institutional investors, 34 “market-centric” financial system, 33 merchant/customer relationship, 29 Pac-Man banking, 34 risky business, 31–33 RTC, 31 SEC, 33 S&L industry, 28, 30 1 166 Index Consumer banking (continued) statistical analysis, 30 US “flow-of-funds” data, 28 usury laws, 30 Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), 68 Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS), 108 Creative destruction, 85 Credit-driven economy, 76–77 Crony capitalism, 85 Cross-Pacific economy, 97 D Debtor Nation, 64 Dirigisme, 83 Dollar-centric financial system, 112 Durbin Amendment, 70 E ECB.See European Central Bank Economic consequences, financial regulation, 55 bank P & Ls and balance sheets bureaucratic regulation, 59 capital allocation, 57 capitalism, 57 clearinghouse/transaction switch, 58 contradictory rules, 59 creative destruction, 63 free-market capitalism, 57 full-blown panic leading, 57 lender-of-last-resort function, 58 payments system, 58–59 private-sector banks, 58 consumer protection vs. access, 67–68 financial access restriction brick-and-mortar branches, 66 civilization, 64 clearinghouse, 63 CRA, 65–66 credit judgments, 65 economic enfranchisement, 64 government paternalism, 65 joint-stock banks, 63 loan securitization, 66 mass-market retail banking, 66 national and multilateral development agencies, 65 non-credit worthy segments, 66 ownership society, 66 paychecks, 64 premium/reward cards, 66 individual banker accountability, 55 interest reduction, 56 predatory lending, 56 product differentiation, 68–69 public utility, 55, 56 regulatory, capital, and litigation costs, 56 regulatory compliance and fraud losses, 56 savers and investors, 71–73 shell game asset-securitization process, 61 commercial and industrial loans, 62 credible assessment, 62 Dodd-Frank Act, 63 Federal Reserve Bank, 63 free-market creative destruction, 63 globalization, 62–63 Great Depression, 61 Great Moderation, 61 least-regulated jurisdictions, 61 regulatory arbitrage, 61 relationship banking, 62 retail banking revolution, 63 return-on-equity business, 62 rules-based regulation, 61 securitization and market-based funding, 63 supervision vs. rule making, 59–60 unbanking, 70–71 utility-style banking, 56 European Central Bank (ECB), 6, 99, 102–103 F Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 34 Index Federal Reserve, 101 Finance consumers, 117 American Revolutionary War song, 118 bondholders and money market funds, 138 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 126 business-to-business commerce, 119 consumerism, 118 credit score, 120–121 debt free, 138–139 “dot-com” bubble, 1264 employment and consumer credit, 121–122 Gallup polling organization, 127 Great Society, 126 house prices, 133 “infrastructure”, 119 innovation and education, America advantage, 129 American living standards, 129 global success, 128 high-stakes examinations, 130 industrial policy, 128 student loans, 131 mass-market pottery, 119 money saving, 136–137 New Class, new elite educated caste, 132–133 non-tradable private sector, 127 one’s station in life, 118 overseas trade, 119 pent-up demand, 119 private-sector employment, 125 property taxes, 127 “self-liquidating”, definition, 119 shelter asset bubbles and distorts markets, 133 electoral process, 134 Japanese economy, 135–136 retirement plans and financial advisors, 134 Travellers Club, 133 wealth effect, 133 short-term insurance scheme, unemployment assistance, 127 stock market, 137–138 structural unemployment American economy, 123–125 labor force participation rate, 123 labor markets, Europe, 122 solidarity, 123 three-tiered system, 122 subsidy-based industries, 125 super-safe government debt, 125 technological creativity and economic progress, 117 unionized public-service employees, 125 US job growth, 126 “welfare to work” requirements, 126 You, Inc., 139 Finance-driven economy, 1, 72 anti-capitalism, 2 capitalism, 1 chronic debt crisis, 22 corporate America, 20 current movie artificial bank earnings, 7 asset prices, 6 banking implosions, 6 borrowers and investors connection, 10 borrowing demand, 7 catastrophic financial bubble, 10 civilization, 10 corporatism, 9 democratic crony capitalism, 9 Dodd-Frank act, 8 economic growth and social stability, 10 financial repression, 9 Glass-Steagall Act, 8 human ingenuity, 10 interbank funding markets, 6 low interest rates and easy money, 6 market collapse, 10 money market, 6 overexuberence, 6 overinvestment and speculation, 6 pre-crisis conditions, 8 printing money, 7 private capital, 7 167 168 Index Finance-driven economy (continued) profitability, 7 quantitative easing, 8 recovery, 8 regulation, 8 regulatory capital rules, 8 resources and tools, 9 shell-shocked enterprises and households, 8 end of employment, 21–22 financial leverage magic and poison CEO class, 14–15 consumer debt, 15–16 disconnection problem, 11–12 market bargain, 10 real economy, 10 wealth financialization, 13–14 working capital, 11 global financial crisis, 2 Great Moderation, 16–18 Great Panic, 18–19 household sector agony, 19–20 investor class, 22 Marx, Karl asset bubble, 5 cash nexus, 4 dot-com bubble, 5 economic revolution, 3 First World War, 4 free markets, 3 French Revolution, 3 globalization, 3 Great Depression, 5 liberalism, 3 normalcy, 4 overproduction and speculation, 3 Wall Street, 4, 5 revolutionary socialism, 2 sovereign debt, 8, 22 Finance reconstruction, 142 bank bashing, 146 “bankers”, 142 business model, challenges, 145 Citigroup, 145 cyclical businesses, 143 government management, 142 legitimacy bonus culture, 148–150 privileged opportunity, longestablished bank, 146 short-term share-price manipulation, 148 state and legal systems, 147 stock price, 147 mark-to-market price, 144 “producers”, 143 profession, definition, 163 prudence, 145, 161–163 root-and-branch transformation, 145 talent pool, 144 “the race for talent”, 143 trust cash management, 160 Financial Market Meltdown, 159 FSA, 159 hackneyed term, 159 information asymmetry, 159 non-bank financial service provider, 161 oversold/up-sold products, 159 utility Anglo-Saxon-type banking systems, 156 big data tools, 158 bills-of-exchange market, 150 branch and payment services, 157 clearinghouse creation, 158 core banking, 154 economic value transmission, 150 exchange of claims, 151 fee-income growth, 155 fiat money system, 151 financial intermediation, 150 financial transactions, 157 flexible contractor/subcontractor relationship, 158 information technology, 156 “liquidity premium”, 152 multidivisional/M-form organization, 153 non-interest income, 155 old-media companies, 157 Index overhead value analysis, 154 “privileged opportunity”, 152 quill pen–era practice, 158 sheer utility value, 155 silos, product business, 153 transaction accounts, 152 venture capital industry, 142 “War for Talent”, 143 Financial crises, 23 affordable housing, 24 banking “transmission” mechanism, 43 Basel III process, 50–51 basel process, 27–28 consumer banking(see Consumer banking) Dodd-Frank, 49–50 domestic banking system, 38 European Union, 51–53 FDIC, 40 finance-driven economy’s leverage machine, 43 Financial Market Meltdown, 25 GDP, 38 Government Policy and Central Banks, market meltdown(see Regulation process) government policy failure, 45 “government-sponsored” public companies, 24 Great Depression, 44 GSEs, 24 legal missteps, 47–48 New Deal, 43 panic-stricken markets, 40 political missteps, 45–47 Ponzi scheme, 42 postwar financial order, 25–27 printing money, 38 private profits and socialized losses, 40 private-sector demand, 43 public-sector demand, 42 quantitative approach, 25 TARP, 39 too-big-to-fail institutions, 41 Triple A bonds, 41 US Federal Reserve System, 38 Financial liberalization, 89 Financial Market Meltdown, 25, 61, 89, 109, 159 Financial repression, 9, 78, 111 Financial Services Authority (FSA), 60, 159 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 69 Fordism, 68 Free-market capitalism, 89 Free markets, 3 French Revolution, 3 Front-end trading systems, 107 FSA.See Financial Services Authority G GDP, 11 “Giro” payments systems, 151 Global imbalance, 96 Globalization, 3 Global whirlwinds, 93 Asia, finance movement cultural differences, 110–111 Financial Market Meltdown, 109 Interest Equalization Tax, 109 language, law, and business culture, 109 primacy, 109 austerity(see Austerity) British Empire, 30 Chimerica, 97 China and United States cross-Pacific economy, 97 foreign interference and aggression, 98 headline growth rates, 97 repression revolution and series, 97–98 Second World War, 98 Smoot-Hawley Tariff, 98 surpluse trade, 97 sustainable development, 98 Chinese ascendancy, 113 clearing and settlement bottleneck, 106–107 Dynastic China, 112 169 Download from Wow!


pages: 823 words: 206,070

The Making of Global Capitalism by Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, book value, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, continuous integration, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, dark matter, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, guest worker program, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, oil shock, precariat, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, seigniorage, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, union organizing, vertical integration, very high income, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

The reason, as the Beards also noted, was of course that the emergency legislation “drove no money changers from the temple. On the contrary it gave the support of public credit to bankers while establishing the supremacy of the Federal Government over gold.”46 The passage a few months later of the Glass-Steagall Act to regulate the domestic banking system by separating commercial banks from investment banks (thereby barring the latter from using deposits to speculate on securities) was widely seen as delivering “the coup de grace to the House of Morgan.”47 But this was by no means unpalatable to all the bankers.

Facilitated by technological innovations in communications, the internationalization of US finance took the form of a competitive push abroad across the full range of financial services, which then rebounded back home in the form of intensified domestic competition. All this strained against the compartmentalization laid down in the Glass-Steagall Act, and was particularly manifested in mounting pressure to remove price controls on brokerage fees for investment banks, as well as the limits on the interest commercial banks could pay on deposits. The move abroad by US finance was in fact part and parcel of a long process whereby Wall Street would gradually bring the Eurodollar market home, as “the very same practices, strategies and techniques that drove the international expansion of American finance also laid the foundation for its continued domestic expansion.”24 And what this clearly portended was the process of international regulatory arbitrage which would soon become so central to the making of global capitalism, in which less onerous regulations in one financial center (in this case London’s Eurodollar market) would be exploited to undermine stronger regulations in another (in this case the US’s own New Deal banking regulations).

The large US multinational commercial banks were also now fully engaged in what Gillian Tett has described as the “years of bold innovation that made high-risk trading and aggressive deal-making the gold standard of the Street [where] a ‘kill or be killed’ ethic prevailed.”61 She notes that, shortly after Salomon Brothers engineered the first major derivative bond swap between IBM and the World Bank in the early 1980s, J.P. Morgan used its City of London operations to circumvent the Glass-Steagall Act and allow its clients to take advantage of the explosion of derivatives markets. By the early 1990s, after also pioneering the development of credit default swaps, half of Morgan’s trading revenues came from derivatives contracts. But Morgan was only one of eight US banks that by then accounted for over 50 percent of interest-rate and currency swaps worldwide, as well as 90 percent of US bank derivatives activity; and there was a similar concentration of derivatives activity in the US investment banking sector.62 This concentration was closely related to the highly complex information and risk-management systems that were required to allow the risk on bonds with different interest-rate and currency structures to be traded without any bonds actually changing hands.


pages: 394 words: 85,734

The Global Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Mason

active measures, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Easter island, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, industrial robot, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, planetary scale, post-oil, price stability, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, systematic trading, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Such are the workings of the neoliberal mind, yielding the conclusion that crises may be necessary evils; that no human design can avert economic meltdowns. For a few decades, beginning with President Roosevelt’s post-1932 attempts to regulate the banks, the Leviathan solution became widely accepted: the state could and should play its Hobbesian role in regulating greed and bringing it into some balance with propriety. The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 is possibly the most often quoted example of that regulatory effort.8 However, the 1970s saw a steady retreat away from this regulatory framework and toward the re-establishment of the fatalistic view that human nature will always find ways of defeating its own best intentions. This ‘retreat to fatalism’ coincided with the period when neoliberalism and financialization were rearing their unsightly heads.

In reacting to this ‘betrayal’, President Obama boxed clever: he empowered Paul Volcker (who is still going strong in his eighties) to author the regulatory legislation under which Wall Street would have had to labour in the future – and to write it in such a manner as to tighten the authorities’ grip over Wall Street in important ways. Volcker, in his new capacity as head of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board (ERAB), came up with the Volcker Rule, which the administration promised to push through Congress. The Volcker Rule revived the New Dealers’ Glass–Steagall Act, which Larry Summers had done away with in the 1990s. It would have prohibited banks from dabbling in derivatives and other exotic financial products. Volcker’s basic idea was that banks which accept deposits and are insured by the state against failure ought not to be allowed to participate in either the stock market or the derivatives trade.

Originally it meant ‘table’ and is associated with banking because, in ancient Greek city-states, borrowing and lending transactions were carried out in the agora (‘marketplace’), with the parties to the transaction seated around long tables. Chapter 7 1. The US Treasury’s equity contribution of $5 would actually come from something called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), whereas the Fed’s $ 50 would come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), set up by the New Dealers (as part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933) to guarantee depositors’ savings in case of a bank failure. The Geithner–Summers Plan set aside $150 billion for TARP, $ 820 billion for FDIC and expected the private sector (hedge and pension funds) to chip in $30 billion of their own money. 2. Under the good scenario, H’s net return equals $10.


When Free Markets Fail: Saving the Market When It Can't Save Itself (Wiley Corporate F&A) by Scott McCleskey

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, break the buck, call centre, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, iterative process, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, place-making, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, statistical model, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, time value of money, too big to fail, web of trust

It used to be a fairly straightforward task to divide the financial world into sectors—banking, securities, and insurance. For much of the past century, at least since the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, the law specifically forbade the mixing of commercial banking and investment banking, effectively separating the banking and securities sectors from one another. The law that created this separation, the Glass-Steagall Act, also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for the banking industry for the specific purpose of guaranteeing investors’ deposits in federally chartered banks (actual regulation of the federal banking system remained with the curiously named Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, established in the 1860s).

See Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) First Amendment, 93, 154 Fitch, 84, 86, 88 foreign regulators, 133 Foreign Service Institute, 148, 150 Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), 148 Freddie Mac, 25, 181 FSOs. See Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) FTC. See Federal Trade Commission (FTC) G G-20. See Group of 20 (G-20) Glass-Steagall Act, 18–19, 76–77 GLB Act. See Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act) Goldman Sachs, 4, 17, 77, 87, 104, 160 Government Accountability Office (GAO), 57–58 government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), 25 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act), 77–78, 178 Great Crash, 76, 112 Great Recession, 3 Greece, 134–35 Greenberg, Chairman Ace, 4, 10 Greenspan, Alan, 42, 62, 64, 70 Group of 20 (G-20), 139–40, 184–86 GSEs.

See also Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) accountability of senior management and boards, 22 Anti-Trust Division of Justice and phone market, 17–18 anti-trust powers/legislation, 18 assets weighted by level of risk, 16 banks, keep them small, 17–18 bonds, arbitrage between prices of, 16 capital cushion requirements, 17 capital requirements, increase, 19–20 commercial vs. investment banking activities, 18 conclusion, 22–23 do nothing, 22 financial disclosures, mandatory, 19 Glass-Steagall Act, bring back, 18–19 government intervention vs. free market principles, 17, 21 government support is swiftest, 23 hedge funds, 16, 19, 102, 105, 157–58 highly leveraged firm, 16 Long Term Capital Management, 16 market capitalization, 16 moral hazard encourages inordinate risks, 22 pay limits for officers, 20 n 191 Plan B, 10, 20, 22, 30, 81, 144 policy options, 17–22 proprietary trading by commercial banks, 19 Resolution Authority, 20–22 risk of unknown loss, 21 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 18 systemic risk, identify, 22 too-big-to-fail concept, 15–17 Volcker, Fed Chairman Paul, 18–19 Volcker Rule, 19 Insurance Core Principles, 140 International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), 140–41 International Organization of Securities Commissioners (IOSCO), 140 international regulations Asia, regulatory initiatives in, 136 Basel Committee for Banking Supervision (BCBS), 140 Code of Conduct Fundamentals for Credit Rating Agencies, 140 conclusion, 141 EU privacy laws, 137, 141 Europe, stock exchanges in, 135 The European Union, 136–38 Financial Stability Board (FSB), 54, 139– 40, 184–85 FSA’s Handbook of regulations, 138 global markets, interconnectedness of, 134 herd mentality (short-term market movements), 134 Insurance Core Principles, 140 International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), 140–41 International Organization of Securities Commissioners (IOSCO), 140 international organizations, 139–41 Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), 136 overseas regulators, 135–39 privacy laws, 134–35, 137, 141 Prospectus Directive governs filing requirements, 137 regulation, principles based vs. rulesbased, 138–39 SEC and shift toward principles-based regulation, 138 Sunday is the new Monday, 133–35 U.S.


pages: 316 words: 87,486

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American ideology, antiwork, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Burning Man, centre right, circulation of elites, Clayton Christensen, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, Frank Gehry, fulfillment center, full employment, George Gilder, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, microcredit, mobile money, moral panic, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, payday loans, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Republic of Letters, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, union organizing, urban decay, WeWork, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, young professional

The Mexican operation probably served as a back-door bailout for Rubin’s old colleagues on Wall Street, but more important, it was what the admiring financial journalist Daniel Gross called “a turning point for Clinton” in his relationship with investment bankers: it “allowed Clinton to ingratiate himself with big investors at the institutional level.”33 The final great accomplishment of Bill Clinton’s presidency was another act of sweeping bank deregulation, the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated commercial from investment banking since 1933. Treasury Secretary Rubin had long argued that the old law had to go so that Wall Street could achieve “revenue diversification” and stay competitive with foreign banking establishments.34 Banking lobbyists agreed with him, as did lobbyists for the insurance industry and—well, lobbyists for just about everyone with money.

The term of art this time around was “Depression-era” (as in “Depression-era barriers” or “Depression-era rules” or “Depression-era walls”), which cast the old law’s repeal in the familiar terms of political rejuvenation, with the Democratic party symbolically casting off the conditions of its New Deal heyday. As with NAFTA, every expert who mattered was on the same page. A retrospective on the banking law published by the Minneapolis Fed in 2000 casually referred to it as “the now infamous Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.” “Almost everybody agreed that Glass-Steagall was an anachronism in a global economy,” proclaimed a 1995 New York Times news story on the effort to repeal the law. “Enacted in 1933 to prevent a recurrence of financial skulduggery that many believed touched off the Great Depression, the act is widely viewed today as a drag on the economy.”35 Not only did everybody agree on what was widely viewed, but repealing it was a bridge to the future itself.

In certain remarkable ways, each of these legislative achievements followed the same characteristic pattern—one that diminishes their effectiveness but allows Democrats to pursue the professional consensus they crave. THE ENDS OF COMPLEXITY All of them, for starters, chose complexity over straightforwardness. The virtue of the old Glass-Steagall Act, which regulated the banking industry from 1933 until its final repeal in the Clinton era, was its simplicity: It structurally separated investment banking from commercial banking and forced those parts to compete with one another. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which was supposed to re-regulate the business, uses a different method—it instructs federal agencies to make detailed new rules for the industry.


pages: 1,202 words: 424,886

Stigum's Money Market, 4E by Marcia Stigum, Anthony Crescenzi

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Brownian motion, business climate, buy and hold, capital controls, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, distributed generation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, flag carrier, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, high net worth, implied volatility, income per capita, intangible asset, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, land bank, large denomination, locking in a profit, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, offshore financial centre, paper trading, pension reform, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Savings and loan crisis, seigniorage, shareholder value, short selling, short squeeze, tail risk, technology bubble, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, two-sided market, value at risk, volatility smile, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Specifically, Gramm-Leach-Bliley amended the Bank Holding Company Act by providing for the creation of financial holding companies, which are bank holding companies that may engage in any activity or hold the shares of any company that engages in any activity that the Federal Reserve Board has determined is either financial in nature, incidental to financial activities, or complementary to existing activity and does not pose a substantial risk to the safety or soundness of depository institutions or the financial system generally. Some History Just what banks were and were not permitted to do was a tangled question before Gramm-Leach-Bliley. There were two principal federal acts guiding bank practices, the Glass-Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 as amended. There were four provisions of Glass-Steagall. Two provisions stated what a bank could do; two provisions, what a bank affiliate could do. Basically, a bank affiliate could engage in a wider range of activities than a bank. Each U.S. money center bank is owned by a holding company, which also owns other companies; these other companies are affiliates of the bank.

Nonbank dealers naturally think that it would be dandy to have banks forever forbidden to tread on their turf. The skirmishing between banks and nonbank dealers dates back to at least 1978. In that year, Bankers Trust began to act as an advisor and agent to issuers of commercial paper, an activity that Bankers viewed as permissible under the Glass-Steagall Act. In 1979, the SIA asked the Fed to declare Bankers Trust’s commercial paper activities unlawful; the Fed declined to do so. The SIA then turned to the courts, which in two rulings at the district court level determined (1) that commercial paper was a security and (2) that Bankers Trust’s agency placements of commercial paper 12 It’s estimated that in 1988 slightly over $250 billion was raised through the sale of publicly offered debt.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley; Summary of Provisions The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act contains numerous provisions that allow banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to affiliate with each other. Below is the Senate Banking Committee’s summary of the many provisions contained in the act taken from the banking committee’s Web site. • Repeals the restrictions on banks affiliating with securities firms contained in sections 20 and 32 of the Glass-Steagall Act. • Creates a new “financial holding company” under section 4 of the Bank Holding Company Act. Such holding company can engage in a statutorily provided list of financial activities, including insurance and securities underwriting and agency activities, merchant banking and insurance company portfolio investment activities.


pages: 482 words: 149,351

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer by Nicholas Shaxson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Donald Trump, Etonian, export processing zone, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, forensic accounting, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Global Witness, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land value tax, late capitalism, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megaproject, Michael Milken, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, two and twenty, vertical integration, Wayback Machine, wealth creators, white picket fence, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Roosevelt’s New Deal, a sweeping package of progressive political reforms in response to the First World War and the great crash of 1929 which shifted economic and political power away from finance and large corporations towards ordinary folk. The New Dealers created a carefully calibrated system of government checks and balances to mediate between competing social and national priorities, regionally and nationally, breaking up concentrations of power wherever they found it. Their flagship legislation was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which forced banks to separate their commercial banking activities from the more speculative investment banking, thereby breaking up the banking behemoths. At every stage it was understood that this was not so much about economics as political power and protecting democracy. While Hayek and the neoliberals saw government as the agent of tyranny, and the Soviet Union as the prime bogey, the anti-monopoly crusaders saw the threat as coming from large concentrations of private power, which also led to tyrannical forms of government, especially fascism.

The derivative the JP Morgan team came up with at Boca Raton was to become known as the credit default swap (CDS). This instrument enabled market players to bet (or insure themselves) not against movements in the price of something, but against the possibility that a bond or a loan would default. The centre of experimentation for this stuff was London because the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated investment banking from commercial banking, prohibited some of the riskier, more lucrative aspects of this from happening in the United States.10 And the rules of the European single market, which was launched in 1993, meant that banks could set up financial instruments in London and sell them across Europe without interference from national regulators in European countries.

Ten years later, as the financial crisis began to bite, that number had risen three hundredfold to over $60 trillion – roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of planet Earth.26 So the banks believed they had obtained an exemption from regulation for these exciting new instruments – at least in London. Then, in 1998, the next big hurdle fell when the US Federal Reserve gave its blessing for JP Morgan to get capital relief via its Bistro deal. This would open the way for the Basel rules on bank capital to accept the deals too. But there were still obstacles to be overcome. Next was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had separated US commercial banking from investment banking to stop speculators gambling with depositors’ money. Glass-Steagall didn’t contain explicit provisions on derivatives – this was a grey area – so an army of lobbyists, armed with the example of London and the offshore centres, mounted a blitzkrieg in Washington to bring it all above board.


pages: 355 words: 92,571

Capitalism: Money, Morals and Markets by John Plender

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, diversification, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, God and Mammon, Golden arches theory, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, industrial research laboratory, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, labour market flexibility, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, money market fund, moral hazard, moveable type in China, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit motive, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Steve Jobs, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, time value of money, too big to fail, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Veblen good, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

To get them, he was, for a man in a suit, surprisingly willing to cause trouble.38 After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, lawmakers decided that depositors’ funds should not be used in speculative investment banking activity. A rigid firewall was erected between commercial and investment banking by the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. The legislation that imposed the division was repealed in 1999, when the world’s biggest banks were enthusiastically expanding while taking on more risk. Between 1990 and 2007, global bank balance sheets increased fourfold in size. On the eve of the crisis they had reached $75 trillion, or 1.5 times the output of the entire planet.39 At the same time, the amount of capital in those balance sheets – the cushion banks need to protect themselves from losses – was shrinking.

In a paper to the central bankers’ annual jamboree at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2012, Andy Haldane and Vasileios Madouros of the Bank of England described the Kafka-esque process thus: Contrast the legislative responses in the US to the two largest financial crises of the past century – the Great Depression and the Great Recession. The single most important legislative response to the Great Depression was the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. Indeed, this may have been the single most influential piece of financial legislation of the twentieth century. Yet it ran to a mere thirty-seven pages. The legislative response to this time’s crisis, culminating in the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010, could not have been more different. On its own, the Act runs to 848 pages – more than twenty Glass–Steagalls.

And the problem now is that despite its appalling cost in taxpayer bailouts and lost output, the crisis has not – incredibly – delivered a big enough shock to bring about a better, simpler and more fool-proof regulatory system, any more than it has succeeded in restoring the stock of moral capital. Moreover, history suggests that simple structural solutions such as the Glass–Steagall Act, with its clear split between commercial and investment banking, have a more powerful restraining influence on behaviour than detailed rule making. Yet there is a reluctance to return to such clear structural solutions, despite the toxicity, in particular, of the big banks’ market-making operations, whereby banks facilitate securities trading and trading in derivative instruments such as swaps and options by acting as an intermediary between buyers and sellers.


pages: 353 words: 88,376

The Investopedia Guide to Wall Speak: The Terms You Need to Know to Talk Like Cramer, Think Like Soros, and Buy Like Buffett by Jack (edited By) Guinan

Albert Einstein, asset allocation, asset-backed security, book value, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, computerized markets, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, dogs of the Dow, equity premium, equity risk premium, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, implied volatility, index fund, intangible asset, interest rate swap, inventory management, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, margin call, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, passive investing, performance metric, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, statistical model, time value of money, transaction costs, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

Related Terms: • Fannie Mae—Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) • Freddie Mac—Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. • Mortgage • Mortgage-Backed Securities—MBSs • Securitization 120 The Investopedia Guide to Wall Speak Glass-Steagall Act What Does Glass-Steagall Act Mean? An act passed by Congress in 1933 that prohibited commercial banks from collaborating with full-service brokerage firms or participating in investment banking activities. Investopedia explains Glass-Steagall Act The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted during the Great Depression to help protect depositors from the additional risks associated with security transactions. The act was dismantled in 1999.


pages: 602 words: 120,848

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Paul Pierson, Jacob S. Hacker

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, business climate, business cycle, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, desegregation, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, income inequality, invisible hand, John Bogle, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, moral hazard, Nate Silver, new economy, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Powell Memorandum, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, very high income, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce

When Citigroup formed in 1998, one of the top bankers involved joked at the celebratory press conference that any antitrust concerns could be dealt with easily: “Sandy will call up his friend, the President.”70 Within a few months, the financial industry had mounted a successful campaign to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the 1930s had prohibited powerful financial conglomerates of the sort Weill now headed on the grounds that they created conflicts of interest and impaired financial transparency and accountability. Leading the charge against Glass-Steagall was, yes, Sanford Weill. The truth is that most people have missed the visible hand of government because they’ve been looking in the wrong place.

A decade later, having switched parties and legislative chambers, Gramm had become an ever more zealous and increasingly powerful advocate of tax cuts for the wealthy and full-throttle deregulation. By 1995, he was the Republican chair of the Senate Banking Committee. This lofty perch gave him enormous power to shape legislation that Wall Street favored and to block initiatives it opposed. Among his legislative triumphs was the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that erected boundaries between investment and commercial banking to limit systemic risk and conflicts of interest. Even more impressive was his successful effort, in the waning days of the 2000 legislative session, to insert the Commodity Futures Modernization Act within a must-pass budget bill.

Even as the DSCC vastly expanded its fund-raising, the share of DSCC funds coming from Wall Street tripled over the course of a decade.8 Observers of banking and finance, as well as lobbyists, have regularly identified Schumer as a “go-to” guy on Capitol Hill—not unlike Phil Gramm. Indeed, while their voting records on most issues could not have been further apart, Schumer often teamed with Gramm in advancing positions favorable to Wall Street. Schumer was a supporter of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the bill that finally repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. In 2001, the two senators launched a successful bipartisan effort to sharply reduce the fees Wall Street paid the federal government to finance regulatory activity, cutting the financial sector’s anticipated costs by $14 billion over the coming decade. They achieved this success at a time when the SEC and other agencies were scrambling (and, it soon became clear, failing) to keep up with the rapidly expanding speed, complexity, and volume of Wall Street activity.


pages: 241 words: 63,981

Dirty Secrets How Tax Havens Destroy the Economy by Richard Murphy

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, centre right, corporate governance, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, high net worth, income inequality, intangible asset, Leo Hollis, light touch regulation, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, race to the bottom, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transfer pricing, Washington Consensus

This started with the Thatcher and Reagan administrations in the UK and United States. From there, the spread of such policies was not limited to parties of the right; it is fair to suggest, for example, that the Clinton administration of 1992–2000 endorsed many of the same ideas. Indeed, its abolition of the Glass–Steagall Act, which deregulated much of the US banking sector, was influenced by the philosophy of the Washington Consensus. Tony Blair’s New Labour governments in the UK were equally neoliberal in their outlook. The results have been unsurprising. Over the recent period, social democracy has very largely ceased to be either social or democratic, under the influence of such economic thinking.

See also trusts France 18, 24–5 free markets market conditions 29–30 tax havens effect on 30–2 and trust 37 free riders 11, 12, 164 Friedman, Milton 41, 42 FTSE 100 companies 25–6 G8 summit, 2013 26, 46–7 G20 summit, London, April 2009 9–10, 19–20 gambling 3, 77–8 GDP 172 General Electric 74, 76 Germany 68, 69, 97–8 Gibraltar 77–8 Glass–Steagall Act (US) 45 global financial architecture 10–11 global financial crisis, 2008 9, 74–5, 90, 125 Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information (OECD) 19–20 globalisation 71–2, 84, 137–8, 161 Google 26, 46, 57, 78 governance 36 government post–tax haven 166–9 role of 42–3 greed 84 Green, Lady Christina 141 Greenland 18 growth 3 Guernsey 14–15, 53, 77, 90, 93–4 harmful tax competition 11–14 Harrington, Brooke 5, 90–1 headline tax rates 75–6 Henry, James 40, 109–11 Heritage Foundation 20–1 Hidden Wealth of Nations, The (Zucman) 112–14, 113 history and development 5, 54–6, 84–5 holding structures 34–8 Hong Kong 77, 100 hot money 74–6, 172 House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (UK) 26, 73, 78 House of Commons Treasury Select Committee (UK) 22 HSBC 60, 103 human rights 144 Iceland 46 India 18 inequality 2, 177 information exchange 12, 15, 17, 32–3, 125–6, 152, 157, 175, 177 inheritance and inheritance tax 3, 64–5 Institute of Economic Affairs 41–2 intent 56 International Consortium of Investigative Journalists 101 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2, 4, 44, 114, 115, 116–17 investment markets 165–6 Ireland 56, 57, 71, 75 Isle of Man 15, 53, 102, 175–6 Israel 158 Japan 68, 97 Jersey 14–15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 53–4, 54, 57, 58–9, 62–3, 69, 71, 83, 86–7, 92, 93–4, 102, 126, 134, 135, 170, 173 Jersey Finance 86 Juncker, Jean-Claude 16 Keen, Michael 114 knock-on effects 116–17 KPMG 25–6, 73, 75, 87, 152 Labour Party (UK) 46 land-value taxation 177 lawyers 89, 154–5 Le Pen, Marine 45 Levin, Carl 22 Liberia 87 Liberian shipping register 77 limited companies 35, 38, 39–40 limited liability 145 abuse of 36–40 literature 21 locations 8, 68–9, 78, 87–8 London 171 Anti-Corruption Summit, 2016 7, 11, 28, 48, 87 G20 summit, April 2009 9–10, 19–20 Lord Mayor of London 52 Luxembourg 15–16, 57, 94, 97, 124, 134, 135 Macau 101 McLaughlin, Alden 86 macro-economic control 167 Malta 56–7, 77, 93–4 Maples and Calder 89 market efficiency 30–1, 118, 120, 165–6 markets 162–3 conditions 29–30 success criteria 3 supremacy 84 tax havens effect on 30–2 trends 137 and trust 37 Marshall Islands 77 Marshall Plan 51–2 Mauritius 57 Meacher, Michael 145 Meluah, Katy 66 Microsoft 74 Mitchell, Dan 40–1 mixed economies 2–3, 162, 164–5 Monaco 8 money laundering 60 money transfers 58–9 Monte Carlo casino 8 Montserrat 87 Mooij, Ruud De 114 Mossack Fonseca 25, 66, 89, 101–2 motivations 60 Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MCMAA) 158 multinational corporations 147, 150 Mutual Assistance Agreement (OECD) 49 neoliberalism 43–4, 84, 161 Netherlands, the 45, 57, 156, 171 New Jersey 55 New York 171 New Zealand 171 Niue 94 non-dom rule (UK) 54–5 non-residents, tax benefits 13 non-trading companies 143 Obama, Barack 17, 89, 125 Occupy movement 25 offshore 8 definition 21, 51 emergence 51–4 offshore bank accounts 59 offshore companies 79–81 numbers 7, 101–2 offshore economy, size 105–15, 113 O’Neil, Paul 13 onshore companies 81 onshore trusts 81–2 opacity 3, 27, 28, 31, 48 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2, 4, 47, 71, 95, 114 Base Erosion and Profits Shifting programme 73, 126–7, 146–7, 148 blacklisting scheme 17–18, 157–8 country-by-country reporting 129, 129–32, 133, 134–8 Double Tax Agreements 18 Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information 19–20, 157 Mutual Assistance Agreement 49 report on Harmful Tax Competition 9, 11–13, 14 revenue loss estimates 107–8 tax haven initiatives 17–21, 23, 24, 26, 27–8, 48, 123–4, 125–6, 126–8, 157–8 Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) 18–19, 20 unitary taxation formula 149 Osborne, George 60 ownership disclosure 140–2 Oxfam 111–12 ‘Tax Havens: Releasing the Hidden Billions for Poverty Eradication’ 105–6, 107 Oxford Centre for Business Taxation 108 Pak, Simon 108 Palan, Ronen 5, 10, 21, 23, 51–2, 59 Panama 77, 93–4, 99 Panama Papers 5, 7, 8, 25, 28, 35, 46, 66, 89, 101, 102, 162 Parmalat 39 patent box schemes 76 peer reviews 20 penalty regimes 154–5 Pfizer 74 Picciotto, Sol 21, 106 political stability, threat to 2 political stereotype 8 political will 155–9, 175–6 politicians and politics, role of 84–6 practices 12–13 Price of Offshore, The (Tax Justice Network) 107 ‘Price of Offshore Revisited, The’ (Tax Justice Network) 109–11 PricewaterhouseCoopers 25–6, 73, 87, 152 privacy 32–5, 66–7, 144, 162 Private Eye (magazine) 25 products 79–84 profit determination 13 profit shifting 70–1, 148 property 3, 59–60 prices 174 rights 179 prosecutions 103 Public and Commercial Services Union 25 public and private partnerships 165 public opinion 103, 145, 175 purposes 1 Reagan, Ronald 44 reforms 4, 145–51, 176–8 regulation 3, 29 revenue loss 2, 105–15, 113 implications 115–21 scale 40 risk 10, 36–7, 38, 135–7, 164 rule of law 3, 161, 178–9 sales patterns 136–7 Sanders, Bernie 45, 117 San Marino–Andorra TIEA 18 Savings Tax Directive (EU) 9, 15–17, 48, 94 secrecy 10, 12, 49, 58, 70–1, 161 assessment 93–103 banking 24, 55–6 becomes key issue 25, 27 British challenge to 46–8 collective denial of 28 comparison with privacy 32–5 definition 34 effects on free markets 30–2 financial costs 40 implications 117–21, 138 importance of 22, 23 and risk 36–7, 38 secrecy jurisdictions 29, 44, 87, 178–9 definition 22–3, 57 layering 23–5 pernicious role 23 post–tax haven 171 secrecy laws 36–7 secrecy space 23–4 separateness, supposed 10–11 service industry 84–93 Sharman, Jason 142 Shaxson, Nicholas 5, 52 shipping registrations 77 side letters 82 Sikka, Prem 21, 87 silence, conspiracy of 43 Singapore 77, 100 Smith, Adam 38–9 social impacts, post–tax haven 176–80 social media 65 Society of Trusts and Estate Practitioners 83, 91–2 South Africa 94 Spain 18 special purpose vehicles 80–1 specific jurisdictions 23 Starbucks 26, 46, 163 STAR trust legislation, Cayman Islands 83, 91–2 states, sovereign rights 151 status 10 Suez Crisis, 1956 51–2 Sweden 32, 156 Switzerland 55–6, 57, 68, 100, 112 tax abuse 2 tax administrations 156–7 tax advisers 63 tax avoidance 41–2, 69, 120 definition 61–2 developing countries 28 personal liability 154–5 schemes 62–7, 76 United Kingdom 26 tax benefits, non-residents 13 tax competition 11–14, 43–9, 74–6, 85, 92, 93, 123, 167, 179 tax compliance 61, 63, 119–20, 144–5, 167 tax evasion 61–2, 103, 109, 113 tax gaps 2, 113, 155–6 tax haven companies 67 tax haven investments 59 tax havens activities 58–60 definition 54, 123 ‘Tax Havens: Releasing the Hidden Billions for Poverty Eradication’ (Oxfam) 105–6, 107 tax incentives 13 Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) (OECD) 18–19, 20 tax justice activists 7 Tax Justice Network 21–2, 25, 40, 92, 105, 106, 142, 158, 171 Financial Secrecy Index 22–4, 57, 87, 93–6, 96–103, 184–9, 191–2, 193–7 The Price of Offshore 107 ‘The Price of Offshore Revisited’ 109–11 tax law 3, 154–5 tax-neutral regimes 86 tax obligations 34, 41 tax rates corporate 71, 75, 94 headline 75–6 reform 176–8 tax reform 176–7 tax risk 135–7 tax transparency 19 tax war 179 tax withholding, European Union 16 terrorist financing 14 Thatcher, Margaret 44 threat 1–2, 4, 7, 9 Tonga 94 Trade Union Congress 25, 25–6 transfer pricing 71–4 transparency 12, 13, 39, 48, 127, 161–2, 163, 166 Trump, Donald 45, 46, 117 trust 37, 119, 164–5 trust laws 83 trusts 35, 81–4, 139–40, 176 Turkey 158 Turks and Caicos Islands 93, 96 Uncut movement 25 unitary taxation 147–9 United Kingdom 24–5, 68 100 largest companies 69 Barclays data 134, 135 Brexit vote 117 challenge to tax haven secrecy 46–8 companies documentation 38 company growth 102 corporate tax 75 Crown Dependencies 14–15, 48, 53, 96, 124 Department for International Development 108–9 disclosure regime 153 domicile rule 54 draft legislation, 2013 145 hot money 75 House of Commons Public Accounts Committee 26, 73, 78 House of Commons Treasury Select Committee 22 Labour Party 46 non-trading companies 143 Overseas Territories 15, 48, 56, 96 penalty regime 154–5 prosecutions 103 revenue loss 115, 120 secrecy score 96–7, 193, 196 tax administration 157 tax avoidance 26 tax gap 113, 156 tax haven activity cost 113 tax havens 14–15, 16, 48, 53–4, 54, 56, 84, 86–7, 96, 170, 171 Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) 19 tax resident people 55 Uncut movement 25 and unitary taxation 149 United States of America 9, 24–5, 60, 68, 69 corporate tax rates 71 corporate tax system 74 corporation tax 40 disclosure regimes 142, 167 failure 13 Federal Trade Commission 29–30 Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) 17, 99, 126, 158 Glass–Steagall Act 45 headline tax rates 75–6 hot money 74–5 hypocrisy 158 Internal Revenue Service 156 Occupy movement 25 secrecy score 97, 98–9, 193, 196 tax gap estimates 156 tax havens 8, 17, 55, 142, 171 Vanuatu 87 Verizon 76 virtual world, the 21–2 VISTA trust 24 Vodafone 26 voter participation, decline in 3 Washington Consensus, the 43–5, 46 Watson, Emma 66 wealth concentration of ownership 3, 111, 117, 161, 167–9, 176 under-taxation of 178 wealth-management professionals 84, 90–2, 155 wealth taxes 177 World Bank 2, 44, 108–9, 109 Zucman, Gabriel 40, 102 The Hidden Wealth of Nations 112–14, 113

See also trusts France 18, 24–5 free markets market conditions 29–30 tax havens effect on 30–2 and trust 37 free riders 11, 12, 164 Friedman, Milton 41, 42 FTSE 100 companies 25–6 G8 summit, 2013 26, 46–7 G20 summit, London, April 2009 9–10, 19–20 gambling 3, 77–8 GDP 172 General Electric 74, 76 Germany 68, 69, 97–8 Gibraltar 77–8 Glass–Steagall Act (US) 45 global financial architecture 10–11 global financial crisis, 2008 9, 74–5, 90, 125 Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information (OECD) 19–20 globalisation 71–2, 84, 137–8, 161 Google 26, 46, 57, 78 governance 36 government post–tax haven 166–9 role of 42–3 greed 84 Green, Lady Christina 141 Greenland 18 growth 3 Guernsey 14–15, 53, 77, 90, 93–4 harmful tax competition 11–14 Harrington, Brooke 5, 90–1 headline tax rates 75–6 Henry, James 40, 109–11 Heritage Foundation 20–1 Hidden Wealth of Nations, The (Zucman) 112–14, 113 history and development 5, 54–6, 84–5 holding structures 34–8 Hong Kong 77, 100 hot money 74–6, 172 House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (UK) 26, 73, 78 House of Commons Treasury Select Committee (UK) 22 HSBC 60, 103 human rights 144 Iceland 46 India 18 inequality 2, 177 information exchange 12, 15, 17, 32–3, 125–6, 152, 157, 175, 177 inheritance and inheritance tax 3, 64–5 Institute of Economic Affairs 41–2 intent 56 International Consortium of Investigative Journalists 101 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2, 4, 44, 114, 115, 116–17 investment markets 165–6 Ireland 56, 57, 71, 75 Isle of Man 15, 53, 102, 175–6 Israel 158 Japan 68, 97 Jersey 14–15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 53–4, 54, 57, 58–9, 62–3, 69, 71, 83, 86–7, 92, 93–4, 102, 126, 134, 135, 170, 173 Jersey Finance 86 Juncker, Jean-Claude 16 Keen, Michael 114 knock-on effects 116–17 KPMG 25–6, 73, 75, 87, 152 Labour Party (UK) 46 land-value taxation 177 lawyers 89, 154–5 Le Pen, Marine 45 Levin, Carl 22 Liberia 87 Liberian shipping register 77 limited companies 35, 38, 39–40 limited liability 145 abuse of 36–40 literature 21 locations 8, 68–9, 78, 87–8 London 171 Anti-Corruption Summit, 2016 7, 11, 28, 48, 87 G20 summit, April 2009 9–10, 19–20 Lord Mayor of London 52 Luxembourg 15–16, 57, 94, 97, 124, 134, 135 Macau 101 McLaughlin, Alden 86 macro-economic control 167 Malta 56–7, 77, 93–4 Maples and Calder 89 market efficiency 30–1, 118, 120, 165–6 markets 162–3 conditions 29–30 success criteria 3 supremacy 84 tax havens effect on 30–2 trends 137 and trust 37 Marshall Islands 77 Marshall Plan 51–2 Mauritius 57 Meacher, Michael 145 Meluah, Katy 66 Microsoft 74 Mitchell, Dan 40–1 mixed economies 2–3, 162, 164–5 Monaco 8 money laundering 60 money transfers 58–9 Monte Carlo casino 8 Montserrat 87 Mooij, Ruud De 114 Mossack Fonseca 25, 66, 89, 101–2 motivations 60 Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MCMAA) 158 multinational corporations 147, 150 Mutual Assistance Agreement (OECD) 49 neoliberalism 43–4, 84, 161 Netherlands, the 45, 57, 156, 171 New Jersey 55 New York 171 New Zealand 171 Niue 94 non-dom rule (UK) 54–5 non-residents, tax benefits 13 non-trading companies 143 Obama, Barack 17, 89, 125 Occupy movement 25 offshore 8 definition 21, 51 emergence 51–4 offshore bank accounts 59 offshore companies 79–81 numbers 7, 101–2 offshore economy, size 105–15, 113 O’Neil, Paul 13 onshore companies 81 onshore trusts 81–2 opacity 3, 27, 28, 31, 48 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2, 4, 47, 71, 95, 114 Base Erosion and Profits Shifting programme 73, 126–7, 146–7, 148 blacklisting scheme 17–18, 157–8 country-by-country reporting 129, 129–32, 133, 134–8 Double Tax Agreements 18 Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information 19–20, 157 Mutual Assistance Agreement 49 report on Harmful Tax Competition 9, 11–13, 14 revenue loss estimates 107–8 tax haven initiatives 17–21, 23, 24, 26, 27–8, 48, 123–4, 125–6, 126–8, 157–8 Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) 18–19, 20 unitary taxation formula 149 Osborne, George 60 ownership disclosure 140–2 Oxfam 111–12 ‘Tax Havens: Releasing the Hidden Billions for Poverty Eradication’ 105–6, 107 Oxford Centre for Business Taxation 108 Pak, Simon 108 Palan, Ronen 5, 10, 21, 23, 51–2, 59 Panama 77, 93–4, 99 Panama Papers 5, 7, 8, 25, 28, 35, 46, 66, 89, 101, 102, 162 Parmalat 39 patent box schemes 76 peer reviews 20 penalty regimes 154–5 Pfizer 74 Picciotto, Sol 21, 106 political stability, threat to 2 political stereotype 8 political will 155–9, 175–6 politicians and politics, role of 84–6 practices 12–13 Price of Offshore, The (Tax Justice Network) 107 ‘Price of Offshore Revisited, The’ (Tax Justice Network) 109–11 PricewaterhouseCoopers 25–6, 73, 87, 152 privacy 32–5, 66–7, 144, 162 Private Eye (magazine) 25 products 79–84 profit determination 13 profit shifting 70–1, 148 property 3, 59–60 prices 174 rights 179 prosecutions 103 Public and Commercial Services Union 25 public and private partnerships 165 public opinion 103, 145, 175 purposes 1 Reagan, Ronald 44 reforms 4, 145–51, 176–8 regulation 3, 29 revenue loss 2, 105–15, 113 implications 115–21 scale 40 risk 10, 36–7, 38, 135–7, 164 rule of law 3, 161, 178–9 sales patterns 136–7 Sanders, Bernie 45, 117 San Marino–Andorra TIEA 18 Savings Tax Directive (EU) 9, 15–17, 48, 94 secrecy 10, 12, 49, 58, 70–1, 161 assessment 93–103 banking 24, 55–6 becomes key issue 25, 27 British challenge to 46–8 collective denial of 28 comparison with privacy 32–5 definition 34 effects on free markets 30–2 financial costs 40 implications 117–21, 138 importance of 22, 23 and risk 36–7, 38 secrecy jurisdictions 29, 44, 87, 178–9 definition 22–3, 57 layering 23–5 pernicious role 23 post–tax haven 171 secrecy laws 36–7 secrecy space 23–4 separateness, supposed 10–11 service industry 84–93 Sharman, Jason 142 Shaxson, Nicholas 5, 52 shipping registrations 77 side letters 82 Sikka, Prem 21, 87 silence, conspiracy of 43 Singapore 77, 100 Smith, Adam 38–9 social impacts, post–tax haven 176–80 social media 65 Society of Trusts and Estate Practitioners 83, 91–2 South Africa 94 Spain 18 special purpose vehicles 80–1 specific jurisdictions 23 Starbucks 26, 46, 163 STAR trust legislation, Cayman Islands 83, 91–2 states, sovereign rights 151 status 10 Suez Crisis, 1956 51–2 Sweden 32, 156 Switzerland 55–6, 57, 68, 100, 112 tax abuse 2 tax administrations 156–7 tax advisers 63 tax avoidance 41–2, 69, 120 definition 61–2 developing countries 28 personal liability 154–5 schemes 62–7, 76 United Kingdom 26 tax benefits, non-residents 13 tax competition 11–14, 43–9, 74–6, 85, 92, 93, 123, 167, 179 tax compliance 61, 63, 119–20, 144–5, 167 tax evasion 61–2, 103, 109, 113 tax gaps 2, 113, 155–6 tax haven companies 67 tax haven investments 59 tax havens activities 58–60 definition 54, 123 ‘Tax Havens: Releasing the Hidden Billions for Poverty Eradication’ (Oxfam) 105–6, 107 tax incentives 13 Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) (OECD) 18–19, 20 tax justice activists 7 Tax Justice Network 21–2, 25, 40, 92, 105, 106, 142, 158, 171 Financial Secrecy Index 22–4, 57, 87, 93–6, 96–103, 184–9, 191–2, 193–7 The Price of Offshore 107 ‘The Price of Offshore Revisited’ 109–11 tax law 3, 154–5 tax-neutral regimes 86 tax obligations 34, 41 tax rates corporate 71, 75, 94 headline 75–6 reform 176–8 tax reform 176–7 tax risk 135–7 tax transparency 19 tax war 179 tax withholding, European Union 16 terrorist financing 14 Thatcher, Margaret 44 threat 1–2, 4, 7, 9 Tonga 94 Trade Union Congress 25, 25–6 transfer pricing 71–4 transparency 12, 13, 39, 48, 127, 161–2, 163, 166 Trump, Donald 45, 46, 117 trust 37, 119, 164–5 trust laws 83 trusts 35, 81–4, 139–40, 176 Turkey 158 Turks and Caicos Islands 93, 96 Uncut movement 25 unitary taxation 147–9 United Kingdom 24–5, 68 100 largest companies 69 Barclays data 134, 135 Brexit vote 117 challenge to tax haven secrecy 46–8 companies documentation 38 company growth 102 corporate tax 75 Crown Dependencies 14–15, 48, 53, 96, 124 Department for International Development 108–9 disclosure regime 153 domicile rule 54 draft legislation, 2013 145 hot money 75 House of Commons Public Accounts Committee 26, 73, 78 House of Commons Treasury Select Committee 22 Labour Party 46 non-trading companies 143 Overseas Territories 15, 48, 56, 96 penalty regime 154–5 prosecutions 103 revenue loss 115, 120 secrecy score 96–7, 193, 196 tax administration 157 tax avoidance 26 tax gap 113, 156 tax haven activity cost 113 tax havens 14–15, 16, 48, 53–4, 54, 56, 84, 86–7, 96, 170, 171 Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) 19 tax resident people 55 Uncut movement 25 and unitary taxation 149 United States of America 9, 24–5, 60, 68, 69 corporate tax rates 71 corporate tax system 74 corporation tax 40 disclosure regimes 142, 167 failure 13 Federal Trade Commission 29–30 Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) 17, 99, 126, 158 Glass–Steagall Act 45 headline tax rates 75–6 hot money 74–5 hypocrisy 158 Internal Revenue Service 156 Occupy movement 25 secrecy score 97, 98–9, 193, 196 tax gap estimates 156 tax havens 8, 17, 55, 142, 171 Vanuatu 87 Verizon 76 virtual world, the 21–2 VISTA trust 24 Vodafone 26 voter participation, decline in 3 Washington Consensus, the 43–5, 46 Watson, Emma 66 wealth concentration of ownership 3, 111, 117, 161, 167–9, 176 under-taxation of 178 wealth-management professionals 84, 90–2, 155 wealth taxes 177 World Bank 2, 44, 108–9, 109 Zucman, Gabriel 40, 102 The Hidden Wealth of Nations 112–14, 113


pages: 430 words: 140,405

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. Mcdonald, Patrick Robinson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, asset-backed security, bank run, Bear Stearns, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book value, business cycle, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cuban missile crisis, diversification, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, hiring and firing, if you build it, they will come, it's over 9,000, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, naked short selling, negative equity, new economy, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, value at risk

For most people, victims or not of this worldwide collapse of the financial markets, it will be, in time, just water over the dam. But it will never be that for me, and my long background as a trader and researcher has prompted me many times to burrow down further to the bedrock, the cause of the crash of 2008. I refer to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. If only President Clinton had never signed the bill repealing Glass-Steagall. Personally, I never thought he much wanted to sign it, but to understand the ramifications it is necessary to delve deeper, and before I begin my story, I will present you with some critical background information, without which your grasp might be incomplete.

President Clinton wanted to stay focused with the concerns of the bankers, many of whom were seriously upset by Achtenberg’s pressure to provide shaky mortgages. And right before the president’s eyes there was a related situation, one that had the deepest possible roots in the American financial community. This was the fabled Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the post–Wall Street crash legislation that prevented commercial banks from merging with investment banks, thus eliminating the opportunity for the high-rolling investment guys to get their hands on limitless supplies of depositors’ money. Glass-Steagall was nothing short of a barrier, and it stayed in place for more than sixty years, but the major U.S. banks wanted it abolished.

It would take another four years for this Depression-era legislation to come once more under attack. President Clinton understood the ramifications, and he was wary of the reform, wary of seeming to be allied with the power brokers of the biggest banks in the country. He understood the complexities of the Glass-Steagall Act, its origins, and its purposes—principally to prevent some diabolical investment house from plunging in big on a corporation like Enron and going down with a zillion dollars of small depositors’ cash. No part of that did President Bill need. On one hand was the belief of the main U.S. clearing banks that such mergers would strengthen the whole financial industry by increasing opportunities for hefty profits.


pages: 414 words: 101,285

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It by Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan

air freight, air traffic controllers' union, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, connected car, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, John Snow's cholera map, Kenneth Rogoff, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open economy, precautionary principle, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reshoring, risk free rate, Robert Solow, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social contagion, social distancing, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

Our power was limited to that of publishing reports and preaching sermons.”32 The culture of deregulation became entrenched worldwide despite the efforts of groups such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and warnings of a number of the world’s foremost economists.33 At the height of subprime lending in the United States, the attorneys general of all 50 states were seeking to investigate these risky practices but were “blocked by a coalition of major banks and the Bush administration,” which used the archaic National Banking Act of 1863 to prevent state-level action.34 In the United States, the world’s largest national financial market, legislation such as the Glass-Steagall Act had aimed to foster financial stability since the Great Depression. Commercial and investment banking activities were separated, reducing speculation and risk taking by stopping banks from “gambling” with savings. In the decades after Glass-Steagall’s ratification, however, administrations convinced of the merits of uncontrolled capital flow began to undermine such efforts. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 constituted the final removal of the divide between commercial and investment banking.

In the short term this provided more financial activity, higher revenues, more taxes, and more growth and explains why so many policy makers argued that their domestic financial system had to become “more competitive,” which they took to mean bound by less regulation. Referring to the so-called Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (which limited the possible interaction between commercial banking and securities firms), Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, promoted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, stating: “We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer.

See General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Geisel, Theo, 24 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Uruguay Round, 12, 73 General Motors, 78 genetic disorders, 159–60 geographical risks, 28–30 geographic concentration: of economic activity, 212–13; in financial sector, 29, 30, 204, 213; of infrastructure, 212; of manufacturing, 29–30, 81, 84, 96, 98, 131; reduction of, 122, 205, 212–14; systemic risks and, 29–30, 212–13; of transportation nodes, 101–2, 103–4, 212. See also urban areas Germany: exports of, 74, 74f; inequality in, 170; political extremism in, 192 Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, 48, 49, 52–53b global financial governance, 60–62, 65, 68. See also financial regulation global governance: accountability of, 201; collective action in, 3–4; contingency plans, 217–18; coordination with national institutions, 205; costs and benefits of, 205; data requirements of, 121–22; environmental, 142–43; flexibility of, 207; limiting, 202; national interests and, 211; need for reforms of, 34, 199, 201, 203, 206–9; policy recommendations for, 209–10, 212–20; scope of, 202; transparency of, 195–97, 199, 201, 207, 208–9, 214–15 globalization: benefits of, xiv, 30, 31–32, 219, 220; butterfly effect and, xiii–xiv; critics of, 30, 185–86, 198; definition of, 1, 10; effects of, 1–2, 9–10, 198–99; environmental effects of, 123, 126, 133–39; inclusive, 168–69, 182, 195–96, 199; management of, 1, 192, 195–96, 199, 200–202, 219; political backlash against, xiv, 4, 186, 187, 200; reversal attempts, xiv, 169, 182, 187, 190; seen as threat, xiv, 4, 188–89, 196; sustainable, 3–4, 31, 168–69, 182, 199, 208, 212.


pages: 311 words: 99,699

Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, book value, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, easy for humans, difficult for computers, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, Kickstarter, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, McMansion, Michael Milken, money market fund, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, Plato's cave, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, risk free rate, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, tail risk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, value at risk, yield curve

In the Panic of 1907, when the New York Stock Exchange plunged to half of its value, Morgan put up vast sums of his personal fortune and rallied other leading bankers to do the same, shoring up the banking system. In the years after the Second World War, the bank lost some of its preeminence. After the crash of 1929, a populist backlash against Wall Street led to the introduction of the Glass-Steagall Act, which forced banks to split off their capital markets operations—the trading of debt and equity securities—from their commercial banking businesses. The J.P. Morgan empire was required to fragment into separate entities, including Morgan Stanley, the US brokerage; Morgan Grenfell, a British brokerage; and J.P.

In practice, during the twentieth century both American and European governments resolved the dilemma by keeping banking private but swaddling it in rules to ward against excesses. During the course of the century, those rules had expanded into what felt to bankers like a straitjacket of regulation. Some of the laws were national in nature, such as the Glass-Steagall Act in the United States, which separated commercial banking from investment banking. The Federal Reserve also imposed rules specifically on American commercial banks—with investment banks left outside its purview—including the stipulation that the total size of their liabilities could not exceed twenty times the size of their equity.

Sandy Weill, the freewheeling financier, embarked on a bold plan to merge Citibank with financial services powerhouse Travelers Group, which had previously bought the hard-charging brokerage Salomon Brothers, to create a financial behemoth called Citigroup. The brokerage Morgan Stanley acquired Dean Witter, creating a merged retail and institutional securities giant. By the late 1990s, the last remaining pieces of the Glass-Steagall Act looked like quaint relics, and Wall Street successfully lobbied for their final demise. On November 12, 1999, President Bill Clinton signed a bill repealing the last of the Depression-era rules. The repeal of Glass-Steagall legitimized the concept of combining commercial and investment banking to construct “one-stop shopping” empires, and many more mergers quickly followed, not just across different sectors of finance but across national borders, too.


pages: 318 words: 99,524

Why Aren't They Shouting?: A Banker’s Tale of Change, Computers and Perpetual Crisis by Kevin Rodgers

Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, buy and hold, buy low sell high, call centre, capital asset pricing model, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Credit Default Swap, currency peg, currency risk, diversification, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, Flash crash, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, invisible hand, John Meriwether, latency arbitrage, law of one price, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Minsky moment, money market fund, Myron Scholes, Northern Rock, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Ponzi scheme, prisoner's dilemma, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, technology bubble, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tobin tax, too big to fail, value at risk, vertical integration, Y2K, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

The Riegle–Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 permitted bank holding companies to acquire banks in any state and allowed interstate bank mergers from 1997. The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999 allowed banks to engage in non-banking financial activities such as insurance – in effect repealing the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 which had, in the aftermath of the crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression, forcibly separated commercial and investment banking. But regulatory change explains why mergers were no longer impossible, not why they were done. Looking through the press releases of some of the mergers that occurred in the 1990s and 2000s, two dominant publicly expressed motivations keep recurring: the idea of the one-stop shop and the idea of efficiency gains.

., 197–8 dividends, 91, 147, 212 Dodd–Frank Act (2010), 209, 230 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 30 dot-com boom (1997–2000), 37, 146, 207 double knockouts, 107 Dow Jones, 79, 138, 147 Dresdner Bank, 20, 48 drive-bys, 17, 20, 68, 132 E e-trading, 55, 57, 67–73, 75, 84, 122 efficiency improvements, 169–70 efficient market theory, 203 Electronic Broking Services (EBS), 24–8, 31, 32–3, 42, 45, 46, 48, 50, 59–60, 63, 69–70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 83, 188 Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs), 59, 61, 66, 193 elephant deals, 38 email, 169, 191, 195, 197, 199 emerging markets, xi, 6, 29–30, 116–43, 147, 228 Empire State Building, New York, 130 ‘Engine’, 127–31, 135, 139, 157, 167, 169 engineering, x–xi, 10 Enron, 156 equities, viii, 23, 50, 66, 71, 74, 80, 89, 95, 146, 193, 207, 211, 235 circuit breakers, 80 colocation, 71 sales-traders, 50, 78 euro, 22, 28, 31, 37, 53, 69, 80, 81–3, 189 Euromoney, 36, 41, 47, 51–2, 54, 55, 56, 57, 64, 66–8, 70, 77, 81, 233 Europe, Middle Eastern and African (EMEA) markets, 117–18 European Union (EU), 102, 196, 201, 203, 207, 210, 212, 230 Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), xi, 22, 102–3, 106, 123, 130, 136, 207, 224 Liikanen Report (2012), 230 Maastricht Treaty (1992), 102 Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), 209 ‘Every Day I Write the Book’ (Elvis Costello), 140 Excel, 107, 221 exchange rates, 9, 11–13, 14, 17, 32, 100 exotic derivatives, 105–11, 127 F ‘F9 monkeys’, 221 Fannie Mae, 90 Federal Reserve, xii, 90, 109, 143, 187, 202–6, 212 Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 193 fibre-optic cables, 77, 84 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), 167 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), 190 Financial Services Act (2013), 210 Financial Stability Board (FSB), 212, 214, 216 Financial Times, 116, 187 financial transactions tax, 216 fines, 181, 190, 196 First Chicago, 168 Fitch, 155 fixings, 181, 187–92, 198 Flannery, Mark, 215 Flash Crash (2010), 79–80, 193 Florence, Italy, 78 Florida, United States, 116 football, 10–11, 43, 83, 117, 167, 195 Forbes, 234 foreign direct investment (FDI), 136 foreign exchange (FX), viii, xi, xii, xiv, 3–28, 29–55, 56–84, 89, 90–1, 95–114, 115–44, 145, 158–9, 165, 174, 175, 180, 181–94, 196–7, 210, 213, 222–3, 224, 225, 233 aggressive prices, 14–15 Application Program Interfaces (APIs), 59–60, 66, 71, 78 Autobahn, 48–51, 53, 64, 68, 69–70, 78, 225 Automated Risk Manager (ARM), 53–5, 56–9, 64, 67, 70–1, 72, 73, 76, 79, 101, 129, 169 banging the close, 190 BARX, 64, 65 bidirectional flows, 69 calls, 19–21, 23, 27, 51, 53, 98, 99 carry trade, 108–10 Clackatron, 32–3, 54, 91 colocation, 71 complex risk, 159, 222 corporations, 9, 36, 61, 76, 96, 109–10 costs, 42 currency pairs, 9, 12, 14, 46, 53, 75, 80 decimalisation, 63–6, 67, 73, 77 drive-bys, 17, 20, 68, 132 Electronic Broking Services (EBS), 24–8, 31, 32–3, 42, 45, 46, 48, 50, 59–60, 63, 69–70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 83, 188 Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs), 59, 61, 66, 193 elephant deals, 38 emerging markets, xi, 6, 29–30, 116–43 Engine, 127–31, 135, 139, 157, 167, 169 fixings, 181, 187–92, 198 forwards trades, 10, 52, 77, 92, 121 hedge funds, 9, 29, 36, 57, 61, 66, 69–74, 77, 81, 120, 123, 131–5, 141–3 hedging, 97, 108, 117–18, 190, 225 high frequency trading (HFT), 57, 63, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 84, 180, 194 LIBOR scandal (2012), 181–7, 188, 189, 190, 197, 198 liquidity, 18–19, 21, 27, 80–1, 83, 233 making rates, 13–21, 27, 38–9, 50, 96 market makers, 18–19, 21, 83 market shares, 41, 48, 51–2, 54, 55, 65, 66–8, 70, 77, 81, 169 ‘mine-and-yours’, 15–16, 18, 19, 192 Monte Carlo pricing, 111–14 off system trades, 111 OPTICS, 101, 103, 131, 153, 170 options trade, 10, 13, 20, 23, 27, 33–4, 38, 43–7, 49, 77, 95–114, 222–3 over-the-counter (OTC) market, 96, 209 passive v. active strategies, 17–19 pay, 43 pension funds, 9, 61, 76, 96 pips, 13, 18, 41, 65, 73, 77 Piranha, 48 pre-deal services, 8 prime brokerage (PB), 61–3, 66, 120, 209 production credits, 49–50 proprietary trading, 22, 31, 39, 46–7, 125 relative value trades, 72–3 retail trade, retail aggregators, 21, 61, 66, 74, 75, 79, 82–3 Reuters Dealing machines, 23, 25–8, 31, 32, 50, 59, 73 Revolutionary Application Program Interface Development (RAPID), 56–9, 77, 101 risk, 15, 16, 19, 20–1, 24, 29, 31, 38, 39, 40, 44–5, 49, 51, 53, 62, 77, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101–8, 110–14, 121–31, 135, 192 risk management systems, 24, 40, 44–5, 53–5, 56–9, 64, 67, 70–1, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 99, 101–8, 110–14, 121–31, 135 rogue systems, 79–80 salespeople, 8–9, 11, 13–15, 20, 24, 28, 29, 33, 35, 37, 46, 47–52, 68, 96, 120 settlements, 5, 24, 40, 44, 51, 61, 101, 209 screen scraping, 32–3, 50, 59 skewed prices, 18, 19, 73, 96, 98 slippage, 188–9 speculation, 21, 31, 102–14 spot, 3–28, 33–4, 42–4, 46, 48–55, 67, 76, 77, 91, 96, 97, 98–9, 108, 111, 118, 122, 159, 165, 169, 188, 189, 199, 201, 222 spread, 12, 14–15, 16, 18, 19, 31, 41–2, 44, 45, 53, 55, 61, 64, 68, 69, 75, 80, 96, 225 traders, 3–28, 33, 35, 38, 41, 43, 46, 50, 52–4, 67, 73, 76, 78, 96, 99, 122, 189 Triangle arbitrage, 31–2, 42, 54, 91, 122 two-way pricing, 11–21, 23, 99 volatility, 14, 26, 46–7, 74–5, 80, 98, 137 wallet, 40 window, 118, 137, 188 WM/R, 187–8 zero coupon bonds, 118–32, 134, 138–43, 149, 152, 158, 159, 173 forward rate agreements (FRAs), 182 forwards trades, 10, 52, 77, 92, 121 Four Seasons, The, 3–5, 9 France, 6–7, 35, 37, 41, 46, 55, 64, 65, 77, 102, 140, 159, 207 Freddie Mac, 90 free market economics, 202–6 FTSE 100, 147 Fuld, Dick, 226 FX All, 59, 78 FX-fixing scandal (2013), 181, 187–92, 198 FXCM, 82–3 G G20 nations, 209, 212, 216 gambling, 31, 102–14 gamma, 97–8, 100 Gaussian copula, 158 geekiness, x, 10, 43, 223 geopolitics, 229 Germany, vii–x, xii, xiii, 16, 28, 36, 44, 54, 75, 144–5, 159, 167, 180, 200, 204 mark, 9, 96, 97, 99, 100, 104 Gibson Greetings, 109 GKOs (rouble-denominated bonds), 118–32, 134, 138–43, 149, 152, 158, 159, 173 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 168, 201, 230 globally systemically important banks (G-SIBs), 216 Goldman Sachs, 23, 146, 198, 216, 230 Commodity Index (GSCI), 148 Google, 78, 234 GQ, 141 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (1999), 168, 201 Great Depression (1929–39), 168 Great Financial Crisis (2007–8), xiii, xiv–xv, 74–5, 87–90, 114, 124, 163, 172–5, 179–80, 196, 204–6, 207, 217, 219, 220, 223, 227–8 Greece, 82, 92, 181 Greeks, 98, 99, 101, 105, 107, 110, 111, 112, 114, 127, 129, 150, 157, 158, 182, 219 Greenspan, Alan, 202–6 GSA, 233 Gulf War (1990–1), xi, 22, 95 Gulliver, Stuart, 231 H ‘haircuts’, 132 Haldane, Andrew, 173 hand signals, 16 Hang Seng, 137 Harrison, William, 168 Harrow School, London, 149 Harvard University, 166 La Haye Sainte, Belgium, 10 hedge funds, xi, 9, 29, 36, 57, 61, 66, 69–74, 77, 81, 97, 114, 116, 122, 123, 131–5, 141–2, 164, 171, 172, 201, 229, 233 hedging, 94, 95, 97, 108, 117–18, 144, 145–6, 157, 190, 225, 226 delta hedging, 97 Hellwig, Martin, 211 Henry, John, 28 Herrhausen, Alfred, 226 high frequency trading (HFT), 57, 63, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 84, 180, 194 Hodgkin, Howard, 195 Holder, Noddy, 232 Hong Kong, 137 Hotspot, 59 Hounslow, London, 193 HSBC, 216, 229, 231 Hussein, Saddam, 22, 95 I ICAP, 73 Iceland, 167, 174 identity theft insurance, 231 Immendorff, Jörg, 56 indexes, 147–50, 153–4, 157, 163, 190 India, 149 Indonesia, 135, 137, 139 IndyMac, 90 initial margin, 120, 132 insurance, 93, 151, 164, 168, 172, 174, 229 Intelligent Flow Monster, 146 interest rates, viii, 7, 10, 92, 108–10, 135, 225 carry trade, 108–10 derivatives, 104, 132, 182–6, 214 futures, 182 LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate), 109, 181–7, 188, 189, 190, 197, 198 swaps, 8, 92, 182–4 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 132, 135, 140, 211, 214, 230 International Swap Dealers Association (ISDA), 152, 153 Internet, xii, 5, 42, 76, 78, 169, 191–2, 195, 197, 199, 228, 233–5 investment banking, 36, 87, 110, 133, 145–6, 151, 158, 165–8, 229–30 iPhone, 5, 228 Iran, 181–2 Iraq, xi, 22, 95 Israel, 29, 138 Italy, 10, 13, 22, 78, 115–16, 141 lira, 22, 102–3, 123 iTraxx, 153 J Jagger, Mick, 87 Japan, 61, 72, 79, 159 yen, 9, 14, 17, 28, 71–2, 75, 79, 80, 136, 184 JPMorgan Chase, 131, 150, 158, 163, 168, 182, 197, 216, 229, 231, 23 J.

(Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons), 3–5, 9 oil, 139, 148, 149–50, 220 Oktoberfest, 144–5 one-stop shop, 145, 160, 168, 230 online banking, 233–4 OPTICS, 101, 103, 131, 153, 170 option-based recapitalisation charge (OBRC), 217–18 options, 10, 13, 20, 23, 27, 33–4, 38, 43–7, 49, 77, 91–114, 121, 128, 134, 137, 140, 141, 149, 150, 218, 222–3 Asian options, 106 barrier products, 104, 107, 108 carry trade, 108–10 commoditisation, 110–11 delta hedging, 97 double knockouts, 107 exotics, 105–11, 127 foreign exchange, 10, 13, 20, 23, 27, 33–4, 38, 43–7, 49, 77, 95–114, 222–3 gamma, 97–8, 100 Greeks, 98, 99, 101, 105, 107, 110, 111, 112, 114, 127, 129, 150, 157, 158, 182, 219 lattice methods, 112 lookbacks, 107 over-the-counter (OTC) market, 96, 209 power options, 107 pricing of, 91–5, 107, 111–14, 128, 133, 150 range trades, 107, 108 rho, 98 risk-weighted assets (RWA), 124–31, 134, 166, 211 spoofing, 99, 192–3 strike price, 94, 95, 104, 113, 218 theta, 98, 140 time decay, 98 tree approach, 112–14 vega, 98 volatility, 94, 98, 128–9 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 124–5, 139, 207 over-the-counter (OTC) market, 96, 209 P Panopticon, 199 Patton, George Smith, 84 pay, 43, 161–3, 210, 216 PayPal, 233 peer-to-peer, 234 pension funds, 9, 61, 76, 96 Philippines, 137 ‘pipes’, 71, 72 ‘pips’, 13, 18, 41, 65, 73, 77 Piranha, 48 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 209 Plankton Strategy, 38, 40, 55, 58 Poland, 117, 167 Ponzi schemes, 205–6 Portugal, 173 power options, 107 Prebon Yamane, 28 Precision Pricing, 65 prime brokerage (PB), 61–3, 66, 120, 209 principal model, 7–8 principles-based regulation (PBR), 201–2 Prisoners’ Dilemma, 84, 186, 197, 201 Procter and Gamble, 109, 136, 155 production credits, 49, 50 proprietary trading, 22, 31, 39, 46–7, 125 Prosper, 234 Pushkin, Alexander, 30 Q quadratic equations, 105–6 quantitative analysis, xiv, 100–1, 103–8, 110–14, 126, 150, 158 quantitative easing, 82 R Rand, Ayn, 202 range trades, 107 ratings agencies, 155–8, 208, 219 rational markets, 202–6 recapitalisation, 217 recovery value, 151, 157, 160 regulation, 73, 80, 131, 148, 152, 168, 174, 180, 186–7, 191–6, 198–9, 200–18, 229, 231, 232 BaFin, 200, 202 bank tax, 216 Basel Accords, 124, 125, 130, 166, 207–9, 211, 217, 231 Big Bang (1986), 201 Central Counterparties (CCPs), 209, 213–15, 229 Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), 202 computers, 209, 213 ‘cops on the beat’, 215 Dodd–Frank Act (2010), 209, 230 European Banking Authority (EBA), 211–12 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act (2013), 210 Financial Stability Board (FSB), 212, 214, 216 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 168, 201, 230 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (1999), 168, 201 option-based recapitalisation charge (OBRC), 217–18 principles-based regulation (PBR), 201–2 rational markets, 6, 202–6 Riegle–Neal Act (1994), 168 shadow banking, 214–15 surveillance, 110, 190, 195–9 trade repositories, 209–10 relative value trades, 72–3 repo markets, 171 request for quote (RFQ), 50, 51 retail banking, 169, 229–30, 233 retail FX, retail aggregators, 21, 61, 66, 74, 75, 79, 82–3 Reuters, 9, 22–3, 188 Reuters Dealing machines, 23, 25–8, 31, 32, 50, 59, 73 Revolutionary Application Program Interface Development (RAPID), 56–9, 77, 101 rho, 98 Riegle–Neal Act (1994), 168 risk, risk management, 15, 16, 19, 20–1, 24, 29, 31, 38–9, 40, 44–5, 53–5, 56–9, 64, 67, 70–1, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 99, 101–8, 110–14, 121–31, 135–6, 139, 142, 144, 150, 152, 157–63, 166– 7, 169–70, 172, 174, 200–1, 206–7, 209, 213, 219, 221, 224–7, 233 agency-like approach, 119, 127 Automated Risk Manager (ARM), 53–5, 56–9, 64, 67, 70–1, 72, 73, 76, 79, 101, 129, 169 BTAnalytics, 107, 108, 112, 134, 150 collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), 154, 156, 158–63 complex risk, 159 concentration, 213 counterparty credit risk, 141–2, 172, 201, 202–3, 209 credit default swaps (CDSs), 151–3, 157, 158, 164, 225 credit risk, 7, 8, 62–3, 123, 125–6, 130, 141, 151, 209 DBAnalytics, 150, 153 foreign exchange, 15, 16, 19, 20–1, 24, 29, 31, 38, 39, 40, 44–5, 49, 51, 53, 62, 77, 192 market risk, 7, 62, 123, 126, 130, 167 model dopes, 221–2 OPTICS, 101, 103, 131, 153, 170 perception gap, 220, 224 quantitative analysis, xiv, 100–1, 103–8, 110–14, 126, 150, 158 Revolutionary Application Program Interface Development (RAPID), 56–9, 77, 101 risk-adjusted return on capital (RAROC), 126–7, 131, 144, 219 risk-weighted assets (RWA), 124–31, 134, 166, 208, 211 shares, 92 Spreadsheet Solutions Framework (SSF), 111, 121, 138, 153 value at risk (VaR), 127–31, 135–6, 139, 142, 157, 158, 169, 170, 172, 174, 204, 207, 219, 226, 227 RiskMetrics, 131 rogue systems, 79–80 Rolling Stones, 87, 89, 151, 171, 172 Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), 48, 217, 233 ‘Rule 575 – Disruptive Practices Prohibited’, 193 Russia, 30, 33, 38, 76, 114–32, 137–42, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 163, 172, 175, 199, 202, 204, 207, 221, 224, 228 Financial Crisis (1998), xi–xii, 29, 114, 115–16, 118–22, 124, 137–43, 146, 163, 172, 175, 202, 207, 221, 224, 228 rouble, 115–16, 118–22, 131, 137, 138, 139 rouble-denominated bonds (GKOs), 118–32, 134, 138–43, 149, 152, 158, 159, 173 S sales-traders, 50, 78 salespeople, 8–9, 11, 13–15, 20, 24, 28, 29, 33, 35, 37, 46, 47–52, 68, 96, 120 Salomon Brothers, 122, 133–4 Sanford, Charlie, 35, 126 Sarao, Navinder Singh, 193 Scholes, Myron, 94–5, 97 screen scraping, 32–3, 50, 59 Securities and Exchange Commission, 215 securities, 91, 145, 155 September 11 attacks (2001), 52, 146, 147 settlements, 5, 24, 40, 44, 51, 61, 101, 209 shadow banking, 214–15 shareholders, 25, 35, 47, 73, 84, 90, 124, 169, 172, 205 shares, 50, 60, 91, 113, 128, 212, 217 forward trades, 91–4, 133, 152 recapitalisation, 217 tree approach, 113 volatility, 94, 128–9 short-dated deposits, 8 Silicon Valley, 234 Singapore, 37, 137, 211 skewed prices, 18, 19, 73, 96, 98 slippage, 188–9 smartphones, 233 Soros, George, 24 South Africa, xvi Soviet Union (1922–91), 22, 64, 199, 204 Spain 87–9, 151, 159, 171, 172 ‘special purpose vehicle’, 154 spoofing, 99, 192–3 spot, 3–28, 33–4, 42–4, 46, 48–55, 67, 76, 77, 91, 96, 97, 98–9, 108, 111, 118, 122, 159, 165, 169, 188, 189, 199, 201, 222 automation, 23–8, 31–3, 42, 48–55, 56–84, 111, 199, 201 brokers, 3–28, 33, 43, 63, 192 traders, 3–31, 33, 35, 38, 41, 43, 46, 50, 52–4, 67–8, 73, 76, 78, 96, 99, 122, 189 voice traders, 54, 67, 76, 122 spread, 12, 14–15, 16, 18, 19, 31, 41–2, 44, 45, 53, 55, 61, 64, 68, 69, 75, 80, 96, 225 spread crossing, 18, 19 Spreadsheet Solutions Framework (SSF), 111, 121, 138, 153 spreadsheets, 33, 38, 40, 107, 111, 219 Standard and Poor’s (S&P), 155, 157, 160 Stanford University, 211 stocks, 50, 60, 79, 89, 117, 129, 133, 136, 138, 147–8, 203–4 indexes, 147–8 streamlining, 230–2 Stress VaR, 207, 211 strike price, 94, 95, 104, 113, 218 structured products, 44 structuring, 153, 219 student loans, 155, 231 sub-prime mortgages, 74, 88–90, 159–61, 170–2, 207, 227 suits, 132, 140–1, 149 surveillance, 110, 190, 195–9 swaps, 8, 92, 119–20, 121, 125, 126, 132, 134, 136, 141, 148, 149, 152, 173 Sweden, 148, 167 SWIFT, 23 Switzerland, 10, 81–3, 120, 211 franc, 9, 20, 31, 81–3 Swiss National Bank, 81–3 T Telerate, 9 ‘ten sigma event’, 135 Thailand, 135, 136, 139 theta, 98 ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ (D:Ream), 120, 121 time decay, 98 Tobin Tax, 216 Tokyo, Japan, 72 Tolstoy, Leo, 30 ‘too big to fail’, 90, 217 total return swaps (TRSs), 119–20, 136, 152 tracker funds, 147–8 trade repositories, 209–10 tranches, 154–9, 161, 174, 208 transparency, 141, 143, 151, 170, 212, 219 ‘tree approach’, 112–14 ‘trial by meeting’, 45, 52 triangle arbitrage, 31–2, 42, 54, 91, 122 Triangle Man, 31–2, 42, 54, 91, 122 Triple I High Risk Opportunities Fund, 116, 141 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), 174, 175 Truth and Reconciliation, xvi Turkey, 231 Tuscany, Italy, 78, 115–16, 141 two-way pricing, 11–21, 23, 99 U UBS, 48, 52, 55, 59, 65, 68, 167, 197, 227 Ulster Bank, 233 United Kingdom, 22, 48, 89, 117, 120, 145, 163, 190, 200, 201–2, 203, 210, 233–4 Big Bang (1986), 201 Exchange Rate Mechanism Crisis (1992), xi, 22, 102–3 Financial Services Act (2013), 210 Flash Crash (2010), 79–80, 193 FX-fixing scandal (2013), 190 general election (1997), 120 LIBOR scandal (2012), 181–7, 188, 189, 190, 197, 198 London, England, vii–x, xi, 3, 9, 15, 35, 69, 72, 76, 79, 91, 120, 121, 137, 140, 193, 199, 202, 209 Northern Rock crisis (2007), 89, 163 pound, 9, 13, 28, 53, 184 principles-based regulation (PBR), 201–2 RBS recapitalisation (2008), 217 RBS/Ulster Bank system failure (2012), 233 Vickers Report (2013), 211, 230 United States, vii, xi, 9, 52, 56, 64, 69, 72, 74, 88–90, 108, 120, 143, 159–60, 168, 170–2, 196, 200, 203–6, 207, 209, 210, 212 Black Monday (1987), 108, 138, 204, 207 Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), 212 Congress, 202, 205 Dodd–Frank Act (2010), 209, 230 dollar, 9, 12, 14, 17–18, 23, 28, 31, 53, 69, 71–2, 73, 79, 88, 96, 97, 99, 100, 104, 118, 119, 135, 136, 140, 184–6, 189 Federal Reserve, xii, 90, 109, 143, 187, 202–6, 212 Flash Crash (2010), 79–80, 193 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 168, 201, 230 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (1999), 168, 201 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy (2008), 75, 89, 172–4, 179, 180, 217, 226, 230, 232 New York, 9, 35, 71, 72, 79, 88, 109, 169, 202 Riegle–Neal Act (1994), 168 September 11 attacks (2001), 52, 146, 147 Subprime Crisis (2007), 74, 88–90, 160–1, 170–2, 207, 227 Treasury bills, 119, 129, 133, 147 Vietnam War (1955–75), 181 Wall Street Crash (1929), 168 universal banking model, 230 V Valli, Frankie, 3–5, 9 value at risk (VaR), 127–31, 135–6, 139, 142, 157, 158, 169, 170, 172, 174, 204, 207, 219, 226, 227 Stress VaR, 207, 211 variation margin, 120, 141 vega, 98 Vickers Report (2013), 211, 230 voice traders, 54, 67, 76, 122 volatility, 14, 26, 46–7, 74–5, 80, 94, 98, 128–9, 137 Volker, Paul, 230 W Wall Street Crash (1929), 168 ‘Watanabe, Mrs’, 61, 75, 79, 82 weather derivatives, 144–5, 146 Wendt, Froukelien, 214 West Texas Intermediate, 139 Wheatley Report (2012), 184, 188 ‘window, the’ 118, 137, 188 ‘wisdom of crowds’, 204 WM/R, 187–8 World Cup 1998 France, 140 2014 Brazil, 195 World War I (1914–18), 207 X XTX, 233 Y Yale University, 110 ‘yours-and-mine’, 15–16, 18, 19, 192 Z zero coupon bonds, 118–32, 134, 138–43, 149, 152, 158, 159, 173 Zombanakis, Minos, 181–2 Zopa, 234 This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law.


pages: 339 words: 109,331

The Clash of the Cultures by John C. Bogle

Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, John Bogle, junk bonds, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, military-industrial complex, money market fund, mortgage debt, new economy, Occupy movement, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Ponzi scheme, post-work, principal–agent problem, profit motive, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, random walk, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, two and twenty, Vanguard fund, William of Occam, zero-sum game

But after all the horse trading between Democrats and Republicans—and reformers, bankers, and lobbyists—I fear that its complex, obtuse regulations (some 170 separate rules are still being developed) involved in limiting proprietary trading by banks makes me wish we’d taken the simple step of restoring the separation of deposit taking banks from investment banks. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 worked well until it was gradually eroded and finally repealed in 1999. We’ve had too much crime and not enough punishment in our financial sector. I’d like to see far harsher penalties for white-collar criminals who abuse their clients’ trust. But, I salute the federal authorities for bringing wire-tapping into play in their prosecutions of insider trading, earning tough victories over highly placed executives who thought they could get away with breaking the law.

Let’s briefly look at the role that our major gatekeepers—10 in all—have played in abetting the new culture of speculation, particularly in the period leading up to the Great Crash of 2007–2009 and its aftermath. 1. Congress Congress, asleep at the switch during the 1990–2000 period, ignored the growing problems or even made them worse; for example, by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, and by allowing stock option costs to be omitted from firms’ expense statements. Then, alarmed by the shocking scandals that came to light in 2001 at some of the nation’s largest corporations, our elected officials stepped up to the plate with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2004. While much maligned by industry, what is commonly known as SOX required the implementation of many prudent and reasonable reforms.

With so many implementation rules still pending, the ultimate effectiveness of this blunderbuss of an Act remains to be seen. My own view is that the Act, while it is well-motivated, contains many flaws that will come back to haunt us. Yes, the Volcker Rule is now a necessity, but bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act—which in 1933 separated deposit banking and investment banking, but was repealed by Congress in 1999—would have been far simpler and more effective. And, yes, I approve of the idea of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but the bitter frost of Washington politics is almost certain to spoil its implementation.


pages: 368 words: 32,950

How the City Really Works: The Definitive Guide to Money and Investing in London's Square Mile by Alexander Davidson

accounting loophole / creative accounting, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, central bank independence, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elliott wave, equity risk premium, Exxon Valdez, foreign exchange controls, forensic accounting, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, index fund, inflation targeting, information security, intangible asset, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, John Meriwether, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market fundamentalism, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, pension reform, Piper Alpha, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Right to Buy, risk free rate, shareholder value, short selling, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

In came broker dealers, whose role merged the previous responsibilities of the jobber and broker, and market makers. Overseas securities firms could for the first time become members of the LSE, and trading on the floor of the Exchange was replaced with the screen-based Stock Exchange Automated Quotations (SEAQ) system. At around the time of Big Bang, US banks were coming to London because the Glass–Steagall Act prevented them from conducting retail and investment banking business simultaneously. The popular perception of the City had been as a club of florid-faced ex-public school chaps with a penchant for long liquid lunches. With Big Bang, a new type of City worker, competitive and egalitarian, was stepping into key roles.

Today, investment banks cover not just investment banking (see Chapter 7) but also activities traditionally associated with commercial banking, including fund management, trade finance, leasing and factoring, venture capital, project finance, syndicated loans and foreign exchange. Convergence between the two types of banking has often been uneasy, and US politicians and financiers blamed it for the great crash of 1929. To prevent a recurrence, the US Congress passed the Banking Act of 1933, the Glass–Steagall Act, which separated the two types of banking. Recent opinion has been that securities trading need not harm commercial banking and, in 1999, Congress passed the Financial Services Modernisation Act, which eliminated the separation between the two types of bank. Culturally, the entrepreneurial spirit of investment banking has sometimes been an uneasy bedfellow for the cautious commercial banking ethos.

Index 419 fraud 204 9/11 terrorist attacks 31, 218, 242, 243, 254, 257 Abbey National 22 ABN AMRO 103 accounting and governance 232–38 scandals 232 Accounting Standards Board (ASB) 236 administration 17 Allianz 207 Alternative Investment Market (AIM) 44–45, 131, 183, 238 Amaranth Advisors 170 analysts 172–78 fundamental 172–74 others 177–78 Spitzer impact 174–75 technical 175–77 anti-fraud agencies Assets Recovery Agency 211–13 City of London Police 209 Financial Services Authority 208 Financial Crime and Intelligence Division 208 Insurance Fraud Bureau 209 Insurance Fraud Investigators Group 209 International Association of Insurance Fraud Agencies 207, 210, 218 National Criminal Intelligence Service 210 Serious Fraud Office 213–15 Serious Organised Crime Agency 210–11 asset finance 24–25 Association of Investment Companies 167 backwardation 101 bad debt, collection of 26–28 Banco Santander Central Hispano 22 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 17, 27, 85, 98, 114 bank guarantee 23 Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) 10, 214 Bank of England 6, 10–17 Court of the 11 credit risk warning 98 framework for sterling money markets 81 Governor 11, 13, 14 history 10, 15–16 Inflation Report 14 inflation targeting 12–13 interest rates and 12 international liaison 17 lender of last resort 15–17 Market Abuse Directive (MAD) 16 monetary policy and 12–15 Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) 13–14 Open-market operations 15, 82 repo rate 12, 15 role 11–12 RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) 143 statutory immunity 11 supervisory role 11 Bank of England Act 1988 11, 12 Bank of England Quarterly Model (BEQM) 14 Banking Act 1933 see Glass-Steagall Act banks commercial 5 investment 5 Barclays Bank 20 Barings 11, 15, 68, 186, 299 Barlow Clowes case 214 Barron’s 99 base rate see repo rate Basel Committee for Banking Supervision (BCBS) 27–28 ____________________________________________________ INDEX 303 Basel I 27 Basel II 27–28, 56 Bear Stearns 95, 97 BearingPoint 97 bill of exchange 26 Bingham, Lord Justice 10–11 Blue Arrow trial 214 BNP Paribas 145, 150 bond issues see credit products book runners 51, 92 Borsa Italiana 8, 139 bps 90 British Bankers’ Association 20, 96, 97 building societies 22–23 demutualisation 22 Building Societies Association 22 Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) see discounted cash flow analysis capital gains tax 73, 75, 163, 168 capital raising markets 42–46 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) 56–58 see also flotation, bond issues Capital Requirements Directive 28, 94 central securities depository (CSD) 145 international (ICSD) 145 Central Warrants Trading Service 73 Chancellor of the Exchequer 12, 13, 229 Chicago Mercantile Exchange 65 Citigroup 136, 145, 150 City of London 4–9 Big Bang 7 definition 4 employment in 8–9 financial markets 5 geography 4–5 history 6–7 services offered 4 world leader 5–6 clearing 140, 141–42 Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) 143 Clearstream Banking Luxembourg 92, 145 commercial banking 5, 18–28 bad loans and capital adequacy 26–28 banking cards 21 building societies 22–23 credit collection 25–26 finance raising 23–25 history 18–19 overdrafts 23 role today 19–21 commodities market 99–109 exchange-traded commodities 101  fluctuations 100 futures 100 hard commodities energy 102 non-ferrous metals 102–04 precious metal 104–06 soft commodities cocoa 107 coffee 106 sugar 107 Companies Act 2006 204, 223, 236 conflict of interests 7 consolidation 138–39 Consumer Price Index (CPI) 13 contango 101 Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) 119 corporate governance 223–38 best practice 231 Cadbury Code 224 Combined Code 43, 225 compliance 230 definition 223 Directors’ Remuneration Report Regulations 226 EU developments 230 European auditing rules 234–35 Greenbury Committee 224–25 Higgs and Smith reports 227 International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 237–38 Listing Rules 228–29 Model Code 229 Myners Report 229 OECD Principles 226 operating and financial review (OFR) 235– 36 revised Combined Code 227–28 Sarbanes–Oxley Act 233–34 Turnbull Report 225 credit cards 21 zero-per-cent cards 21 credit collection 25–26 factoring and invoice discounting 26 trade finance 25–26 credit derivatives 96–97 back office issues 97 credit default swap (CDS) 96–97 credit products asset-backed securities 94 bonds 90–91 collateralised debt obligations 94–95 collateralised loan obligation 95 covered bonds 93 equity convertibles 93 international debt securities 92–93  304 INDEX ____________________________________________________ junk bonds 91 zero-coupon bonds 93 credit rating agencies 91 Credit Suisse 5, 136, 193 CREST system 141, 142–44 dark liquidity pools 138 Debt Management Office 82, 86 Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 235, 251, 282 derivatives 60–77 asset classes 60 bilateral settlement 66 cash and 60–61 central counterparty clearing 65–66 contracts for difference 76–77, 129 covered warrants 72–73 futures 71–72 hedging and speculation 67 on-exchange vs OTC derivatives 63–65 options 69–71 Black-Scholes model 70 call option 70 equity option 70–71 index options 71 put option 70 problems and fraud 67–68 retail investors and 69–77 spread betting 73–75 transactions forward (future) 61–62 option 62 spot 61 swap 62–63 useful websites 75 Deutsche Bank 136 Deutsche Börse 64, 138 discounted cash flow analysis (DCF) 39 dividend 29 domestic financial services complaint and compensation 279–80 financial advisors 277–78 Insurance Mediation Directive 278–79 investments with life insurance 275–76 life insurance term 275 whole-of-life 274–75 NEWICOB 279 property and mortgages 273–74 protection products 275 savings products 276–77 Dow theory 175 easyJet 67 EDX London 66 Egg 20, 21 Elliott Wave Theory 176 Enron 67, 114, 186, 232, 233 enterprise investment schemes 167–68 Equiduct 133–34, 137 Equitable Life 282 equities 29–35 market indices 32–33 market influencers 40–41 nominee accounts 31 shares 29–32 stockbrokers 33–34 valuation 35–41 equity transparency 64 Eurex 64, 65 Euro Overnight Index Average (EURONIA) 85 euro, the 17, 115 Eurobond 6, 92 Euroclear Bank 92, 146, 148–49 Euronext.liffe 5, 60, 65, 71 European Central Bank (ECB) 16, 17, 84, 148 European Central Counterparty (EuroCCP) 136 European Code of Conduct 146–47, 150 European Exchange Rate Mechanism 114 European Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices 13 European Union Capital Requirements Directive 199 Market Abuse Directive (MAD) 16, 196 Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) 64, 197–99 Money Laundering Directive 219 Prospectus Directive 196–97 Transparency Directive 197 exchange controls 6 expectation theory 172 Exxon Valdez 250 factoring see credit collection Factors and Discounters Association 26 Fair & Clear Group 145–46 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation 17 Federation of European Securities Exchanges 137 Fighting Fraud Together 200–01 finance, raising 23–25 asset 24–25 committed 23 project finance 24 recourse loan 24 syndicated loan 23–24 uncommitted 23 Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) 217–18 financial communications 179–89 ____________________________________________________ INDEX 305 advertising 189 corporate information flow 185 primary information providers (PIPs) 185 investor relations 183–84 journalists 185–89 public relations 179–183 black PR’ 182–83 tipsters 187–89 City Slickers case 188–89 Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) 165, 279–80 financial ratios 36–39 dividend cover 37 earnings per share (EPS) 36 EBITDA 38 enterprise multiple 38 gearing 38 net asset value (NAV) 38 price/earnings (P/E) 37 price-to-sales ratio 37 return on capital employed (ROCE) 38 see also discounted cash flow analysis Financial Reporting Council (FRC) 224, 228, 234, 236 Financial Services Act 1986 191–92 Financial Services Action Plan 8, 195 Financial Services and Markets Act 2001 192 Financial Services and Markets Tribunal 94 Financial Services Authority (FSA) 5, 8, 31, 44, 67, 94, 97, 103, 171, 189, 192–99 competition review 132 insurance industry 240 money laundering and 219 objectives 192 regulatory role 192–95 powers 193 principles-based 194–95 Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) 17, 165, 280 Financial Services Modernisation Act 19 financial services regulation 190–99 see also Financial Services Authority Financial Times 9, 298 First Direct 20 flipping 53 flotation beauty parade 51 book build 52 early secondary market trading 53 grey market 52, 74 initial public offering (IPO) 47–53 pre-marketing 51–52 pricing 52–53 specialist types of share issue accelerated book build 54  bought deal 54 deeply discounted rights issue 55 introduction 55 placing 55 placing and open offer 55 rights issues 54–55 underwriting 52 foreign exchange 109–120 brokers 113 dealers 113 default risk 119 electronic trading 117 exchange rate 115 ICAP Knowledge Centre 120 investors 113–14 transaction types derivatives 116–17 spot market 115–16 Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee 112 forward rate agreement 85 fraud 200–15 advanced fee frauds 204–05 boiler rooms 201–04 Regulation S 202 future regulation 215 identity theft 205–06 insurance fraud 206–08 see also anti-fraud agencies Fraud Act 2006 200 FTSE 100 32, 36, 58, 122, 189, 227, 233 FTSE 250 32, 122 FTSE All-Share Index 32, 122 FTSE Group 131 FTSE SmallCap Index 32 FTSE Sterling Corporate Bond Index 33 Futures and Options Association 131 Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) 237, 257 gilts 33, 86–88 Giovanni Group 146 Glass-Steagall Act 7, 19 Global Bond Market Forum 64 Goldman Sachs 136 government bonds see gilts Guinness case 214 Halifax Bank 20 hedge funds 8, 77, 97, 156–57 derivatives-based arbitrage 156 fixed-income arbitrage 157 Hemscott 35 HM Revenue and Customs 55, 211 HSBC 20, 103 Hurricane Hugo 250  306 INDEX ____________________________________________________ Hurricane Katrina 2, 67, 242 ICE Futures 5, 66, 102 Individual Capital Adequacy Standards (ICAS) 244 inflation 12–14 cost-push 12 definition 12 demand-pull 12 quarterly Inflation Report 14 initial public offering (IPO) 47–53 institutional investors 155–58 fund managers 155–56 hedge fund managers 156–57 insurance companies 157 pension funds 158 insurance industry London and 240 market 239–40 protection and indemnity associations 241 reform 245 regulation 243 contingent commissions 243 contract certainty 243 ICAS and Solvency II 244–45 types 240–41 underwriting process 241–42 see also Lloyd’s of London, reinsurance Intercontinental Exchange 5 interest equalisation tax 6 interest rate products debt securities 82–83, 92–93 bill of exchange 83 certificate of deposit 83 debt instrument 83 euro bill 82 floating rate note 83 local authority bill 83 T-bills 82 derivatives 85 forward rate agreements (FRAs) 85–86 government bonds (gilts) 86–89 money markets 81–82 repos 84 International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 58, 86, 173, 237–38 International Financial Services London (IFSL) 5, 64, 86, 92, 112 International Monetary Fund 17 International Securities Exchange 138 International Swap Dealers Association 63 International Swaps and Derivatives Association 63 International Underwriting Association (IUA) 240 investment banking 5, 47–59 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) 56–58 see also capital raising investment companies 164–69 real estate 169 split capital 166–67 venture capital 167–68 investment funds 159–64 charges 163 investment strategy 164 fund of funds scheme 164 manager-of-managers scheme 164 open-ended investment companies (OEICs) 159 selection criteria 163 total expense ratio (TER) 164 unit trusts 159 Investment Management Association 156 Investment Management Regulatory Organisation 11 Johnson Matthey Bankers Limited 15–16 Joint Money Laundering Steering Group 221 KAS Bank 145 LCH.Clearnet Limited 66, 140 letter of credit (LOC) 23, 25–26 liability-driven investment 158 Listing Rules 43, 167, 173, 225, 228–29 Lloyd’s of London 8, 246–59 capital backing 249 chain of security 252–255 Central Fund 253 Corporation of Lloyd’s 248–49, 253 Equitas Reinsurance Ltd 251, 252, 255–56 Franchise Performance Directorate 256 future 258–59 Hardship Committee 251 history 246–47, 250–52 international licenses 258 Lioncover 252, 256 Member’s Agent Pooling Arrangement (MAPA) 249, 251 Names 248, one-year accounting 257 regulation 257 solvency ratio 255 syndicate capacity 249–50 syndicates 27 loans 23–24 recourse loan 24 syndicated loan 23–24 London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) 74, 76 ____________________________________________________ INDEX 307 London Stock Exchange (LSE) 7, 8, 22, 29, 32, 64 Alternative Investment Market (AIM) 32 Main Market 42–43, 55 statistics 41 trading facilities 122–27 market makers 125–27 SETSmm 122, 123, 124 SETSqx 124 Stock Exchange Electronic Trading Service (SETS) 122–25 TradElect 124–25 users 127–29 Louvre Accord 114 Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) 64, 121, 124, 125, 130, 144, 197–99, 277 best execution policy 130–31 Maxwell, Robert 186, 214, 282 mergers and acquisitions 56–58 current speculation 57–58 disclosure and regulation 58–59 Panel on Takeovers and Mergers 57 ‘white knight’ 57 ‘white squire’ 57 Merrill Lynch 136, 174, 186, 254 money laundering 216–22 Egmont Group 218 hawala system 217 know your client (KYC) 217, 218 size of the problem 222 three stages of laundering 216 Morgan Stanley 5, 136 multilateral trading facilities Chi-X 134–35, 141 Project Turquoise 136, 141 Munich Re 207 Nasdaq 124, 138 National Strategy for Financial Capability 269 National Westminster Bank 20 Nationwide Building Society 221 net operating cash flow (NOCF) see discounted cash flow analysis New York Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) 16 Nomads 45 normal market share (NMS) 132–33 Northern Rock 16 Nymex Europe 102 NYSE Euronext 124, 138, 145 options see derivatives Oxera 52  Parmalat 67, 232 pensions alternatively secured pension 290 annuities 288–89 occupational pension final salary scheme 285–86 money purchase scheme 286 personal account 287 personal pension self-invested personal pension 288 stakeholder pension 288 state pension 283 unsecured pension 289–90 Pensions Act 2007 283 phishing 200 Piper Alpha oil disaster 250 PLUS Markets Group 32, 45–46 as alternative to LSE 45–46, 131–33 deal with OMX 132 relationship to Ofex 46 pooled investments exchange-traded funds (ETF) 169 hedge funds 169–71 see also investment companies, investment funds post-trade services 140–50 clearing 140, 141–42 safekeeping and custody 143–44 registrar services 144 settlement 140, 142–43 real-time process 142 Proceeds of Crime Act 2003 (POCA) 211, 219, 220–21 Professional Securities Market 43–44 Prudential 20 purchasing power parity 118–19 reinsurance 260–68 cat bonds 264–65 dispute resolution 268 doctrines 263 financial reinsurance 263–64 incurred but not reported (IBNR) claims insurance securitisation 265 non-proportional 261 offshore requirements 267 proportional 261 Reinsurance Directive 266–67 retrocession 262 types of contract facultative 262 treaty 262 retail banking 20 retail investors 151–155 Retail Prices Index (RPI) 13, 87 264  308 INDEX ____________________________________________________ Retail Service Provider (RSP) network Reuters 35 Royal Bank of Scotland 20, 79, 221 73 Sarbanes–Oxley Act 233–34 securities 5, 29 Securities and Futures Authority 11 self-regulatory organisations (SROs) 192 Serious Crime Bill 213 settlement 11, 31, 140, 142–43 shareholder, rights of 29 shares investment in 29–32 nominee accounts 31 valuation 35–39 ratios 36–39 see also flotation short selling 31–32, 73, 100, 157 Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) 119 Solvency II 244–245 Soros, George 114, 115 Specialist Fund Market 44 ‘square mile’ 4 stamp duty 72, 75, 166 Sterling Overnight Index Average (SONIA) 85 Stock Exchange Automated Quotation System (SEAQ) 7, 121, 126 Stock Exchange Electronic Trading Service (SETS) see Lloyd’s of London stock market 29–33 stockbrokers 33–34 advisory 33 discretionary 33–34 execution-only 34 stocks see shares sub-prime mortgage crisis 16, 89, 94, 274 superequivalence 43 suspicious activity reports (SARs) 212, 219–22 swaps market 7 interest rates 56 swaptions 68 systematic internalisers (SI) 137–38 Target2-Securities 147–48, 150 The Times 35, 53, 291 share price tables 36–37, 40 tip sheets 33 trading platforms, electronic 80, 97, 113, 117 tranche trading 123 Treasury Select Committee 14 trend theory 175–76 UBS Warburg 103, 136 UK Listing Authority 44 Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities (UCITS) 156 United Capital Asset Management 95 value at risk (VAR) virtual banks 20 virt-x 140 67–68 weighted-average cost of capital (WACC) see discounted cash flow analysis wholesale banking 20 wholesale markets 78–80 banks 78–79 interdealer brokers 79–80 investors 79 Woolwich Bank 20 WorldCom 67, 232 Index of Advertisers Aberdeen Asset Management PLC xiii–xv Birkbeck University of London xl–xlii BPP xliv–xlvi Brewin Dolphin Investment Banking 48–50 Cass Business School xxi–xxiv Cater Allen Private Bank 180–81 CB Richard Ellis Ltd 270–71 CDP xlviii–l Charles Schwab UK Ltd lvi–lviii City Jet Ltd x–xii The City of London inside front cover EBS Dealing Resource International 110–11 Edelman xx ESCP-EAP European School of Management vi ICAS (The Inst. of Chartered Accountants of Scotland) xxx JP Morgan Asset Management 160–62 London Business School xvi–xviii London City Airport vii–viii Morgan Lewis xxix Securities & Investments Institute ii The Share Centre 30, 152–54 Smithfield Bar and Grill lii–liv TD Waterhouse xxxii–xxxiv University of East London xxxvi–xxxviii


pages: 382 words: 105,166

The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations by Jacob Soll

accounting loophole / creative accounting, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, delayed gratification, demand response, discounted cash flows, double entry bookkeeping, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Glass-Steagall Act, God and Mammon, High speed trading, Honoré de Balzac, inventory management, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, Ralph Waldo Emerson, scientific management, Scientific racism, South Sea Bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route

Months after the crash began, Wall Street traders knew perfectly well that the stock they were selling was worthless. “If there must be madness,” the economist John Kenneth Galbraith lamented, “something may be said for having it on a heroic scale.” Those in the soup lines, however, would not have agreed.6 In response to the crash, in 1933 Congress enacted the Glass-Steagall Act to separate the activities of investment and commercial banking and prevent investment banks from putting depositors at risk by making risky and often difficult to regulate trades. It would also facilitate the auditing of their assets and liabilities. Spurred by the reforming zeal of the former New York District Attorney Ferdinand Pecora (1882–1971), who had unearthed J.

Corporate clients were clearly less interested in audits than they were in consultants promising ever-greater profits. The consulting business boomed. And the worst was yet to come.23 In the 1999, with little public or investor protest, the U.S. government, in the name of economic freedom, replaced the Glass-Steagall Act with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed the consolidation of commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies. It enabled banks to take deposits and make loans, as well as underwrite and sell securities (such as pools of mortgages). Signing the act into law on November 12, President Clinton recognized that it made “the most important legislative changes to the structure of the U.S. financial system since the 1930s.”

See debt bailouts Balance sheets, 171, 186, 193 Balanced books, concept of, xvi Balzac, Honoré de, 178–179 Bank of England, 108, 111, 165 Bank of the United States (first National), 163 Banker (or Moneylender) and His Wife, The (art) (Matsys), 58 Banking development of, 9 Dutch, 72–73 Glass-Steagall Act and, 192, 200 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and, 200 laws of the church and, 20–22 Medici family and, 30, 33–34 papacy and, 16–17, 33 Bankruptcy Act of 1831 (England), 172–173 Banque Générale, 134 Baring Brothers bank, 123 Barlaeus, Caspar, 79 Basilica of San Lorenzo, 35 Bastille, 144 Bear Stearns, 202–203 Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin de, 154 Beeckman, Isaac, 74 Benci, Giovanni di Amerigo, 37–38 Benson, Sir Henry, 194 Bentham, Jeremy, 117, 130, 167 Bentley, Richard, 120 Bentley, Thomas, 122, 125 Bernardino of Siena, 27 Bevis, Herman, 197 Bewindhebbers, 79, 81–82 Bill of Rights of 1689 (England), 103 Black Death, 25 Blunt, John, 106 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 25 Book of Revelation (Bible), 24 Book-keeper, The, 165, 176 Book-keeping methodiz’d (Mair), 118, 150 Borgia, Cesare, 56 Boston & Worcester Railroad, 169 Botticelli, 39 Boulton, Matthew, 124 Boulton and Watt (firm), 124 Bowring, John, 167–168 Braams, Daniël, 84 British Enlightenment Protestantism, 119–122 Brodrick, Thomas, 109 Brown, Obadiah, 150 Brown University, 150 Brunelleschi, 35 Bubbles French Mississippi scheme as, 106, 107 risky mortgages and, 202–203 South Sea Company, 107–112 Bureau of Accountability (France), 145 Burgundy, Duke of (Charles the Bold), 44–45 Bush, George W., 201, 202, 239n28 Business Education and Accountancy (Haskins), 176 Byzantium, 9–10, 12 Caligula (emperor), 6 Calonne, Vicomte de, Charles Alexandre, 142–143 Calvinists.


pages: 519 words: 148,131

An Empire of Wealth: Rise of American Economy Power 1607-2000 by John Steele Gordon

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buttonwood tree, California gold rush, Charles Babbage, clean water, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, disintermediation, double entry bookkeeping, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial independence, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Ida Tarbell, imperial preference, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, margin call, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, new economy, New Urbanism, postindustrial economy, price mechanism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, vertical integration, Yom Kippur War

Employment Service to work with state employment agencies to help the unemployed find jobs. June 13. Roosevelt signed the Home Owners Refinancing Act establishing the Home Owners Loan Corporation, which was empowered to issue $2 billion in bonds to help nonfarm home owners keep their properties. June 16. Roosevelt signed the Banking Act of 1933, usually known as the Glass-Steagall Act after its congressional sponsors. It revolutionized American banking. June 16. Roosevelt also signed the Farm Credit Act to help refinance farm mortgages. June 16. Roosevelt also signed the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act to increase federal regulation of railroads and railroad holding companies.

The number of people receiving high school diplomas almost doubled in the 1930s, while those receiving college degrees increased by 50 percent. In 1940 some 8.1 percent of twenty-three-year-olds received bachelor’s degrees.) NOWHERE DID THE EARLY NEW DEAL have a greater effect on the American economy than in banking, the one sector that had come closest to utter destruction as the depression had deepened. The Glass-Steagall Act greatly strengthened the Federal Reserve’s control over the nation’s banking system, making many more banks, such as savings banks, eligible for membership. It also gave the Federal Reserve the power to control speculation on Wall Street by setting margin requirements. In 1935 the Federal Reserve Act further increased and centralized the powers of the Federal Reserve.

For the first time in ninety-nine years, since President Andrew Jackson had destroyed the Second Bank of the United States, the country had a fully functioning and empowered central bank. The country had paid dearly for the lack of one in those years, not least because the country had been unable to develop much expertise in the arcane specialty of central banking. The Glass-Steagall Act also established the Federal Bank Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which guaranteed the deposits of banks that joined the system (only banks that were members of the Federal Reserve were required to join) up to $5,000 per account. At a stroke, the bank run, a recurring nightmare in the American economy since the first one in 1809, became a thing of the past.


pages: 270 words: 73,485

Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One by Meghnad Desai

3D printing, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, Home mortgage interest deduction, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, women in the workforce

But there was also pressure on mutually owned institutions – the building societies in the UK, for example – to become mainstream profit-making companies, whose equities could be held by anyone. Demutualization proceeded apace during the 1980s and 1990s. Through the course of the 1990s there was a huge push to deregulate banking in the US. The Glass–Steagall Act passed during the New Deal had regulated the commercial banks which took retail deposits about the sort of investment activities they could engage in. The new complaint of the US banks was that Glass-Steagall restricted competition. Retail deposit-taking is profitable, not so much for itself but because it can provide a large source of idle funds for a bank to invest on its own account and make profits.

Retail deposit-taking is profitable, not so much for itself but because it can provide a large source of idle funds for a bank to invest on its own account and make profits. Investment banks could make such profits. The demand was for retail deposit-taking banks to be allowed to combine with investment banks. To this effect, certain provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act were repealed. Now banks were able to merge the different activities and became much larger. Most developed countries had some regulatory institutions for financial and commodity markets. But the pace of innovation in the financial markets was fast. There was also the ideological pressure to leave markets alone as they were held to be working perfectly based on the efficient market hypothesis and rational expectations.

(i) Elizabeth II (i) emerging economies (i) benefits of capital flows (i) capital inflows (i) saving and investment (i) empires, end of (i) empirical analysis of asset prices (i) employment and fiscal policy (i) role of government spending (i) energy-intensive technology (i) Engels, Friedrich (i) The Communist Manifesto (with Karl Marx) (i) The Condition of the Working Class in England (i) entrepreneurs (i) equation of exchange (i) equilibrium (i) assuming (i) flow (i) Keynesian (i) market economy (i) as naturally determined (i), (ii) possible states of (i) rabbits and foxes game (i) theory of (i), (ii), (iii) Walras’ view of (i) see also flow equilibrium; general equilibrium theory; partial equilibrium theory; disequilibrium, stock equilibrium tradition (i) equities (i) equity bundles (i) Essay on Population (Malthus) (i) Europe, political upheaval (i) European Central Bank (ECB) (i), (ii) European Economic Community (EEC) (i) European Monetary System (i) Eurozone (i), (ii) crisis (i) excess credit (i) Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) (i) exchange rate policy, role of (i) exchange rates Bretton Woods system (i) fixed (i) flexibility (i), (ii) setting level of (i) expectation of distribution (i) expectations adaptive (i), (ii) rational (i), (ii), (iii) role of (i) statistical definition (i) exploration, effects of (i) externality (i) fallacy of aggregation (i) Fama, Eugene (i), (ii), (iii) Fannie Mae (i) Federal Reserve, reaction to Great Depression (i) feudalism (i) financial crisis, definition (i) financial innovations (i) financial instruments (i), (ii), (iii) financial markets (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) financial revolution (i) financial service providers, insolvency and illiquidity (i) Financial Services Authority, UK, regulatory approach (i) financial services, availability (i) First Socialist International (i) fiscal crisis (i) fiscal policy (i), (ii) Fisher, Irving (i) fixed costs (i) flexible exchange rates (i) food prices (i) foreign aid (i) foreign exchange Asian countries (i) dealing (i), (ii) levels of transactions (i) theory of rates (i) foreign investment, liquidation (i) forward trading (i) France Keynesian experiment (i) occupation of Germany (i) FRB-MIT-PENN model (i) Freddie Mac (i) free movement, capital and labor (i) free trade (i), (ii) French Revolution (i) Friedman, Milton (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz) (i) A Theory of the Consumption Function (i) Frisch, Ragnar (i), (ii) full employment (i), (ii), (iii) future developments, optimism/pessimism (i) Gaitskell, Hugh (i) Galbraith, John Kenneth (i) The Affluent Society (i) Garicano, Luis (i) Gates, Bill (i) Geddes Axe (i) Geithner, Timothy (i), (ii), (iii) general equilibrium theory (i), (ii) Germany, post-World War I (i), (ii) Glass-Steagall Act (i) global economy, growth poles (i) global imbalances (i) global interdependence (i) globalization (i) acceleration (i) effect on interest rates (i) effects of (i) events (i) inapplicability of Keynesian models (i) market economy (i) nineteenth-century (i) glut, possibility of (i) Glyn, Andrew (i), (ii) God, as clockmaker (i) Godwin, William (i) An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (i) gold flows (i) Gold Standard (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Bretton Woods system (i) leadership of (i) return to (i), (ii), (iii) suspension (i), (ii), (iii) UK exit (i), (ii) Goldberger, Arthur (i) goodness of fit (i) goods, production and supply (i) Goodwin, Richard (i) Goodwin cycle (i) rabbits and foxes game (i) government debt, grading (i) government spending attitudes to (i) benefit (i) post-World War I (i) governments influence over behavior (i) interference and corruption (i) role of (i) Grapes of Wrath, The (John Steinbeck) (i) Great Depression (i), (ii), (iii) monetary policy (i) reactions of economists (i) role of Keynesian model in recovery (i) Great Moderation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Great Recession banks (i) as economic crisis or crisis of economics (i) effects of (i) events of (i) failure to anticipate (i) overview (i) prospect of recovery (i) responses to (i), (ii) Great War see World War I Greece, Great Recession (i) Greenspan, Alan (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) The Age of Turbulence (i) gross domestic product (GDP) (i) growth poles, proliferation (i) Hamilton, Alexander (i) Hansen, Alvin (i), (ii) Hansen, Lars Peter (i) Harris, Seymour (i) Harrod, Roy (i) Harvey, William (i) Hatry, Clarence (i) Hayek, Friedrich (i), (ii), (iii) development from Wicksell (i) return to favor (i) heterodoxies (i) heterogeneity, of total output (i) Hicks, John (i) high yields (i) home ownership (i) house prices (i), (ii) household debt, rise in (i) houses as appreciating assets (i) depreciation (i) Hume, David (i), (ii) A Treatise on Human Nature (i) hydraulic analogue model (i) hyperinflation, Germany (i) ideological capture (i) ideological pressure (i) immigrants, scapegoating of (i) imperfect competition (i) theory of (i) imperialism (i) income (i) growth: Harrod’s theory (i); long boom (i) inequality (i) levels (i); influence of money supply (i); new classical model (i); per capita (i) incomes policies (i) indentured labor (i) India (i) individual volition, within overall pattern (i) Industrial Revolution (i), (ii) industrial unrest (i) industrialization effects of (i) less-developed countries (i) industry, working conditions (i) inequality income and wealth (i) long-run trends (i) inflation determining factors (i) eighteenth century (i) house prices (i) Hume’s theory (i) Keynesian models (i) Locke’s theory (i) and manufacturing supply (i) as permanent (i) post-World War I (i) and price rises (i) as priority (i) Smith’s theory (i) as target of public policy (i) and unemployment (i) inflation rates, developed countries (i) information, as public (i) infrastructure development (i) initiative, opportunities for (i) injecting liquidity (i), (ii), (iii) see also quantitative easing innovations clusters (i), (ii), (iii) need for (i) role in boom and bust (i) Institute for Konjunktur (i) interconnectedness (i), (ii) interdependence (i), (ii), (iii) interest attitudes to (i) long-/short-run rates (i) market rate vs. natural rate (i) vs. profit (i) regulation (i) interest rates effect on recovery (i) global effects (i) Keynes’ view (i) rise in (i) setting (i) US (i) interference and corruption (i) interlinking, developed and emerging economies (i) international economics, interdependence (i) International Gold Standard (i) International Monetary Fund (IMF) purpose (i) warnings of crisis (i) international trade (i), (ii), (iii) invention, and globalization (i) investment and aggregate effective demand (i) and bank credit (i) in business (i) expectations (i) as future-oriented (i) high yields (i) theory of (Keynes) (i) invisible hand (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) involuntary unemployment (i) iron law of wages (Ricardo) (i), (ii) irrational exuberance (i), (ii) IS-LM model (i), (ii), (iii) Is the Business Cycle Obsolete?


pages: 373 words: 80,248

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges

Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bear Stearns, Cal Newport, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, Glass-Steagall Act, haute couture, Herbert Marcuse, Honoré de Balzac, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, income inequality, Joseph Schumpeter, Naomi Klein, offshore financial centre, Plato's cave, power law, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Seymour Hersh, single-payer health, social intelligence, statistical model, uranium enrichment

This has effectively decapitated the leadership in the inner cities, where African Americans have traditionally had to react more quickly to confront social injustices. The Clinton administration, led by Lawrence Summers, signed into law the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which ripped down the firewalls that had been established by the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. Designed to prevent the kind of meltdown we are now experiencing, Glass-Steagall established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It set in place banking reforms to stop speculators from hijacking the financial system. With Glass-Steagall demolished, and the passage of NAFTA, the Democrats, led by Clinton, tumbled gleefully into bed with corporations and Wall Street speculators.

Augustine, Saint Austro-Hungarian Empire Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (Seligman) Authorization for Use of Military Force (congressional resolution) Bacevich, Andrew Bakan, Joel Balkans Balzac, Honoré Banks bailing out collapse of faltering and Glass-Steagall Act insolvent leaders of and looting of financial system nationalizing and poor and Stewart Banks, Russell Barry (porn producer) Batista (wrestler) Bear Stearns Bearer, Paul Bellah, Robert N. Ben-Shahar, Tal D. Benjamin, Walter Bernanke, Ben Berry, Wendell Bewitched (television show) Biden, Joe Big Brother (television show) Big Show (wrestler) Bigg Boss (television show) Blackwater/Xe Blade, Barrett Blair, Dennis Blanc, Mel Blankfein, Lloyd Blue, Ashley Bluebird Films Boeing Boileau, Jay Boorstin, Daniel Born to Be Good: The Science of the Meaningful Life (Keltner) Botton, Alain de Bradbury, Ray Bradley, Betty Bradley, James Bradley, John Brave New World (Huxley) Brint, Steven British Petroleum (BP) Brownmiller, Susan Budden, Jackiey Buddha Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S.

William Fuld, Richard (Dick) Gabler, Neal Gag Factor (movie) Gagnon, Rene Gaza Geithner, Timothy General Electric General Motors Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (Jensen) Geyman, John The Girls Next Door (television show) Giroux, Henry Glass-Steagall Act (1933) Global warming Globalization Golden, Daniel Goldman Sachs González, Roberto Goodman, Amy Goody, Jade Gordon, Michael Gore, Al Gossip Girl (television show) Graceland Graham, Elyse Great Depression The Great Transformation (Polanyi) The Greater Good (magazine) Greenberg, Maurice R.


pages: 422 words: 113,830

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency peg, diversification, Doha Development Round, energy security, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mobile money, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route

Bush’s approval rating, but debt had already become one of America’s giant industries. Paper Entrepreneurialism: Mergers, Acquisitions, and Buyouts Comparable growth opportunities for the financial sector came from a trio of frenetic, debt-enabled merger and acquisition waves. Until the 1990s, financial services purveyors were constrained by an old New Deal statute—the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933—that kept commercial banks, mortgage finance, insurers, and securities firms apart and unable to collude with each other in the unsafe and speculative practices they had indulged in the 1920s. But cracks were expanding. In 1984, the Bank Holding Company Act was relaxed somewhat, and in 1997, banks were permitted to buy securities firms; in 1998, even before Congress had repealed Glass-Steagall, the Fed had on its own supposed authority approved a merger between Citigroup and Travelers, a leading insurance company.

They’d say ‘The way to solve the problems is more deregulation,’ and by the way, deregulation means fewer examiners” (see p. 41). Even one bank lawyer looked back with dismay on the 1996 Supreme Court ruling deregulating credit-card fees. Duncan MacDonald, a lawyer for Citibank, commented that “I didn’t imagine that some day we might have ended up creating a Frankenstein.”21 The 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall act and its restraints on financial mergers, pushed by Democratic President Clinton and his treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, as well as by Congressional Republicans, wound up creating the regulatory equivalent of the Cumberland Gap. Nomi Prins, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, described the crippling result this way: “Another festering problem created by the Financial Services Modernization Act was so-called functional regulation.

Some of this stemmed from Bill Clinton’s embrace of the bull market and participation in Wall Street’s summer circuits on Martha’s Vineyard and in the Hamptons; further satisfaction came from Rubin’s handling of global financial crises and from White House support of the sector’s much-desired repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the 1930s legislation that blocked common ownership of banks, investment firms, and insurance companies. Besides Glass-Steagall repeal, other 1990s deregulation and court holdings permitted new holding companies, loosened structure in the telecommunications and energy industries, and unleashed credit card operators.


pages: 393 words: 115,263

Planet Ponzi by Mitch Feierstein

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, book value, break the buck, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, disintermediation, diversification, Donald Trump, energy security, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, frictionless, frictionless market, Future Shock, Glass-Steagall Act, government statistician, high net worth, High speed trading, illegal immigration, income inequality, interest rate swap, invention of agriculture, junk bonds, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low earth orbit, low interest rates, mega-rich, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Neil Armstrong, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, pensions crisis, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, tail risk, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, value at risk, yield curve

And yes, the landmark deal of the era, the takeover of RJR Nabisco by KKR, a leveraged buyout outfit, was unwound after little more than ten years in a haze of cost and disappointment. But all this time Wall Street was booming. The growth of the securities market was enthusiastically assisted by the regulators. In 1999 Congress and President Bill Clinton repealed the Glass–Steagall Act, which had, for seventy years, maintained barriers between lending banks and securities houses. Although there had been a small but growing market in credit-based derivative products in the 1990s, the rule changes of 1999 laid the groundwork for massive growth in that market. To regulators this looked like another win: furious innovation, big fees on Wall Street, new products for investors and corporations alike.

Consumer banking and banking for small and medium-sized companies will be housed within the ring-fence around retail banking. Those ‘fenced-in’ banking operations will be closely regulated and required to hold plenty of capital against possible losses. And so on. In effect, it’s like a British Glass–Steagall Act fitted to the needs of the twenty-first century.9 If rules like these had been in place in the US in 2008, the crisis would have wrecked Wall Street but left Main Street largely untouched. There are other good things in the pipeline too. The set of zoning rules which governs new construction developments has been cut down from over 1,000 pages of regulations to just 52.10 Red tape, more generally, is to be cut.

Some banks would have gone bust, which would have reminded bank boards and shareholders that their job is to ensure their charge is properly managed. Those outcomes would have been painful but good‌—‌a phrase in the lexicon of every true leader, but one that has slipped from use today. In the United States, it’s hard even to single out individuals for blame. Do I cite Bill Clinton for abolishing the Glass–Steagall Act and systematically opposing any real constraint on Wall Street’s power to destroy trillions of dollars’ worth of value? Or George W. Bush for his countless fiscal follies? Or Barack Obama for his changeless change, his stimulus plans that have stimulated little but the flow of red ink? Or Nancy Pelosi for her refusal to contemplate entitlement cuts of any kind?


pages: 302 words: 84,428

Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side by Howard Marks

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, behavioural economics, business cycle, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, Isaac Newton, job automation, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, secular stagnation, short selling, South Sea Bubble, stocks for the long run, superstar cities, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, transaction costs, uptick rule, VA Linux, Y2K, yield curve

Here’s a partial list: Government policies supported an expansion of home ownership—which by definition meant the inclusion of people who historically couldn’t afford to buy homes—at a time when home prices were soaring; The Fed pushed interest rates down, causing the demand for higher-yielding instruments such as structured/levered mortgage securities to increase; There was a rising trend among banks to make mortgage loans, package them and sell them onward (as opposed to retaining them); Decisions to lend, structure, assign credit ratings and invest were made on the basis of unquestioning extrapolation of low historic mortgage default rates; The above four points resulted in an increased eagerness to extend mortgage loans, with an accompanying decline in lending standards; Novel and untested mortgage backed securities were developed that promised high returns with low risk, something that has great appeal in non-skeptical times; Protective laws and regulations were relaxed, such as the Glass-Steagall Act (which prohibited the creation of financial conglomerates), the uptick rule (which prevented traders who had bet against stocks from forcing them down through non-stop short selling), and the rules that limited banks’ leverage, permitting it to nearly triple; Finally, the media ran articles stating that risk had been eliminated by the combination of: the adroit Fed, which could be counted on to inject stimulus whenever economic sluggishness developed, confidence that the excess liquidity flowing to China for its exports and to oil producers would never fail to be recycled back into our markets, buoying asset prices, and the new Wall Street innovations, which “sliced and diced” risk so finely, spread it so widely and placed it with those best suited to bear it.

Levered mortgage backed securities (and financial derivatives, most of which contain high levels of built-in leverage) generally switched from being return-enhancing tools to weapons of financial mass destruction, as levered funds and securities breached loan covenants, and issuers ultimately proved unable to service their debt. Of course, the new financial products demonstrated—as usual—that financial innovations promising high returns with low risk rarely keep that promise. As for the relaxed regulations, the financial conglomerates permitted by revocation of the Glass-Steagall Act had extensive problems; the repeal of the uptick rule allowed the stocks of financial institutions to be driven down relentlessly; and several banks proved unable to survive under the high levels of leverage that had been allowed. Because of everything that had gone before, the consequences included massive mortgage defaults and home repossessions; downgradings and failures on the part of mortgage backed securities; collapsing home prices and the inability to sell existing homes; collapsing stock and corporate bond markets and the disappearance of liquidity; a total drying up of credit availability; and failures, bailouts and bankruptcies at a number of banks.

See Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08 Crutchley, John- Paul, 124 cycles, 3 causation and progression, 30–32, 283, 297–98 cessation of, 178, 180, 285–88, 290 cycle of success, 270–71 definitions of, 40–41 elements of, 18–19, 25–27, 208–10 excess and corrections, 29, 85–86, 293, 299, 307–9 interaction of, 32–33, 167, 186–89, 199–201 listening to, 3–5, 309 major cycles, 267 midpoint and aberrations, 24–29, 266, 296–97 regularity and irregularity, 40–42, 172, 217, 244–45 timing and extent, 24, 39, 145, 282, 295–96 understanding, 17, 22–24, 118, 239, 314–15 See also credit cycle “Death of Equities, The,” 49, 277–78 D Demosthenes, 222, 227, 284 Dimson, Elroy, 13–14, 239 distressed debt investments, 161–62 credit crunch and, 164–66 role of high yield bonds, 163–64 understanding opportunities, 163, 166–67, 241–42, 282 Dow 36,000 (Glassman & Hassett), 219 Dowd, Timothy, 255 Drexel Burnham, 165 Drunkard’s Walk, The (Mlodinow), 42 E economic cycles, 46–47, 64–66, 167 long and short term, 29–30 repetition and fluctuation, 24–25, 97, 135 short-term, 47, 58, 61 economic forecasts, 61–63, 208 Economics and Portfolio Strategy, 13 Economist, The, 141 Eichholtz, Piet, 182 Einstein, Albert, 36 Ellis, Charlie, 5 emotion/psychology, 3, 31, 34, 37, 167 “bubble” and “crash,” 196–98 contrarianism, 133, 135, 142, 234, 244, 301–4 credulousness and skepticism, 90–91, 133, 227 definition of insanity, 36 effect on economic cycles, 83–86, 97–99, 211, 228, 289–92, 298–299 emotionalism or objectivity, 95–96 euphoria and depression, 89, 94, 99, 125, 211, 222, 305, 312 extremes, 113–16, 265 fear, effect on consumption, 59 fear and/or greed, 87–89, 92–93, 114, 221–22, 233–35, 303 humility and confidence, 271–73 investment psychology, 40–42, 93–94, 186–88, 190–91, 214–15, 244 optimism and pessimism, 89–90, 133, 299–301, 302–3 “silver bullet,” 227 F falling knives, 8, 156, 202, 235–36 Federal Reserve Bank, 68, 119, 180, 231 Feynman, Richard, 289 Financial Times, 122, 124 Frank, Barney, 151 Friedman, Milton, 62 fundamentals, 185–87, 189, 209 valuation metrics, 211 future prediction macro prediction, 10 opinions and likelihood, 15, 102, 208, 263–65 qualitative awareness, 214–15 South Sea Bubble, 195–96 G Galbraith, John Kenneth, 5, 34, 63, 125, 178–79, 222 Geithner, Timothy, 155, 239, 287 Glass-Steagall Act, 120, 128 Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08, 36, 59, 119–22, 127–32, 147–57, 180, 233 bear market stages, 193–94 effect on real estate market, 177 lessons from, 239–40 Treasury guarantee of commercial paper, 139–40, 155, 233 Goldman, William, 43 Goldman Sachs, 155 government deficits and national debt, 71–73 economic management tools, 71–73 Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, 103 Graham, Ben, 189 Greenblatt, Joel, 5 Greenspan, Alan, 217 gross domestic product (GDP) consumption, 59–60 definition of, 47 recession (negative growth), 48 See also productivity H high yield bonds, 44, 106, 108, 131–32, 157, 281–82 history and memory, 34, 42, 178 Arab oil embargo, 292 blue chips or small-capitalization, 274 brevity of, 222 convertible arbitrage, 275 growth and tech stocks, 274 mortgage defaults, 229 one house in Amsterdam, 181–82 permanent prosperity, 288–89 poor performance of stocks, 276–77 projections of the future, 286–87, 311–12 History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides), 37–38 Hoover, Herbert, 287 I intrinsic value, 11, 92, 133, 194, 200, 205 when to buy, 237 investing aggressive or defensive, 248, 250–53, 259–60, 295 asset selection, 248, 255–59 bargains or popularity, 273–78 capitulation, 34–35, 194–95 cycle positioning, 248, 250, 252, 254–55, 312–14 definition of, 101–2, 262 fluctuation in, 186–87 growth stocks, 197–98 long or short securities sales, 8 market cycle, return, 204–6 overpayment, 144, 169, 179 philosophy, 4–5, 197, 207 security analysis and value investing, 11 skill or luck, 249, 253–54, 258–59, 272–73 “weighing machine,” 189 See also fundamentals; psychology investment indices, 232t, 238t “it’s different this time,” 37, 197–99 J Jain, Ajit, 5, 276 Janjigian, Jahan, 280 junk bonds.


Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity by Bernard Lietaer, Jacqui Dunne

3D printing, 90 percent rule, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, clockwork universe, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, conceptual framework, credit crunch, different worldview, discounted cash flows, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, liberation theology, low interest rates, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, Occupy movement, price stability, reserve currency, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban decay, War on Poverty, working poor

SOLUTIONS INSIDE THE BOX The fragility of the conventional system has been a concern for quite a while now. Following the 1929 crash, two banking reforms were proposed in the United States to ensure that such a disaster would never happen again. One was the Banking Act of 1933, also known as the Glass-Steagall Act. It strictly separated banking activities between Wall Street investment banks and commercial banks. However, the most prominent academics of the time favored another proposal known as the Chicago Plan.15 The quickest way to explain the Chicago Plan is that bank-debt money would be made illegal.

The government would itself issue a currency to be used in payment of all debts, public and private.16 Banks 70 PROSPERITY thereby would become simple intermediaries. They would be forbidden to lend out more than the deposits they collected. Said another way, banks would have to apply a 100 percent compulsory reserves rule, and since no bank-debt money could be created at all, banks would de facto be limited to the role of money brokers.17 The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed by President Clinton. Since then, this repeal has been blamed for triggering the subprime crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, which in turn precipitated the global banking scramble, leaving so many governments overindebted.

Kung culture, 47; time currency and, 80– 81, 84– 85 Favela, 141 Fear, 4 Federalism, 69 Federal Reserve Act of 1913, 25–26 FEMA, 170–171 Fiat money, 26–28; creditos as, 184–185; inflation and, 91; as social construct, 58 Finite world, 42, 44, 192–193 Fisher equation, 63– 64 Flow network, 32– 33, 61– 63 Fomentos, 105 Food chain, 61 Food stamp, 12 Forgery, 184–185 Fractional reserve banking, 25–26, 39– 40, 228n1, 228n4 Fractional reserve multiplier, 40, 228n1 Fraud, 146–147, 194; counterfeiting, 184–185; emergency currencies and, 170–171; fraudulent currency initiatives, 192 Free clinic, 162–165 Free Lakota Bank, 113–114 Free market, 28, 31– 32, 35, 217 Free money, 176–178 Freigelt, 176–178 Frequent flyer miles: computers enabling, 60– 61; as cooperative currency, 59, 74; inflation and, 92; in multicurrency world, 55 Friendly Favors (FF), 132–133, 183–184 Fuel, 126–128 Functional currency, 199, 201 Fureai kippu, 166–169 Futility, 20 Game, 156–157 Garbage. See Trash Garden, 151, 161 Geuro, 149 GI Bill, 153 Gift, 47– 49, 82 Glass-Steagall Act, 69–70 Globalization, 86, 221 Global Trading Network, 182–183 Golden ghetto, 19 Gold standard, 24–26; Free Lakota Bank and, 113; homogeneity and, 65– 66; as reference currency, 140; Terra and, 135; in Utah, 201; in Weimar Republic, 236n10 INDEX Goodwill: in Friendly Favors, 132–133; TimeBank and, 82 Google, 200 Google Wallet, 115–116 Government Accountability Office (GAO), 170–171 Government debt, 42– 43, 70, 145–147, 227n21 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 70 Great Depression, 24, 175, 180–181; GDP and, 35; GNP and, 33– 34; WIR and, 99, 102 Greece, 149 Greed, 4 Green products, 152, 186 Greenwashing, 198 Gross domestic product (GDP), 34– 35, 131, 146 Gross National Happiness, 131 Gross national product (GNP), 33– 35 Growth pressure, 2, 42– 43, 52– 53 Happy Futures Global Challenge, 131 Hate group, 182 Health care, 14, 16; free clinic, 162–165; in Mae Hong Son, 205 Helplessness, 17 High-powered money, 40 Hitler, Adolf, 180, 236n10 Holacracy, 191 Homogeneity, 65– 66, 86 Honey, 130–131 HOURS, 162–165, 163 Housing: buying, 110–111, 142–143; improvised, 141 Hubbee, 130–131 Hub Network, 130–131 Human construct, 2, 13, 217 Human right, 49 Human Right, A, 165–166 Hyperinflation, 70, 176, 178–179 ICCO, 105 Identity, 19 Immediacy.


pages: 262 words: 83,548

The End of Growth by Jeff Rubin

Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, decarbonisation, deglobalization, Easter island, energy security, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, Eyjafjallajökull, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, flex fuel, Ford Model T, full employment, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Hans Island, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, illegal immigration, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, Kickstarter, low interest rates, McMansion, megaproject, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

But what if they’re simply the most vocal representation of a deeper current of dissatisfaction among citizens? Could other changes be on the way? The financial industry is overdue for a deep structural overhaul that will help to eliminate some of the conflicts of interest that led to the 2008 financial crisis. During the Great Depression, for instance, US lawmakers adopted the Glass-Steagall Act, legislation that separated the different parts of a bank’s business. Under the act, a bank’s traditional deposit-taking business was walled off from the proprietary trading desks that make huge leveraged bets in stock, bond and currency markets. Separating bankers lending money from traders investing money, the thinking went, would help to mitigate the type of rampant speculation that led to the stock market crash of 1929.

If access to public money wasn’t enough to supersize Wall Street deals, American regulators also contributed to the trend, easing the rules limiting the amount of money investment banks could borrow, allowing banks to pile up debt that dwarfed their equity. At the same time, the Clinton administration made a quiet but profound decision to leave the financial derivatives market largely unregulated. This followed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had maintained walls between the pillars of the financial services industry in the United States since the 1930s. At the same time, former executives from Goldman Sachs, such as Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson, were now running the Treasury Department. Not surprisingly, Wall Street got nearly anything it wanted in those days.

But Wall Street has held similar sway in Washington before only to see changing economic circumstances curb its influence. In the Roaring Twenties, Wall Street dined out on largely unregulated markets. Fraud and corruption were systemic. That all changed when the Depression struck. An epidemic of bank failures compelled Washington to pass the Glass-Steagall Act that I mentioned above, to erect barriers between deposit-taking institutions and investment banks. Under the act’s regulatory yoke, the United States enjoyed a remarkably stable financial system for the better part of five decades. That era ended with the push toward deregulation advocated by Reaganomics in the 1980s.


pages: 284 words: 85,643

What's the Matter with White People by Joan Walsh

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, banking crisis, clean water, collective bargaining, David Brooks, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, full employment, General Motors Futurama, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Golden Gate Park, hiring and firing, impulse control, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, mass immigration, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, plutocrats, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, upwardly mobile, urban decay, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, white flight, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

See Irish Catholic Americans Catholic University CBS News Chait, Jonathan Cheney, Dick Chicago Democratic Convention (1968) race relations in 1960s Washington as mayor of Chicago Defender Child Health Insurance Program Chinese Americans Christian, Harriet Christian Brothers Church, Frank civilian review board (New York City) Civil Rights Act civil rights movement black-Irish Catholic relations and Occupy Wall Street compared to See also individual names of civil rights leaders Civil War Draft Riots (1863) class conflict Carter administration and Hard Hat Riot (1970) income disparity Irish Catholic Americans and New York City in 1960s/1970s Occupy Wall Street Republican Party and white working class (present-day) 2008 general election 2008 primaries See also labor unions; police; race relations Cleaver, Emanuel Clinton, Bill on “big government” on Bush v. Gore detractors DLC and earned income tax credit economic policy Glass-Steagall Act and impeachment 1992 election of Obama and poverty during administration of 2008 election and 2000 primaries and welfare reform white vote and Clinton, Hillary on Iraq War 2008 primaries on “vast right-wing conspiracy” Clyburn, Jim CNN Coates, Ta-Nehisi Coburn, Tom Coles, Robert college education of African Americans economic status and of Irish Americans Colored Orphan Asylum Colson, Chuck Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960–2010 (Murray) communism Congressional Black Caucus contraception Catholic Church on Fluke on Limbaugh on Coughlin, Father Charles crime rates Croly, David Cromwell, Oliver Culinary Workers Union “cultural recognition” strategy Cuomo, Mario Daley, Richard Dallek, Robert D’Amato, Al Dean, Howard Dean, John debt-ceiling battle Declining Significance of Race, The (Wilson) De La Salle, Jean Baptiste DeMint, Jim Demmons, Bob Democratic Party “Blue Dog” Democrats Democratic Convention (1948) Democratic Convention (1968) Democratic Convention (1984) Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and labor’s declining influence with (1970s) (See also labor unions) 1960s activism and “Reagan Democrats” Smith and 2008 general election 2008 primaries See also individual names of Democratic presidents and leaders Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) DeVries, Robert Dickens, Charles Digby (blogger) “Dividing the Democrats” memo Dodd, Chris “dog whistle politics” Douglass, Frederick Douthat, Ross Dowd, Maureen Draft Riots (1863) Dreams from My Father (Obama) DuBois, W.

Dukakis, Michael “dump Johnson” movement Dunham, Ann Dunham, Madelyn Dutton, Fred earned income tax credit (EITC) Ebony economic crisis of 2008 ecumenicism Edelman, Peter Edwards, John Ehrenreich, Barbara Ehrlichman, John Eisenhower, Dwight Emanuel, Rahm Emerging Republican Majority, The (Phillips) empathy, need for Empire State Building e pluribus unum, defined Epton, Bernie Eskew, Carter “Even Critics of Safety Net Depend On It” (New York Times) Falwell, Jerry Family and Medical Leave Act Fassnacht, Robert Federal Hall Federal Reserve Felix, Brother Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan) feminism Ferraro, Geraldine Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Europe: A World of Difference (Alesina, Glaeser) finance sector banking deregulation and Reagan Democratic Party and economic crisis of 2008 economic stimulus and Federal Reserve FIRE sector (finance, insurance, real estate) Glass-Steagall Act and Great Depression recession of 1982 TARP Fitzwater, Marlin Five Points by Gaslight (Foster) Five Points (New York City) Fletcher, Bill Fluke, Sandra food stamps Ford, Gerald Fortune Foster, George Foster, Vince Fox News Freedman, Samuel G. Freedom Summer (Mississippi) FreedomWorks free market economic policy Friedan, Betty Friedman, Milton From, Al Futurama 2 (General Motors) Ganz, Marshall garment industry (New York City) Gates, Henry Louis Geithner, Tim General Motors Gibbs, Robert Giffords, Gabrielle Gingrich, Newt Gitlin, Todd Glaeser, Edward Glass-Steagall Act Glazer, Nathan Glover, Ann Glover, Danny Goldman Sachs Gore, Al Grand Army of the Republic Grassley, Chuck Great Depression income inequality and Roosevelt and 1932 election Great Society Greeley, Horace Greenberg, Stanley Grijalva, Raul Groppi, Father James gun issue Hacker, Jacob Haldeman, H.

Freedom Summer (Mississippi) FreedomWorks free market economic policy Friedan, Betty Friedman, Milton From, Al Futurama 2 (General Motors) Ganz, Marshall garment industry (New York City) Gates, Henry Louis Geithner, Tim General Motors Gibbs, Robert Giffords, Gabrielle Gingrich, Newt Gitlin, Todd Glaeser, Edward Glass-Steagall Act Glazer, Nathan Glover, Ann Glover, Danny Goldman Sachs Gore, Al Grand Army of the Republic Grassley, Chuck Great Depression income inequality and Roosevelt and 1932 election Great Society Greeley, Horace Greenberg, Stanley Grijalva, Raul Groppi, Father James gun issue Hacker, Jacob Haldeman, H.


pages: 478 words: 126,416

Other People's Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? by John Kay

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, call centre, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, currency risk, dematerialisation, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial thriller, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, Irish property bubble, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, loose coupling, low cost airline, M-Pesa, market design, Mary Meeker, megaproject, Michael Milken, millennium bug, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, NetJets, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Thiel, Piper Alpha, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, railway mania, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, rent control, risk free rate, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, Yom Kippur War

The events of 1929–33, in which a financial crisis became an industrial depression, threatened not just economic prosperity but political stability. A Senate inquiry into these events was led by a brilliant chief counsel, Ferdinand Pecora, who single-handedly destroyed the reputations of many Wall Street institutions and Wall Street figures. The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 imposed the separation of commercial and investment banking. The House of Morgan was divided into J.P. Morgan, the commercial banking arm, and Morgan Stanley, an investment bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) would in future insure depositors against losses from bank runs or bank failures.

The American finance sector, which had been publicly humiliated in 1933, became a more and more powerful lobby. That lobby secured steady relaxation of the restrictions that had been imposed on the industry fifty years earlier. The separation of investment from commercial banking – the principle that had become synonymous in the public mind with the Glass–Steagall Act – was steadily weakened, although not finally repealed until 1999. In Britain, the trigger for change was the ‘Big Bang’ – the deregulation of finance in 1986 – which swept away a mass of restrictions, including most obstacles to the creation of financial conglomerates. The large British commercial banks, with the enormous capital strength derived from their retail deposit base, were immediate diversifiers.

Crédit Lyonnais, bailed out in 1993 by the French state (which already owned a majority of the shares), was the first global diversified bank to fail in the modern era, after a farcical expansion in which the bank actually became owner of the Hollywood film studio MGM. In the USA the archetypal deal-maker was Sandy Weill, architect of Citigroup. The Glass–Steagall Act was repealed for the more or less explicit purpose of allowing Weill’s Travelers Group to merge with Citicorp, after which Weill rapidly moved to eject his co-CEO, the urbane retail banker John Reed. Citicorp became Citigroup, the world’s largest financial institution, absorbing investment bank Salomon, broker Smith Barney and insurer Travelers, providing virtually every financial product available.


pages: 460 words: 122,556

The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, break the buck, Brownian motion, Carmen Reinhart, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, geopolitical risk, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, Kenneth Rogoff, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, the payments system, too big to fail, tulip mania, Y2K

California Callan, Erin capitalism Carroll, David Cassano, Joseph Cayne, James (Jimmy) CDOs. See collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) Cerenzie, Michael Chase Manhattan China China Investment Corporation Chrysler Citigroup acquisitions by n bailouts of capital raised by CDOs and corporate loans of dissent at Timothy Geithner and Glass-Steagall act repeal and history of mortgage bond insurance of international portfolio of job losses at leadership change at leverage of losses mortgage bubble and New York Federal Reserve and nonregulated subsidiaries of Hank Paulson and risk at annual letters to shareholders of stock price of subprime mortgages and Wachovia and Clinton, Bill Clinton, Hillary CNBC Cohen, H.

See home foreclosure(s) foreign investors France Frank, Barney Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae accounting problems of affordable housing and Alternative-A loans bailout of Ben Bernanke and capital raised by competitive threats to Congress and Countrywide Financial and Democrats and Federal Reserve and foreign investment in Alan Greenspan and as guarantor history of lack of regulation of leadership changes leverage losses mortgage bubble and as mortgage traders Hank Paulson and politics and predatory lending and reasons for failures of relocation to private sector Robert Rodriguez and shareholders solving financial crisis through statistical models of stock price of Treasury Department and free market Freidheim, Scott Friedman, Milton Fuld, Richard compensation of failure to pull back from mortgage-backed securities identification with Lehman Brothers Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and Lehman Brothers’ last days and long tenure of Hank Paulson and personality and character of Gamble, James (Jamie) GDP Geithner, Timothy AIG and bank debt guarantees and Bear Stearns bailout and career of China and Citigroup and financial crisis, response to Lehman Brothers and money markets and Morgan Stanley and in Obama administration Hank Paulson and TARP and Gelband, Michael General Electric General Motors Germany Glass-Steagall Act Glauber, Robert Golden West Savings and Loan Goldman Sachs AIG and as bank holding company Warren Buffett investment in capital raised by capital sought by compensation at credit default swaps and hedge funds and insurance (credit default swap) premiums of job losses at leverage of Merrill Lynch and Stanley O’Neal’s obsession with Hank Paulson and pull back from mortgage-backed securities short selling against stock price of Wachovia and Gorton, Gary government, U.S.

In his 2003 book [published after the events described above] Rubin advocated “comprehensive” margin requirements for derivatives, and in pronouncements throughout his career, Rubin was generally a proponent of sensible, if moderate, regulation. In practice, he was often a deregulator. Simultaneous to his opposition to Born, he advocated repeal of the Glass-Steagall act—a cause championed by Citigroup, which Rubin would shortly join. Summers, probably the most liberal of the group, was generally open to the case for regulation. Yet when Born proposed some market supervision, Summers, too, tried to bully her into submission. j Basel II, a multilateral pact to create an international banking standard, published in 2004 and yet to be fully adopted, aimed to ensure that capital allocation was “more risk sensitive.”


The Economics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Microeconomics by Rod Hill, Anthony Myatt

American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biodiversity loss, business cycle, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, electricity market, endogenous growth, equal pay for equal work, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, failed state, financial innovation, full employment, gender pay gap, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, income inequality, indoor plumbing, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, medical malpractice, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Paradox of Choice, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Peter Singer: altruism, positional goods, prediction markets, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, publication bias, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, search costs, shareholder value, sugar pill, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, ultimatum game, union organizing, working-age population, World Values Survey, Yogi Berra

In the early 1930s the Roosevelt administration enacted three key pieces of legislation in an effort to avoid a repeat of the Great Depression. The system worked well for about fifty years. Roosevelt’s first piece of legislation was the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which prevented commercial banks (which take deposits and grant loans to both households and business) from acting as investment banks (which issue stocks and shares, and organize huge business deals such as mergers). Investment banking is inherently more risky than commercial banking, and the Glass-Steagall Act kept the two separate. The second key piece of legislation was the Federal Housing Administration Act (1934), which regulated the terms of mortgages and insured them against default.

.: 522) show that by 1988, a scant two years after the tax code was changed, 68 per cent of home equity loans were used to fund things other than home improvements, compared with just 35 per cent in 1984. Running parallel to this growth was the growth in small consumer finance companies. In 1977, these little consumer finance companies owned a mere 0.5 per cent of the home equity loan market. But by the end of the 1980s, they had 32 per cent. The repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited commercial banks from owning other financial companies such as investment banks or insurance companies.4 It was this feature which was abolished in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Bank Deregulation Bill. The consolidation of commercial and investment banks was supposed to ­allow the resulting ‘full-service’ banks to better compete and to enjoy economies of scale.5 Instead, it enhanced the scope for conflicts of interest and perverse incentives.

., 115, 142, 166, 169 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 18–20, 115, 194; The Affluent Society, 79, 87 game theory, 129 gasoline: oligopolistic industry, 61; prices of, 73 gender pay gap, 189 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 224 George, David, 42, 204 Gini coefficient, 200–1 Gintis, Herb, 1 Glass-Steagal Act, 259; repeal of, 260–1 global trading system, agreements, 224 global warming, evidence of, 156 globalization, 229–31; analysis of, 219–42 Gomory, R. E., 229 Goodwin, N., 74, 218 government: and determination of market outcomes, 13; and equity, 13–14; and externalities, 154; bias against, habit formation, 12 happiness, 246; maximization of, 10, 12; measurement of, 88–9 see also wellbeing and utility Harberger, A.


pages: 457 words: 128,838

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, Apple Newton, bank run, banking crisis, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital controls, carbon footprint, clean water, Cody Wilson, collaborative economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Columbine, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, Firefox, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, hacker house, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, litecoin, Long Term Capital Management, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, new new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price stability, printed gun, profit motive, QR code, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, special drawing rights, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, Ted Nelson, The Great Moderation, the market place, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, Y2K, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP

Everyone from voters to Wall Street traders to congressmen to the president wanted to believe the financial system could be left in the hands of the Fed. The highly respected Paul Volcker gave way to the “maestro,” Alan Greenspan, who was equally revered, until he wasn’t. In 1999, we turned a blind eye to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had barred the merging of commercial and investment banks ever since the Depression, and so blessed the emerging banking behemoths to hijack every lever of power. When the system blew up in their faces, they pulled their last lever: taxpayer-funded bailouts. Six years on, we are still a long way from fixing this system.

It would combine the global commercial-banking reach of Citicorp with the investment-banking prowess of Travelers’ Salomon Smith Barney, as well as the latter’s comprehensive insurance offerings. One problem: the deal was essentially illegal. By any reading it ran afoul of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which decreed that commercial banks and investment banks must remain separate. The law’s intent was that commercial depositors’ funds should not be put at risk by an investment bank that could use them to finance speculative investments rather than the more reliable residential or commercial loans that commercial banks pursued.

Abed, Gabriel Abridello, Mike accelerators Accel Partners Adams, Douglas Afghan Citadel Afghanistan Africa A-Grade Investments Ahmadi, Parisa AIG Airbnb Akimbo Alamgir, Nadia Alcoholics Anonymous Aleph Alibaba Alipay Alisie, Mihai Allaire, Jeremy al-Qaeda altcoins dogecoin litecoin Realcoin Alyattes, King Alydian Amazon Amazon Cloud American Express AME Ventures Amidi, Saeed Andolfatto, David Andreessen, Marc Andreessen Horowitz Andresen, Gavin Android angel investors anonymity anonymous remailers AntMinter Antonopoulos, Andreas ANX Apache tribe APIs (application programming interfaces) Apple Argentina exchange houses in trust problem in Aristotle Armstrong, Brian ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) chips Assange, Julian assassination AstroPay AT&T Atlas ATS Australia Austrian school of economics automobile loan payments Avalon Average Is Over (Cowen) Babylonians Back, Adam Bacon, Francis Bagehot, Walter Banco Popular Banga, Ajay Bank of America Bank of England (BOE) bankruptcy banks, banking central fees of fractional reserve Glass-Steagall Act and ledger and Medici modern payment system centered around people excluded from system of shadow system of tellers in too-big-to-fail Baran, Paul Barbados Barbie, Johann Barclays Barrett, John barter Beckstrom, Rod Bel Bruno, Joe Bell, Jim Bernanke, Ben Betamax BitAngels BitCarbon bitcoin(s): addresses in artwork and songs about balance in blockchain ledger in boom in brand of carbon footprint of as commodity community around creation of; see also Nakamoto, Satoshi crime and cryptography mailing list and culture of as currency defined as deflationary currency dollar and double-spending of early adopters of encryption in evangelists of exchange rate of fraud and future of Genesis Block in imitators of, see altcoins issuance of meetups for mining, see bitcoin mining and miners merchants accepting as movement as payments protocol as property regulation of, see regulation release of reward program in security and software for symbols of as technology thefts of traceability of transaction confirmation in transaction fees and transaction malleability bug and transaction volumes of trust and value of volatility of wallets for wealth concentration and Wild West phase of work in Bitcoin 2.0 (Blockchain 2.0) bitcoin barons bitcoin.com Bitcoin Decentral Bitcoin Faucet Bitcoin Forum Bitcoin Foundation Bitcoinica Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Market bitcoin mining and miners ASICs in cloud at data centers Dr.


pages: 511 words: 132,682

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants by Maurice E. Stucke, Ariel Ezrachi

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 737 MAX, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, Corrections Corporation of America, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, delayed gratification, disinformation, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Chrome, greed is good, hedonic treadmill, incognito mode, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, information asymmetry, invisible hand, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, late fees, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Network effects, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, payday loans, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price anchoring, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, sunk-cost fallacy, surveillance capitalism, techlash, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, Yochai Benkler

Bush asking his Council on Competitiveness “to put an end to what he has called ‘regulatory creep’ in the federal government.”9 Sounds doubtful? Well, let’s consider the financial sector. The US Supreme Court in 1963 characterized the banking regulations as one of the most, if not the most, successful systems of economic regulation.10 Commercial banking, as a result of federal laws, like the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as well as state laws, was diffused through many independent, local banks, rather than concentrated in a few nationwide banks, as in England and Germany. With this federal and state regulatory framework for commercial banking, the Court noted the “virtual disappearance of bank failures from the American economic scene.”

Pushing the reductivist narrative, the industry argued that if competition is viewed as inherently organic and good, then regulation must be seen as inherently artificial, intrusive, and bad—something that interferes with natural market forces. Interest groups, businesses, lobbyists, and politicians repeated the magical formula. One victim in the late 1990s was the Glass-Steagall Act, which was meant to prevent banks from becoming too-big-and-integrated-to-fail, by hampering affiliations between the commercial banking and securities industries. The financial industry was calling the law “an anticompetitive anachronism.”11 The act was hobbled, and then eventually cut down to pave the way for the $70 billion merger of Travelers Group Inc. and Citicorp, which created the largest commercial banking organization in the world, with total consolidated assets of approximately $751 billion.

See Federal Trade Commission fuel shortage incidents on airlines, 56–58, 61 Fun Kid Racing app (Tiny Lab), 194–95, 199, 202–3 Gallup, 277 Gamemakers, 192–224 overview, xiii, 192, 195–96 addictive qualities built into apps, 196–203 advertisers bidding on targets, 208–9 attracting bidders, 207–9 benefits of their technology, 221 business models, 198, 220 children’s data gleaned for advertisers, 193–95 controlling what we see or don’t see, 218–22 creating an illusion of choice and control, 211–15 extracting our personal data, 203–7 Google and FB dominance, 208, 210, 213–15 identifying consumers’ weaknesses for advertisers, 199–201 lack of transparency, 209–10 media and traffic from Google and FB, 210 offering developers a helping hand, 198, 204 payment for free services, 216–18 privacy assurance and policies, 194, 206–7, 211, 212, 217–18 profit from auctions, 209–11 surveillance capitalism, 195 targeting consumers, 204–5 toxic competition, 192–93, 203, 206–7, 220–22, 223 tracking software, 204–7, 217, 222 See also Facebook; Google gaming disorder, 202 Gates, Dominic, 265 gazelles with trackers metaphor, 92–93 General Data Protection Regulation, Europe, 287 General Mills, 64 GEO Group, 167, 172, 173, 175, 176 German printing industry, 244 Germany’s antitrust authority and Facebook, 222 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 127–28 global economic crisis, causes of, 130 Goldberg, Shmuli, 103–4 Goldman Sachs, 274–76 Google auction of user data to advertisers, 208–9 Fun Kid Racing app, 193–95, 199 initial creation of, 282–83 Location History feature, 212–13 time spent on, 196 YouTube, 196, 208–9, 210, 215 See also Gamemakers Google Books Ngram Viewer, 131, 131–32, 132 government’s role in promoting healthy competition, 260–72 failure of, leading to financial crisis of 2008, 261–64 preventing exploitation of human weaknesses, 267–69 providing a safety net, 269–72 regulation of the market, 260 regulatory guides for the competition machine, 264–67 See also policy makers greed-inspired competition, 235–36, 237, 240.


pages: 491 words: 131,769

Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global reserve currency, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Minsky moment, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Paradox of Choice, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price stability, principal–agent problem, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, unorthodox policies, value at risk, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, Yom Kippur War

For the previous three decades, freeing financial markets from “onerous” regulations had been an article of faith among conservatives. It also became public policy. From the 1980s onward, tight regulations of the financial system instituted during the Great Depression were phased out or eliminated. The most notable casualty was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Part of that landmark legislation had created a firewall between commercial banks (which took deposits and made loans) and investment banks (which underwrote, bought, and sold securities). Those provisions suffered death by a thousand cuts. Beginning in the late 1980s, the Federal Reserve Board permitted commercial banks to buy and sell a range of securities.

In the United States, the panic of 1907 left many lawmakers concerned about the nation’s lack of a central bank, and prompted the formation of the Federal Reserve a few years later. The mother of all financial crises—the chain of disasters known as the Great Depression—sparked radical reforms of financial systems internationally. In the United States, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 created federal deposit insurance and established a firewall between commercial and investment banking; subsequent legislation gave the Federal Reserve the power to regulate bank reserves. The government brought the stock market to heel as well: the Securities Act of 1933 required issuers of securities to register them and to publish a prospectus, and it made the investment banks that underwrote the sale criminally liable for any errors or misleading statements in the prospectus.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, crippling panics and depressions hit the nation again and again. Financial crises disappeared only after the Great Depression, a period that coincided with the rise of the United States as a global superpower. At the same time the U.S. government reined in financial institutions with legislation like the Glass-Steagall Act and shored them up by creating agencies like the SEC and FDIC. The dollar became the ballast of an extraordinarily stable international monetary system, and crises came to seem like things of the past. Though serious cracks started to appear in the facade after the 1970s, economists in developed nations kept the faith, worshipping at the altar of the Great Moderation.


pages: 291 words: 91,783

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi

addicted to oil, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, carried interest, classic study, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, computerized trading, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, David Brooks, desegregation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, financial innovation, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, illegal immigration, interest rate swap, laissez-faire capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market bubble, medical malpractice, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Sergey Aleynikov, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

“I always tell people, rule of thumb, once the project is approved, you’re still two years away from the first shovel hitting the ground,” he says. “It just takes that long to get all the permits and the paperwork done.” I ask him if experiences like that would color his opinion on, say, the deregulation of the financial services industry in the late nineties. “Absolutely,” he says. When I bring up the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (which prevented the mergers of insurance, investment banking, and commercial banking companies) and the 2000 law that deregulated the derivatives industry, Bock demurs. I’m not sure he knows what I’m talking about, but then he plunges forward anyway. In his opinion, he says, the deregulation of Wall Street was the right move, but it was just implemented too quickly.

He wanted a government that was utterly powerless to interfere in the workings of private business, leaving just one tool in its toolbox—the ability to funnel giant sums of money to the banks. He turned the Fed into a Santa Claus who was legally barred from distributing lumps of coal to naughty kids. Greenspan’s reigning achievement in this area was his shrewd undermining of the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that barred insurance companies, investment banks, and commercial banks from merging. In 1998, the law was put to the test when then–Citibank chairman Sandy Weill orchestrated the merger of his bank with Travelers Insurance and the investment banking giant Salomon Smith Barney.

In short, the value added of derivatives themselves derives from their ability to enhance the process of wealth creation. Translating that into English: I recognize that derivatives are making everyone shitloads of money, so I’ll leave them alone. It was in the immediate wake of all these historically disastrous moves—printing 1.7 trillion new dollars in the middle of a massive stock bubble, dismantling the Glass-Steagall Act, deregulating the derivatives market, blowing off his regulatory authority in the middle of an era of rampant fraud—that Greenspan was upheld by the mainstream financial and political press as a hero of almost Caesarian stature. In February 1999, Time magazine even put him on the cover, flanked by Clinton officials Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, next to the preposterous headline “The Committee to Save the World: The inside story of how the Three Marketeers have prevented a global economic meltdown—so far.”


pages: 335 words: 89,924

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Bartolomé de las Casas, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, company town, complexity theory, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, energy transition, European colonialism, feminist movement, financial engineering, Food sovereignty, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Haber-Bosch Process, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microcredit, Naomi Klein, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, peak oil, precariat, scientific management, Scientific racism, seminal paper, sexual politics, sharing economy, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, spinning jenny, strikebreaker, surplus humans, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, wages for housework, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War

A wan environmentalism is unlikely to make change if its principal theory rests on the historically bankrupt idea of immutable human separation from nature. Unfortunately, many of today’s politics take as given the transformation of the world into cheap things. Recall the last financial crisis, made possible by the tearing down of the boundary between retail and commercial banking in the United States. The Great Depression’s Glass-Steagall Act put that barrier in place to prevent future dealing of the kind that was understood to have knocked the global economy into a tailspin in the 1930s. American socialists and communists had been agitating for bank nationalization, and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Dealers offered the act as a compromise safeguard.119 When twenty-first-century liberal protestors demanded the return of Glass-Steagall, they were asking for a compromise, not for what had been surrendered to cheap finance: housing.

See also Feudalism; Genoese banking; specific nations extrahuman natures: appropriation of, 63, 95; care work and, 110, 117; redistribution and, 210; temporal relationship with, 98; threats to, 226n44; value and, 101; work of, 24–25, 119, 164 Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 136 Félix, Georges, 212 Ferdinand V, King of Spain, 65, 66, 74 feudalism: decline of, 49, 59, 72, 96–97; in Europe, 9–13, 100, 163; Little Ice Age and, 48 finance: accumulation, 88–89; debt repayment, 39; double-entry bookkeeping, 223n45; financialization, 68–70, 87, 125–28; financier advancement, 28; Glass-Steagall Act, 40; Greece debt crisis, 89–90; interest rates, 70, 77, 222n30; International Monetary Fund (IMF), 87, 89, 131, 136; investment returns, 27, 28; low interest, 68; microfinance, 224n92; monetary systems, 71–74; women’s inheritance rights, 125–28. See also bankers/banking; Cheap Money Florence, 71, 74 food systems: animal food consumption, 153, 155; consumption strategies, 33; food prices, 152–53, 154 fig. 5; food/trash balance, 23; Green Revolution, 149–153, 155; in India, 152 fig. 4; industrialization and, 141–155; labor organizing, 104–5; Little Ice Age and, 48–49; “plants of civilization”, 139, 144, 160, 231n8; transformations of, 140; urban discontent and, 140–41; worker control and, 104–5.

See also Genoese banking Genoese banking: American silver and, 79; Centurione family, 35, 65–66, 79, 221n2; Charles V (Carlos I) King of Spain and, 79–80; cheap money and, 74–77; currency shortage, 71; global silver trade and, 82; merchant class and, 65, 75, 76; Pinelo, Francisco, 65–66, 79; Reconquista and, 65–66; relationships to, 26; war financing and, 79–81 German Peasants’ War of 1525, 73, 74, 82, 163, 175 Germany: banking in, 15–16; fiscal hegemony of, 89; Fugger family, 72; German Peasants’ War of 1525, 73, 74, 82, 163, 175; technologies of, 148 Glass-Steagall Act, 40 Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, 136 Global North: animal food industry, 174; care professionals, 134; defined, 25; GDP growth in, 28; investment returns in, 28 Global South: care professionals, 134; defined, 25; Green Revolution, 155; nationalism in, 197–98; nutritionism in, 157; petroloans, 177; in sexual politics, 131 gold standard, 146, 176 governments: alternative nationalisms, 199–200; and bankers, 28, 66, 85–88; commercial power and, 28; and norms, 39.


pages: 177 words: 50,167

The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics by John B. Judis

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, Charlie Hebdo massacre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, full employment, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, mass immigration, means of production, neoliberal agenda, obamacare, Occupy movement, open borders, plutocrats, Post-Keynesian economics, post-materialism, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, white flight, Winter of Discontent

As his campaign unfolded, Sanders unveiled a set of radical reforms that would, among other things, entail government reassuming control over the private market. He proposed Medicare for all (which would remove private insurance as a middleman and guarantee health insurance as a right), free tuition to public colleges financed by a transaction tax on Wall Street speculation, a carbon tax to reduce carbon emissions, the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial and investment banking, and public campaign financing. Sanders’s critics among Democrats argued that his proposals were impractical because they would never get through a Republican congress. A column in New York magazine was entitled, “What Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Understand About American Politics.”

Neither candidate mentioned deficits in their speeches nor pledged to reduce what neoliberals have called “entitlements”; both pledged to be vigilant about trade deals and runaway shops; both committed themselves to regulating Wall Street. In the primaries, Sanders had been the only candidate to call for reviving the Glass-Steagall Act, but both party platforms called for reviving some version of the act. How much this shift in debate will be reflected after the November election remains unclear. If Trump is soundly defeated, as seems likely at this writing, the Republican congressional and business leadership will argue that his defeat was due not only to his intemperate and amateurish campaigning, but to his populism.


pages: 165 words: 48,594

Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism by Richard D. Wolff

asset-backed security, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, business cycle, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, declining real wages, feminist movement, financial intermediation, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Howard Zinn, income inequality, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, laissez-faire capitalism, means of production, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Occupy movement, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, wage slave, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration

They systematically evaded, then weakened, the taxes and regulations of the New Deal, and eventually, when politically possible, eliminated them altogether. Business profits funded the parties, politicians, public relations campaigns, and professional think tanks that together shaped the real social effects and historical decline of government economic regulation. Examples include the destruction of the Glass-Steagall Act, the current assault on Social Security, the shift in the federal tax burden from business to individuals and from upper- to middle-income individuals, and so on. Unions, the left, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party—even when in power—proved unable or unwilling to secure the federal government’s commitment to New Deal policies.

That happened historically as a consequence of profound social dissatisfaction with how the profit-driven strategies of private banks contributed to economic crises, with intolerable social costs. In the United States, the Great Depression provoked congressional hearings that revealed extensive conflicts of interest and fraud committed by banks and their investment subsidiaries. The resulting Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 (the Glass-Steagall Act) gave the Federal Reserve the power to regulate savings accounts interest rates and also prohibited bank-holding companies from owning other kinds of financial enterprises in order to stop banks from using their depositors’ funds for risky investments. Such controls of what private capitalists could charge and do were steps toward—even as they stopped short of—a full nationalization of banking.


Risk Management in Trading by Davis Edwards

Abraham Maslow, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, Brownian motion, business cycle, computerized trading, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, discrete time, diversified portfolio, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, implied volatility, intangible asset, interest rate swap, iterative process, John Meriwether, junk bonds, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, p-value, paper trading, pattern recognition, proprietary trading, random walk, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, selection bias, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stochastic process, systematic trading, time value of money, transaction costs, value at risk, Wiener process, zero-coupon bond

From 22 RISK MANAGEMENT IN TRADING the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s until the late 1990s, banks in the United States were divided into commercial banks and investment banks by the Glass‐Steagall Act (the U.S. Banking Act of 1933). This act prevented financial institutions that take deposits from customers (commercial banks) from engaging in many financial activities involving financial markets. Under the Glass‐Steagall Act, deposit‐taking institutions were prevented from: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Buying or selling securities for customers Investing in securities on their own behalf Underwriting or distributing securities Owning or affiliating with companies involved in securities activities Sharing employees with securities firms.

Coinciding with the growth of the derivatives market in the mid‐1970s, U.S. commercial banks started creating subsidiaries to enter securities markets in a limited manner. Demonstration of sound risk management practices convinced banking regulators to allow the use of these loopholes. Over time, these exemptions grew. By the time the Glass‐Steagall Act was finally repealed in 1999, it was mostly a symbolic action—large financial conglomerates handling both commercial and investment banking already existed. The risk management concepts pioneered by banks were soon adopted by hedge funds. This helped hedge funds improve their profitability and attract more investors.


pages: 831 words: 98,409

SUPERHUBS: How the Financial Elite and Their Networks Rule Our World by Sandra Navidi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, digital divide, diversification, Dunbar number, East Village, eat what you kill, Elon Musk, eurozone crisis, fake it until you make it, family office, financial engineering, financial repression, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google bus, Gordon Gekko, haute cuisine, high net worth, hindsight bias, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Jaron Lanier, Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, McMansion, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, Myron Scholes, NetJets, Network effects, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Parag Khanna, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, performance metric, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Satyajit Das, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech billionaire, The Future of Employment, The Predators' Ball, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, women in the workforce, young professional

Two years later, the former Goldman Sachs luminary became the seventieth secretary of the treasury. He is widely credited with “Rubinomics,” a policy that achieved a balanced budget by way of tax increases and spending cuts. Clinton praised him as the most admired U.S. treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton. But Rubin had also presided over the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment and commercial banking activities and is now considered to have been one of the main causes of the crisis. After Rubin left the White House, Sandy Weill, the architect of the Citi conglomerate, worried about losing Rubin to a competitor and made him an offer that was very concrete in terms of remuneration—$15 million a year—but vague when it came to obligations.

Summers wanted the position badly, and although he had a tight web of powerful supporters including President Obama, countless others inside and outside the Beltway voiced opposition. Critics pointed to the fact that Summers had driven the deregulation that resulted in the repeal of parts of the Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment from commercial banking and insurance activities. Since Summers had also opposed regulation of complex derivatives, they argued, he had significantly contributed to the crisis. Some pointed out that he lacked relevant monetary policy experience, especially when compared to his main competitor for the job, Janet Yellen, who at the time was the vice chair of the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke.

See Wealth gaps Gates, Bill, 4, 70, 128 Geithner, Timothy AIG and, 183 appointment as U.S. treasury secretary, 188 background on, 45–46 at Bilderberg conference, 121 CEO relationships with, 174 Jamie Dimon and, 57 Larry Fink and, 30–31 in Lehman Brothers collapse, 172–173 Nouriel Roubini and, 47 personal relationships and, 11, 172 in public and private sectors, 165 relationship with Bernanke and Paulson, 11 Robert Rubin and, 168 Gekko, Gordon, 191, 210 Gender discrimination, 201 Gender gap, 147, 158–161 Genentech, 199 Generosity, 105 Geneva, Switzerland, 93 Gergiev, Valery, 116 Germany, 37, 39, 84, 116, 141–142, 174, 178, 190 Gini coefficient, 211 Give and Take, 104 “Givers,” 104–105 “Giving Pledge,” 70, 126 “Glass cliff,” 154 Glass-Steagall Act, 167, 188 Glencore, 171, 205 Global Competitiveness Report, 96 “Global corporate citizenship,” 63, 95 Global corporations, 178–179 Global Risk Report, 212 Globalization, xxvi, 8, 95, 97, 211, 213, 220 Goethe, 76 Goethe University Frankfurt, 142 Goldman Sachs, 23, 36, 44, 52, 76, 84, 88, 91, 121, 136, 151, 156, 165–166, 168, 184, 189, 217 Goodbye Gordon Gekko, 24 Google, 40, 114, 199 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 16 Gordon, Robert, 220 Gorman, James, 89 Grant, Adam M., 104 Great Britain, 9 Great Depression, 34, 36, 186, 219 Greece, 27, 110, 132, 177, 194 Greed, 220–221 Green, Michael, 128 Greenspan, Alan, 35–36, 42, 44, 220 Gregory, Joe, 182 Griffin, Kenneth, 76, 82, 87, 121 Grill Room, 124 Grímsson, Olafur Ragnar, 9 Gross, Bill, 53, 65–69 Gross domestic product debt versus, 210 finance as, 12 Group of Thirty, 105, 118, 222–224 Groupthink, 51 Guanxi, 103 Guardian, 87, 160 Guare, John, 18 H Haakon, Prince of Norway, 114 Haines, Stephen, 218 Haldane, Andrew, 214 “Halo effect,” 23 Hamilton, Alexander, 167 Hamilton Project, 168–169 Hamptons, 91 Hanauer, Nick, 13, 212 “Hard power,” 225 Harvard Business Review, 87, 152 Harvard Business School, 41, 57, 61, 199 Harvard Club, 195 Harvard Corporation, 168 Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus, 200 Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 96 Harvard Law School, 23, 199 Harvard University, 36, 47, 81–82, 153, 166, 174, 185, 187, 198 Hawking, Stephen, xxvi Hedge fund(s), 23–24, 27, 63, 70–71, 75, 82, 86–87, 111, 188 Hedge fund managers earnings by, 87–88 residences of, 90 women as, 149 Heffernan, Margret, 224 Henry Crown Fellowship Program, 200 Herrhausen, Alfred, 136 Heterophily, 147 Hierarchy creditworthiness and, 51 opposition to change by, 227 purposes of, 225 social, 22 status and, 22 at World Economic Forum, 114 Highbridge Capital Management, 90 “High-Level Conference on the International Monetary System,” 38 Hildebrand, Philipp, 30, 39, 43, 121 Homogeneity description of, 78–79 familiarity and, 102 hegemony of, 79–92 Homophily, 75–92 description of, 41 mentoring based on, 155 shared background and, 79 in spouse selection, 79–80 Hotel De Bilderberg, 120 Hubs definition of, 19 in financial system, 19 links to, 19 network efficiency affected by, 20 system failures caused by failure of, 20 Human capital, 26, 80 Human networks formation of, 98 homophily influences on, 76 position of individuals in, 21 social capital in, 25 Human relationships description of, 7–8, 105 links in, 19 Human thinking, 50, 218 Humor, 102 Hyperconnectivity, 214 I Iceland, 27 Ideologies, 63–64 IGWEL.


pages: 353 words: 98,267

The Price of Everything: And the Hidden Logic of Value by Eduardo Porter

Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, British Empire, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, clean water, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, flying shuttle, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, guest worker program, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, new economy, New Urbanism, peer-to-peer, pension reform, Peter Singer: altruism, pets.com, placebo effect, precautionary principle, price discrimination, price stability, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, ultimatum game, unpaid internship, urban planning, Veblen good, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

A century ago there were virtually no regulations to restrain banks’ creativity and speculative urges. They could invest where they wanted, deploy depositors’ money as they saw fit. After the Great Depression, President Roosevelt set up a plethora of restrictions to avoid a repeat of the financial bubble that crashed in 1929. Interstate banking had been limited since 1927. In 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act forbade commercial banks and investment banks from getting into each other’s business—separating deposit taking and lending from playing the markets. Interest-rate ceilings were also imposed that year. The move to regulate bankers continued in 1959 under President Eisenhower, who forbade mixing banks with insurance companies.

Barred from applying the full extent of their wits toward maximizing their incomes, many of the nation’s best and brightest who had flocked to make money in banking left for other industries. Then, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration unleashed an unstoppable surge of deregulation that continued for thirty years. By 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act lay repealed. Banks could commingle with insurance companies at will. Ceilings on interest rates had vanished. Banks could open branches anywhere. Unsurprisingly, the most highly educated returned to finance to make money. By 2005, the share of workers in the finance industry with a college education exceeded that of other industries by nearly 20 percent.

electricity elephant-seal cows Elías, Julio Jorge e-mail, spam and Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act (1974) Empire State Stem Cell Board encyclopedias, free energy engagement rings engineers England environment see also climate change; pollution Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Epson ESP printers Essay on the Principle of Population, An (Malthus) Ethiopia Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock) eToys Eurobarometer surveys Europe Catholic Church in decline of polygamy in happiness in lack of sprawl in U.S. compared with work hours in see also Western Europe European Climate Exchange European Union evangelical Christianity executive pay ExxonMobil faith benefits of cheap cost of Fallaci, Oriana families changes to culture and income of of 9/11 victims size of Fanning, Shawn (the Napster) Federal Communications Commission Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, Delaney Clause to (1958) Federal Reserve Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “Feeding the Illusion of Growth and Happiness” (Easterlin) Feinberg, Kenneth fertility decline in female file sharing film financial crises financial services fines fire departments fishing floors Florence foeticide food culture and faith and preparation of price increases for surpluses of Food and Agriculture Organization Food Quality Protection Act (1996) Ford Ford, Henry Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Fourier, Charles France happiness in work hours in Frank, Robert Free (Anderson) Freedom Communications free lunch, use of term free rider problem free things broadcast TV and movies music and Napstering the world and profiting from ideas freeware Freud, Sigmund fuel see also gas Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints future ethics of mispricing nature and price of Gabaix, Xavier Gallup polls Gandhi garbage gas price of General Motors (GM) General Social Survey General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The (Keynes) genetics, genes Germany happiness in Germany, Nazi Gershom ben Judah Ghosts I-IV (album) gifts Glass-Steagall Act (1933) GlaxoSmithKline globalization global warming Goa God Goldin, Claudia goods Google Google News Gore, Al Gorton, Mark government hostility toward intervention of resource allocation of Great Britain bubbles in gas prices in happiness in politics in Great Depression Greece, ancient green revolution (1960s and 1970s) Greenspan, Alan gross national happiness (GNH) index Haiti Hammurabi Hanna, Mark happiness faith and genetics and life-cycle curve of loss aversion and money and problems with defining of right-left gap in U.S. trade-off and Hare Krishna Society Harvard University Haryana health health care health insurance Health Ministry, New Zealand Healthway Heinrich, Armin Hindus, Hinduism HIV homeland security, U.S.


pages: 363 words: 98,024

Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government by Paul Volcker, Christine Harper

Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bretton Woods, business cycle, central bank independence, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, Donald Trump, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forensic accounting, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, income per capita, inflation targeting, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, low interest rates, margin call, money market fund, Nixon shock, oil-for-food scandal, Paul Samuelson, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Right to Buy, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Sharpe ratio, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, too big to fail, traveling salesman, urban planning

Weak financial analysis wasn’t sustainable for a bank that saw itself as an intellectual as well as a business leader. In those days, commercial banks were still tied down by laws and regulations imposed after the financial debacle of the early 1930s. Interest rates on deposits were capped (at zero for demand deposits). The Banking Act of 1933, known as the Glass-Steagall Act for the senator and congressman who sponsored it, forbid banks from underwriting and trading corporate stocks and bonds (effectively separating “deposit-taking” banks from engaging in “investment banking”). Foreign operations were subject to restraints. Branching across state lines was prohibited by federal law and had long been limited within most states, even in New York State.

See also Volcker, Barbara Bahnson, Bishop, 43 Baker, Howard, xiv, 149 Baker, Jim balanced budget and, 144 exchange rates and, 143–144 Latin American debt crisis and, 135 Reagan’s request to Fed/Volcker and, xiii, 118–119 as Treasury secretary, xiii, 139–141, 143–144 Volcker/Federal Reserve and, xiii, xiv, 118–119, 135, 149–150, 228 “Baker Plan,” xiv, 135 Ball, George, 51 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 72, 134, 146, 146n Bank Holding Company Act (1956), 43 Bank of America, 93 Bank of England, 19, 27, 29, 134, 145, 147, 234 Bankers Trust, xv, 93, 166, 168 Bankhaus Herstatt, Germany shutdown (1974), 121 Banking Act/1933 (Glass-Steagall Act/1933), 41, 120, 149, 150, 203, 205 banks commerce separation and, 204–205 “correspondent” banks, 57, 57n “deposit-taking banks” vs. investment banks, 41 overlapping agencies and, 230–231, 233 regulations (early 1930s to 1950s), 41 too-big-to-fail debate, 128 See also specific banks; specific regulators/regulation Barre, Raymond, 78 Barros, Robert, 91 “Basel Agreement,” 148 Basel Committee, 146–148 Bear Stearns/rescue, 208, 209 Beaver Lake, New Jersey, 11, 12 Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House (Safire), 72–73 Belgium and fixed exchange rate, 63 Bennett, Jack, 80 “Bergier Commission,” 177, 179, 180 Bernanke, Ben, 156–157, 208, 231 Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One, The: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry (Black), 130 Biden, Joe, 217 Black, William, 130 Bliley, Tom, 205 Blumenthal, Michael, xi, 101, 102, 160 boards, 167–168, 169–172 Bocuse, Paul, 27 Bolton, Emily, 246 bonds (government), 20, 37 bonuses, 43, 171 Bowen, Bill, 152, 160 Bowsher, Chuck, 198 Bradfield, Michael, 70, 73, 132, 180–181, 240–242, 245 Bradley, Bill, 210 Brady, Nicholas (“Nick”), 135, 209, 242 Brady Plan, 135–136 Brash, Donald, 225 Brazil, 137 Bretton Woods system, ix, 24, 67.

See also specific individuals Frank, Barney, 213 Franklin National Bank, New York failure (1974), 121 Fraser, Doug, 122 Freddie Mac, 89, 89n, 90 Freeman, Brian, 123 Friedman, Milton, 32, 33, 42, 63, 106, 109, 112, 117–118 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act/1978 (“Humphrey-Hawkins Act”/1978), 100 G-5 (“Group of Five”), xiii, xiv, 83n, 140–141, 144 G-10 (“Group of Ten”), x, xi, 49, 62, 62n, 76–79, 83, 146 G-30 (“Group of Thirty”), xvi, 169–171, 206–207 Garfield, James assassination, 238 Garn, “Jake,” 130 Gaviria, Gustavo, 190 GDP, 207, 237 Gehrig, Lou, 11 Geithner, Tim Obama administration/Treasury and, 211, 212, 213, 231 Volcker and, 208, 212 General Electric, 205 General Electric Capital, 205 General Motors, 213 generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), 194, 196 George, Eddie, 145 Germany, 42, 62, 64, 65, 69, 77, 79, 80–81, 138, 139 Githongo, John, 190 Glasgall, Bill, 246 Glass-Steagall Act/1933 (Banking Act/1933), 41, 120, 149, 150, 203, 205 Gleacher & Company, 166 GNP (gross national product), 32, 32n, 206 Goheen, Robert, 158–159 gold standard. See fixed exchange rates Golden, Ray, 154 Goldman Sachs, 121n, 149 Goldsmith, Lord, 184 Goldstein, Jeffrey, 154 Goldstone, Richard, 182 Goolsbee, Austan, 210, 245 Gore, Al, 175, 210, 238 Gotlieb, Allan, 183 governance of other countries, 157–158, 240 governance of United States challenges overview, 2–3, 221, 237–240 Hamilton on, 236–237 polarization and, 2 presidential views/examples, 238 Reagan on, 172, 235, 236 strengthening, 172–174, 237–240 trust problems, 2–3, 145, 221, 235–236 Volcker Alliance and, 235–236, 239 Volcker’s mother on, 240 wealth concentration and, 2 See also specific components; specific individuals Government Accountability Office (GAO) Federal Reserve audit and, 229, 230 importance, 193 Graham, Frank, 18–19 Gramm-Leach-Bliley law/1999 (Financial Services Modernization Act/1999), xv, 205 Gramm, Phil, 205 Gray, Edwin, 129–130 Great Depression, 5, 20, 23, 24, 31, 37, 38, 120, 129, 220, 230 Great Recession (2008) bank capital and, 148 derivatives and, 170, 206, 209 Dodd-Frank legislation following, 128, 213, 214–216, 217, 230 Federal Reserve/Treasury efforts and, 39, 49–50 Great Depression comparisons, 20 missed signs, 203–209, 232 too-big-to-fail issue and, 128, 213–214 Volcker’s warnings, 207–208 See also Dodd-Frank legislation; Obama, Barack Great Recession (2008) aftermath financial regulation/reform, 2, 148, 170, 209, 213 stress tests and, 213 Volcker and, 207, 209, 210–212, 213–214, 215–218 Greenspan, Alan, 149 consulting career beginnings, 31 Federal Reserve, xiv, 150, 157, 225 on price stability, 225 wife, 150 Gyohten, Toyoo, 156 Haberkern, Roy, 42–43 Haberler, Gottfried, 23–24 Hamilton, Alexander, 2, 40, 59, 227–228, 236–237 Hansen, Alvin, 22–24, 31 Harvard/Volcker economics and, 22–24, 25–26 Harvard Graduate School of Public Affairs, ix, 22, 40 Hayek, Friedrich, 17 Hayes, Alfred, 39, 93–94 Heath, Edward, 76 Heimann, John, 98 Heineman, Ben, 189 Hiroshima atom bomb, 9 holding companies, 43, 58 Holmes, Alan, 96 Hoover, Herbert, 238 hubris and US, 3 Hume, David, 117 “Humphrey-Hawkins Act”/1978 (Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act/1978), 100 Hunt brothers/loans and silver market, xii, 124–125 Hunt, Nelson “Bunker,” 124 Hurricane Katrina response, 175, 236 Hydoski, Frank, 193 I-Houses, 169 Iacocca, Lee, 123 ICI (British chemical manufacturer), 152 Independent Advisory Council, 174 Independent Panel Review of the World Bank Group Department of Institutional Integrity, 189–192 Indonesia, 137n inflation Carter administration/Fed, 105–106, 108, 110, 111–112 fighting significance, 150–151 fighting strategy (Fed/Volcker as chairman), xii, xiii, 33, 55, 87, 105–106, 108, 110–116, 117–118 importance of fighting, 222 “money illusion” and, 13 Nixon administration and, 61, 87 problem in late 1960s/1970s, 69, 87 “stagflation,” 99, 223 World War II/Korean War and, 23 See also price stability Inter-American Bank financing, 136 Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, 191 interest equalization tax, 50 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 50 International Accounting Standards Board, xv, 194, 195 International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation, London, 194, 195 International Banking Conference (Munich/1971), x, 69–70 International Financial Reporting Standards, 196 International House, New York, 168–169 International Monetary Fund Belgrade meeting, 106, 107 Camp David meetings (1971) and, 73 creation, ix exchange-rate system and, 25, 73 international monetary reform and, 83–86 Latin American debt crisis and, xiii, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136 Volcker/Per Jacobsson Lecture (1990), xv, 8n, 151 international monetary reform conflicting triad with, 86–87 International Monetary Fund and, 83–86 Volcker and, 83–86 international organizations, importance of, 181.


pages: 340 words: 100,151

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It by Scott Kupor

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Blue Bottle Coffee, carried interest, cloud computing, compensation consultant, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, family office, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, index fund, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Lean Startup, low cost airline, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Paul Graham, pets.com, power law, price stability, prudent man rule, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, the long tail, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, VA Linux, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Rumor has it that not only did Morgan’s house almost burn down from some of the early wiring mishaps, but his neighbors also threatened him as a result of the loud noise emanating from the generators required to sustain the illumination. Banks would continue to play a significant role in the direct financing of many startup businesses until the 1930s passage of the Glass-Steagall Act restricted these activities. Today, VC firms exist by the grace of limited partners who invest some of their own funds into specific VC funds. Limited partners do this because, as part of their desire to maintain a diversified portfolio, venture capital is intended to produce what investment managers refer to as alpha—excess returns relative to a specific market index.

“I knew nothing about airlines”: “Herb Kelleher: Father of Low-Cost Airline Travel Dies at 87,” BBC News, January 4, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46755080. Chapter Four: What Are LPs and Why Should You Care? Financing a whaling venture: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins, “Whaling Ventures,” Harvard Business School Case Study 9-813086, October 2012 (revised December 9, 2013). the 1930s passage of the Glass-Steagall Act: Kurt Jaros, “The Men Who Built America: J. P. Morgan,” Values & Capitalism,” http://www.valuesandcapitalism.com/the-men-who-built-america-j-p-morgan. the endowment tops $25 billion: Josh Lerner, “Yale University Investments Office: February 2015,” Harvard Business School Case Study 9-815-124, April 2015; Yale Investments Office, 2016 Yale Endowment.

., 11 fiduciary duties and Bloodhound case, 236–239 to debt holders, 246 in difficult financing scenarios, 232, 236, 237 dual fiduciaries, 201–202, 212 duty of candor, 215 duty of care, 211–212, 215, 217 duty of confidentiality, 212–215 duty of loyalty, 212, 215, 218 and winding down the company, 246 financial crisis of 2008, 59 financial forecasts, 150–151 fixed income, 63 foreign equities, 62 foundations, 55, 57 founders adaptability of, 49 and board of directors, 97–98, 171–172 and capitalization tables, 190–191 and common stock, 93 and company vs. product-first companies, 44–45 departure of cofounders, 94–95, 96–100 egomania in, 47–48 and evaluation of early-stage companies, 43, 44, 49 founder-market fit, 45–47, 131–133 and information asymmetry, 5, 140, 275 and intellectual property, 101–103 leadership abilities of, 47–48 and product development, 49 and stock restrictions in term sheets, 181 and storytelling skills, 134 and taxation, 71 and vesting, 95–97, 99–101, 183, 186–187, 205–206 409A opinions, 205 fraud, accusations of, 218 Freenome, 128 full ratchet, 166 funds of funds, 56 general partners (GPs) and board seats, 179, 214–215 and carried interest, 74–77 and choosing a corporate structure, 93–94 and clawbacks, 80–81 co-investments of, 86–87 compensation of, 73–77 as dual fiduciaries, 202 and equity partners agreement, 88–89 and exit of VC after IPO, 267 and indemnification, 89–90 investments as domain of, 85–86 and LP–GP relationship, 70–71, 85–88 and management fee, 72–74 and managing conflicts, 214–215 obligations of, 87 and state of fund, 84 suspension of, 87–88 and vesting, 89 See also limited partnership agreement Glass-Steagall Act, 54 going to market, 135–138 good corporate governance, 206–207 Google, 10, 25, 41 Gornall, Will, 3 go-shop provisions, 239, 255 governance terms in term sheets, 196–198 Graham, Paul, 20 green shoe, 265 growth assets, 57–58, 61–63 HA Angel Fund (Horowitz Andreessen Angel Fund), 19 The Hard Thing about Hard Things (Horowitz), 18 hedge funds, 57–58, 62 Hewlett-Packard, 18–19 Hindawi, David, 46 Hindawi, Orion, 46 Horowitz, Ben and Andreessen Horowitz, 21–22, 270 angel investing, 19 aspirin/vitamin analogy of, 50 on founders’ leadership capabilities, 47 The Hard Thing about Hard Things, 18 interview with, 12–13, 14 “hurdle rates,” 83 illiquid assets, 64 incentive stock options (ISOs), 104–105, 185 indemnification, 89–90, 183, 253 inflation, 56–57, 61 inflation hedges, 58, 63 information asymmetry, 5, 140, 275 information rights, 282 initial coin offerings (ICOs), 274 initial public offerings (IPOs), 257–268 and alternative forms of financing, 108–109 and conversion to common shares, 160–161 costs involved in, 107 declining number of, 106–109, 160–161, 249 and dot.com boom/bust, 9–10, 15 effects of efficiency rules on, 107–108 and emerging growth companies (EGCs), 261–263 and exit of VC, 2, 266–267 and the green shoe, 265 and initial filing range, 17 and liquidity, 258–260, 265 and lockup agreements, 265–266 mutual funds’ impact on, 108 percentage of venture backed, 3 and pressure on public companies, 109 pricing, 263–265 process of, 260–268 and prospectus, 261, 263 and reasons to go public, 257–260 and road shows, 263 and secondary offering of shares, 267–268 time frame for, 10 Instacart, 45 Instagram, 45, 130 institutional investors, 29–30, 40–41 insurance companies, 56, 57 intellectual property, 101–103 invention and assignment agreements, 101 investment banks, 260–261 investors’ role in venture capital, 29.


pages: 411 words: 98,128

Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning From It by Brian Dumaine

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, AI winter, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Swan, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, corporate raider, creative destruction, Danny Hillis, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, money market fund, natural language processing, no-fly zone, Ocado, pets.com, plutocrats, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, wealth creators, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture

Trump wasn’t alone in his dislike for the Seattle company. A growing chorus of critics believed that Amazon had gotten too big and too powerful. Former Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon said that Amazon should be dismantled. Senator Elizabeth Warren argued that Amazon needs its own version of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which split consumer and investment banks. In her scenario, the government would break Amazon into two parts, separating Amazon’s website from its direct retail business. The company’s platform sells products not only from third-party sellers but also from Amazon itself. Warren said that Amazon had an unfair advantage by competing with merchants who use its e-commerce platform.

Chapter 15: The Rise of Hipster Antitrust A little more than a year later, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin: Maggie Fitzgerald, “Amazon Has ‘Destroyed the Retail Industry’ So US Should Look into Its Practices, Mnuchin Says,” CNBC, July 24, 2019. “Pick one business or the other”: James Langford, “Amazon Needs a Glass-Steagall Act, Elizabeth Warren Suggests,” Washington Examiner, September 13, 2018. Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said: Ryan Tracy, “House Committee Requests Tech Executives’ Emails in Antitrust Probe,” Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2019. Khan, who works at the Open Markets Institute: Meyer Robinson, “How to Fight Amazon (Before You Turn 29),” The Atlantic, July/August 2018.

See warehouses Furman, Jason, 261 Gao, Wei, 52 Gates, Bill, 58, 241 Gawande, Atul, 27, 227 Geneen, Harold, 216 General Mills, 267 Gen Zers, 15–16, 19 Germany, 22, 119, 154, 189, 237 Gianaris, Michael, 254 Gibson, William, 102 Gilboa, David, 211, 212 Gilded Age, 264–65, 266 Gillespie, Jane, 179 Gise, Lawrence Preston, 31–32, 33–34, 36–37, 42 Gise, Mattie, 36 Gizmodo, 93 Glass-Steagall Act, 257 Goldman Sachs, 8, 235 Good to Great (Collins), 5, 78, 83 Google AI-driven flywheel at, 88–89, 90 Amazon’s shopping searches versus searches on, 221 Android operating system of, 14, 64, 225 Best Buy marketing of electronics from, 205 Bezos’s investment in, 217 brand value of, 16 corporate campus of, 75 digital advertising and, 220, 221 facial recognition and, 35 health-care innovation by, 90, 225 identification with founder, 53 public perception of founder of, 57, 58 search engine of, 88–89, 117, 123 shopping assistants of, 116, 117 smart home devices from, 116 Voice Search app from, 108 Google Assistant voice system, 111, 113, 117, 191 Google Glass initiative, 224 Google Home device, 114, 117 Google Pay, 235 Google Shopping website, 117 Gordon, Bing, 96 Gorelick, Jamie, 66 government facial recognition contracts, controversy over, 35–36 Graham Don, 68 grocery stores.


Firefighting by Ben S. Bernanke, Timothy F. Geithner, Henry M. Paulson, Jr.

Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, Basel III, Bear Stearns, break the buck, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Doomsday Book, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, invisible hand, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pets.com, price stability, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, tail risk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail

But so far, virtually all of the core Dodd-Frank reforms remain in place, and while some critics initially attacked them as a massive overreach that would cripple the financial system, the system has proved strong enough to support a sustained economic expansion. Other critics attacked the Dodd-Frank reforms for preserving too much of the status quo instead of breaking up big banks immediately and reinstating the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act rules that separated commercial banking from more speculative investment banking. Those more radical measures would have been heavy lifts in Congress, but that’s not why we didn’t pursue them. We simply didn’t believe they would address the root causes of the crisis or limit the risk of future crises.

and arsenal for dealing with future crises, 118, 120 background, 13 and Bear Stearns rescue, 48, 50–51, 54 and Countrywide sale, 39 and early stages of financial crises, 33 and expansion of emergency authorities, 80–81 “Geithner put” condition, 101 and Lehman failure, 63, 65, 66, 67 and merger efforts, 77 and onset of financial crisis, 1, 30–31 and policy responses to crisis, 96, 97–101, 105, 106–7 and post-crisis reforms, 112, 116 and shortcomings of U.S. regulatory regime, 28 and spark of crisis, 16 and TARP, 93 and Term Securities Lending Facility, 44 and theoretical approaches to financial crises, 35 General Electric, 69 General Motors, 95, 97, 105, 208 Glass-Steagall Act, 115 global impact of financial crisis, 16, 129, 195–98 “global savings glut,” 16 GMAC, 22, 102, 180, 208 Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns rescue, 51, 53 collateral Treasuries held by, 20–21 and expansion of crisis, 75, 77–78, 157 government investment in, 176 and Lehman failure, 64, 69 and merger efforts, 77 and Paulson’s background, 13 private capital raised during crisis, 175, 181 Goldstone, Larry, 44 Gorton, Gary, 31 Government Accountability Office (GAO), 115 government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and acceleration of crisis, 23 and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship, 56–57 and migration of risk outside regulatory system, 150 and onset of financial crisis, 155, 156 and recovery from crisis, 210 refinancing and loan modification programs, 194 and shortcomings of U.S. regulatory regime, 27–28 and taxpayer profit from rescue, 208 See also Fannie Mae; Freddie Mac Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 27 Great Depression Bernanke’s scholarship on, 13, 109 and federal intervention in financial system, 60 and Fed policies, 35 financial crisis compared to, 1, 5–6, 110, 200 and history of financial crises, 33 and model for stress tests, 101, 180 and small bank failures, 115 and U.S. regulatory regime, 29–30 “Great Moderation,” 146 guarantee programs, 164 “haircuts,” 74, 81–82, 87–88, 90, 93, 100, 127 hedge funds, 13, 31, 63, 71 herd mentality, 15–16, 117 Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, 187 history of prior financial crises, 11–12 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), 105–6, 163, 190, 192, 194 Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), 105–6, 163, 190, 193, 194 Hope Now, 190, 194 House Financial Services Committee, 54 household debt levels, 16 household wealth, 200, 216n Housing and Economic Recovery Act, 58–59, 185 housing market and causes of financial crisis, 4 and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship, 54–60 and fiscal stimulus efforts, 103 homeowner relief efforts, 80, 92, 97, 107 home ownership ideal, 29 home prices, 4, 108, 148, 154, 190, 200, 204, 216n and legacy of financial crisis, 123 and onset of financial crisis, 30 and policy responses to crisis, 105, 161, 189–94 and post-crisis reforms, 112 and resolution of financial crisis, 110 and spark of crisis, 18 See also mortgage market hyperinflation, 6, 109 income inequality, 12, 125, 143 IndyMac Bank, 54, 69, 71, 81, 190 inflation, 35–36, 147 insurance and acceleration of crisis, 22 and AIG rescue, 71, 72 and expansion of crisis, 76, 77 insured deposits, 22–23 and Lehman failure, 69 and models for future crisis management, 127 and TARP, 102 See also Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) interbank lending, 84–85 interest rates coordinated interest rate cuts, 197 and legacy of financial crisis, 123–24 long-term trends, 147 and policy responses to crisis, 97, 105–6, 163 and role of central banks, 34 and stimulus programs, 43 and vulnerability of financial system, 14 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 102, 198 investment banks, 4, 22, 47–48, 69, 77 It’s a Wonderful Life (film), 14 James, Bill, 76 JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns rescue, 49–50, 53–54 and expansion of crisis, 47 and expansion of emergency authorities, 81 government investment in, 176 and Lehman failure, 62 and onset of financial crisis, 155 and post-crisis reforms, 115 private capital raised during crisis, 175, 181 Keynesian stimulus, 44, 111–12, 123 Kindleberger, Charles, 11–12 King, Mervyn, 35, 89 labor force, 12, 141, 142 Lacker, Jeffrey, 36 Latin American debt crisis, 37 layoffs, 95, 108 Lazear, Edward, 70 Lehman Brothers and acceleration of crisis, 22 Archstone-Smith acquisition, 40 and arsenal for dealing with future crises, 121 and Bear Stearns rescue, 47–48, 51, 53 and causes of financial crisis, 4 and expansion of crisis, 75, 157 failure and rescue efforts, 61–62, 62–71 and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship, 60 management firings, 73 and policy responses to crisis, 168, 169, 176 and politics of crisis management, 9 and post-crisis reforms, 115 and spark of crisis, 18 lending practices, 17, 29, 40, 56 Lenin, Vladimir, 5 leverage and acceleration of crisis, 20–25 and Bear Stearns rescue, 47 and causes of financial crisis, 3 and current state of financial system, 6, 7 and Lehman failure, 63 and politics of crisis management, 126–27 and post-crisis reforms, 112, 117–18 and prevention of financial crises, 110–11 and recovery from crisis, 210 and roots of financial crisis, 12 and shortcomings of U.S. regulatory regime, 25–26, 28–29 and spark of crisis, 16, 19 “liar” loans, 17 Libor-OIS spread, 153, 155, 201 liquidity and Bear Stearns rescue, 48, 53 and Countrywide sale, 38–39 and current state of financial system, 6 and expansion of crisis, 75, 76, 158 Fed programs promoting, 42 and Lehman failure, 69 and onset of financial crisis, 32 and overleverage in financial system, 21 and policy responses to crisis, 161, 164, 166 and post-crisis reforms, 112–13 and recovery from crisis, 202 and regulation shortcomings, 26 and roots of financial crisis, 13 and TARP, 87, 90 and Term Securities Lending Facility, 44–45 and theoretical approaches to financial crises, 35, 36–37 loan loss rates, 145 loan modification programs, 105–7, 192, 193, 194 loan originators, 17–18 loan-servicing industry, 106 lobbying, 27 local budgets, 188 Lombard Street (Bagehot), 34 Long-Term Capital Management, 13, 40, 64 low-income borrowers, 17 Mack, John, 77 Maiden Lane, 50, 179, 208, 217n manias, 111, 112 margin requirements, 4, 22, 114, 126 maturity transformation, 14, 16, 23, 117 McCain, John, 80, 82 McCarthy, Callum, 67 McConnell, Meg, 118 media coverage of financial crisis, 65, 98 memory of financial crises, 3, 4, 125–26 mergers, 67, 77, 114 Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns rescue, 51, 53 and causes of financial crisis, 4 and expansion of crisis, 75, 157 and foreign investment, 41 government investment in, 176 and instability of financial system, 84 and Lehman failure, 61, 64, 66–67 management firings, 73 and post-crisis reforms, 115 private capital raised during crisis, 175, 181 and TARP, 95, 96 and write-down of troubled assets, 40–41 Mexico, 37 middle-class insecurity, 125 Middle-Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, 187 Minsky, Hyman, 13 Mitsubishi, 78 monetary policy and legacy of financial crisis, 123–24 and onset of financial crisis, 43–44 and policy responses to crisis, 161, 163, 183–88 and prevention of financial crises, 111–12 and TARP, 89 money market funds and acceleration of crisis, 22 and expansion of crisis, 76–77 and migration of risk outside regulatory system, 150 and policy responses to crisis, 163, 171 and stress tests, 102 and TARP, 87 and taxpayer profit from rescue, 208 monoline insurers, 44 moral hazard and AIG rescue, 74 and Bear Stearns rescue, 51, 52 and current state of financial system, 8 and early stages of financial crises, 33 and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship, 56 and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Deposit Insurance Fund, 81–82 and shortcomings of U.S. regulatory regime, 28 and theoretical approaches to financial crises, 36, 37–38 Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns rescue, 51, 53 credit default swaps, 75 and expansion of crisis, 77, 78, 157 and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship, 59 and foreign investment, 41 government investment in, 176 and Lehman failure, 64, 69 and onset of financial crisis, 156 private capital raised during crisis, 175, 181 mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and causes of financial crisis, 4 and legacy of financial crisis, 123 and policy responses to crisis, 106, 163, 190, 191 and roots of financial crisis, 12 and spark of crisis, 17 mortgage market and Bear Stearns rescue, 53 and causes of financial crisis, 3–4 and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship, 55–60 and instability of financial system, 85 loan modification programs, 105–7, 192, 193, 194 and long-term interest rates, 147 mortgage-related assets, 21 and policy responses to crisis, 103–7, 169, 189–94 and quantitative easing, 103–4 and recovery from crisis, 203 and shortcomings of U.S. regulatory regime, 27, 29 and spark of crisis, 16–20 See also housing market; mortgage-backed securities Mozilo, Angelo, 38–39 National Bureau of Economic Research, 43 nationalization of financial institutions, 54–60, 86, 91, 98, 100, 107, 182 negotiation of relief efforts, 65 Nevada housing market, 19 New York Fed, 26, 28, 64, 66, 118 New York Times, 70 “NINJA” loans, 17 no-documentation loans, 29 nonbanks and acceleration of crisis, 22–24 and AIG rescue, 72 and arsenal for dealing with future crises, 118–20 and bank holding companies, 216n and Bear Stearns rescue, 47, 48–50, 52, 53–54 and Countrywide sale, 39 and expansion of crisis, 76 and Lehman failure, 61, 63 and migration of risk outside regulatory system, 150 and policy responses to crisis, 162, 173 and post-crisis reforms, 113–14, 115 and shortcomings of U.S. regulatory regime, 26–27, 211 and Term Securities Lending Facility, 44–45 See also specific institutions Northern Rock, 155 Obama, Barack and arsenal for dealing with future crises, 120, 124 election, 93 and government response to crisis, 80, 82, 93, 103–7 and legacy of financial crisis, 124 and onset of financial crisis, 1 and policy responses to crisis, 163 and politics of crisis management, 9 and post-crisis reforms, 113 and TARP, 96–98, 100, 105, 107 Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), 23, 59 Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), 23, 71, 116 optimism, 18, 117 “orderly liquidation authority,” 121 “originate-to-distribute” mortgage model, 17–18 overconfidence, 12–13, 125–26 overnight funding, 24 panics and Bear Stearns rescue, 49 causes of, 3 contagion effect of, 37, 111 inherent vulnerability to, 13–16 and Lehman failure, 70 and onset of financial crisis, 2, 31–32 and post-crisis reforms, 112 and prevention of financial crises, 111 and TARP, 87 and toxic mortgage assets, 41 Paulson, Henry M., Jr.


Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government by Robert Higgs, Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.

Alistair Cooke, American ideology, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, creative destruction, credit crunch, declining real wages, endowment effect, fiat currency, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income per capita, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, manufacturing employment, means of production, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, plutocrats, post-industrial society, power law, price discrimination, profit motive, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, Works Progress Administration

/Feb. 1972): 186-191; Albert Rees, "Real Wages and Inflation: Rejoinder," ibid., p. 192. 12. Hoover, Memoirs, pp.47-48, 88, 114, 143-144, 156, 162-163; Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 6-24. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 should not be confused with the better remembered Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The latter, also known as the Banking Act of 1933, mandated inter alia the separation of investment and commercial banking and the establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. 13. Hoover, Memoirs, pp. 140-141, 118 (also pp. 258-259).

Unfortunately, as Lester Chandler has observed, the President "seems to have paid little attention to wage rates as a determinant of costs of production." 11 Hoover backed various measures to stimulate federal spending and extensions of the government's credit, including increased appropriations for public works and the Federal Land Banks, creation of the Agricultural Credit Banks and the Home Loan Banks, liberalization of the Federal Reserve Banks' lending authority by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, and passage of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932, which allowed the federal government to give (officially, to lend) the state governments funds to use for relief of the unemployed. Hoover also used his discretionary authority to reduce immigration-he supposed that an immigrant would either become a public charge or displace someone else from a job.

., 138 Garrity, John, 170 Gary, Elbert H., 115 Gas lines, 254 Geertz, Clifford, 48-49, 55 General Electric, 214 General Maximum Price Regulation, 208209 General Motors, 214 George, Henry, 79 George, Walter F., 200 Gerber, Larry, 190 GI Bill of Rights, 229, 236 Gifford, Walter S., 128, 130 Gillam, Richard, 229, 241 Glass-Steagall Act, 164 Glazer, Nathan, 193 Godfrey, Hollis, 128, 130 Godkin, E. L., 77 Gold Reserve Act, 174 Gold standard, 78,87-91, 168, 174, 194 Gold Standard Act, 90 Gold-clause cases, 185-187, 189 Gompers, Samuel, 86, 143 Gore, Thomas P., 174 Gorman, Arthur P., 97 Gouldner, Alvin, 47, 51 Granger Laws, 82 Great Contraction, 161-162 Great Depression, 85, 159-195,260 Great Northern Railway, 93 Great Society, 256, 261 Greenbackers, 82, 97 Hancock, John M., 218 Hansen, John Mark, 69 Hardin, Russell, 42 Harding, Warren, 150 Harlan, John M., 102 Harris, Seymour E., 211 Harrer, M.


pages: 554 words: 158,687

Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All by Costas Lapavitsas

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, conceptual framework, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, false flag, financial deregulation, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, Flash crash, full employment, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, global village, High speed trading, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, market bubble, means of production, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, oil shock, open economy, pensions crisis, post-Fordism, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Simon Kuznets, special drawing rights, Thales of Miletus, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, union organizing, value at risk, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

The theoretical and ideological justification for tight controls over finance was provided by Keynes’s damning verdict on financial excess in the General Theory, calling for the ‘the euthanasia of the rentier’ as a valid aim of monetary and financial policy that would strengthen the role of productive capitalists.1 The regulation of finance was an integral part of the dominant Keynesianism of the period, summed up as ‘financial repression’.2 The system of financial repression had its roots in the great crisis of the 1930s which ushered in major regulatory changes with the aim of placing finance under control. The major institutional and legal change of the era took place in the US with the introduction of the Glass–Steagall Act in 1933, which separated commercial from investment banking as well as setting administrative limits on bank interest rates (under the so-called Regulation Q) and limits on the volume of bank lending against securities.3 The Glass–Steagall Act encapsulated the dominant approach to financial regulation until the gradual emergence of financialization had signalled the second great wave of financial ascendancy. Financial repression was also spurred by the vast accumulation of public debt by mature countries in the course of the Second World War.

It relied, on the one hand, on the role of the dollar as world money under the Bretton Woods Agreement and, on the other, on administrative controls on prices, quantities and functions within the domestic financial system. Three elements characterized financial regulation generally across mature capitalist countries, although the distinction between market-based (Anglo-Saxon) versus bank-based (German–Japanese) financial systems never ceased to apply. In spite of the prominent role played by the Glass–Steagall Act, these elements were most vividly apparent in Japan, a late developer that finally joined the ranks of mature capitalist countries in the three decades after the Second World War.4 First, there were controls on interest rates, received by and paid to, financial institutions. Rates on assets were frequently determined administratively, based on the lending rate of the central bank, and were kept deliberately low in nominal terms with the (spoken or unspoken) aim of supporting productive capitalists.

This aspect of financial repression again varied according to the historical and institutional trajectory of particular countries, but several features were in common across both mature and developing countries. Commercial banking was generally kept separate from investment banking through legislation – the Glass–Steagall Act in the US and its equivalent, Article 65, in Japan – or through monopoly practices and informal ‘clubbing’ exclusivity (as in the UK and elsewhere). Banks that provided long-term investment funds were also generally kept separate from other banks, through special privileges in obtaining liabilities (for instance, issuing long-term bonds) or even through direct state ownership.


pages: 655 words: 156,367

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle

2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, David Graeber, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, George Floyd, George Gilder, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kitchen Debate, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Journalism, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shock, open borders, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Powell Memorandum, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, super pumped, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, urban decay, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

Everyone knew that the construction of this pageant, and the celebration of America that it implied, was the work of the New Deal.5 As part of its campaign to assume new powers, the federal government placed extensive new controls on the country’s financial system. In 1933, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial from investment banking and establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to assure depositors that the federal government would guarantee their savings. The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 reined in buying stocks on margin (i.e., with borrowed money to be paid back from the proceeds of expected increases in stock value) and established the Securities and Exchange Commission to enforce the new kind of financial regulation that the New Deal was imposing.

In 1996, Clinton, working with Congress, deregulated the exploding telecommunication industry, now including not just phones and television but the cable and satellite sub-industries so important to the new information economy. Soon after, he did the same with the electrical generation industry that sustained (literally) the new economy. And then, in 1999, he supported Congress’s repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal law that had done more than any other to end speculation, corruption, and the boom-bust cycle in America’s financial sector.35 Clinton had come to regard markets as something akin to natural law. Upon signing NAFTA in December 1993, he remarked that the United States really had no choice in the matter.

During the Clinton years, this unshackling went under the name of “financial modernization.”76 As with the media industry, the finance industry was seen by groups on both sides of the political aisle as hobbled by an outdated regulatory regime, this one also established during the halcyon early days of the New Deal order. The relevant legislation in this case was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had imposed a regime of regulation on Wall Street in order to prevent a recurrence of the wild speculation and trades that had sparked the Great Crash of 1929. Separating investment and commercial banking stood at the heart of Glass-Steagall. Investment banks were to underwrite loans to corporations looking to expand their business, handle stock offerings, trade securities, and process mergers and acquisitions.


pages: 248 words: 57,419

The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy by Richard Duncan

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bretton Woods, business cycle, currency manipulation / currency intervention, debt deflation, deindustrialization, diversification, diversified portfolio, fiat currency, financial innovation, Flash crash, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, inflation targeting, It's morning again in America, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megaproject, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, reserve currency, risk free rate, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, special drawing rights, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade liberalization

If the reserve requirement had been 10 percent, the banking system would have ended up with $1,000 of deposits, or 10 times the amount of gold initially deposited, and $900 of new credit. In that case the money multiplier would be 10. Now consider the reduction of the reserve requirements of the commercial banks. Commercial Banks Commercial banking was a straightforward business after the passage of the Glass–Steagall Act separated commercial banking from investment banking in 1933. Banks took deposits and used them to make loans; and the banks were required to hold reserves with the central bank to ensure they would have sufficient liquidity to repay deposits to their customers upon demand. In 1945, deposits supplied 98 percent of the banks’ funding.

See Balance of payments Fortune magazine Fractional reserve banking, money creation through Freddie Mac: conservatorship of credit creation and decline in liquidity reserves quantitative easing and U.S. debt guarantees and Friedman, Milton General equilibrium, theory of Germany Glass–Steagall Act Globalization Global savings glut theory, of Bernanke Goldman Sachs Gold reserve requirement, end of and creation of fiat money Government Accountability Office report Government sector: inflation and deflation’s effects on percentage of total credit market debt rational investment option for results of spending cuts in Government-sponsored entities (GSEs): credit supply and GSE-backed mortgage pools inflation and deflation’s effects on quantitative easing and U.S. debt guarantees and Great Depression economic conditions during Friedman’s conclusions about Greece Greenspan, Alan Gross domestic product (GDP): change in value added, by industry debt as percentage of driven by credit equation of exchange and during Great Depression ratio of credit growth to GSE-backed mortgage pools History of Economic Analysis (Schumpeter) Hoover, Herbert Household sector: debt and inflation and deflation’s effects on Human Action (von Mises) Hyperinflation Inflation and deflation credit and inflation derivative regulation and effects on asset classes Fisher’s theory of debt-deflation inflation in 2011 inflation likely in 2012 inflation likely without additional quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus New Great Depression scenarios and protectionism and wealth preservation during Innovation, in Mitchell’s theory of business cycles Interest rates, in U.S.: bond sales and cut by Federal Reserve to encourage credit expansion money supply and quantitative easing and trade balances and International Monetary Fund Ireland Jackson, Andrew Japan Johnson, Lyndon JP Morgan JPMorgan Chase Keynes, John Maynard Korea Labor market, changes in marginal cost of wages in.


pages: 438 words: 109,306

Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank That Runs the World by Adam Lebor

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, central bank independence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, deindustrialization, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial independence, financial innovation, foreign exchange controls, forensic accounting, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, haute cuisine, IBM and the Holocaust, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, power law, price stability, quantitative easing, reserve currency, special drawing rights

Until the Big Bang, the Square Mile had been still a clubby, comfortable place of old school tie connections and long lunches, where Montagu Norman would have felt at home. That world vanished almost overnight. Wall Street investment banks poured into the Square Mile, bringing aggressive new tactics. The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment banking and deposit taking, was still in force in the United States. London, newly unburdened from cumbersome regulations, offered fabulous opportunities, heightened by the rapid growth of computer technology, which accelerated trading. The BIS gave the Big Bang a cautious welcome.

The Asian debt crisis was an accident waiting to happen.”2 Knowing there was a problem, however, did not mean the bank could always persuade policymakers to take preventative or remedial measures. Just a few years later, in the early 2000s, the United States was also facing a similar potential financial meltdown. The repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act that separated banks’ deposit taking and broking activities had helped fuel a credit boom and asset bubble. Glass-Steagall had been passed in 1933 during the Great Depression. The warnings of those who said that repealing the act would trigger another cycle of boom, bust, and depression were ignored.

., 101 industrialists, postwar fate of, 157–163 modern economy, 223 Nazi party, postwar strategy of, 156–157, 220–224 Nazi relationship with BIS, xviii–xx, 33, 51, 78–79, 84–87, 114–115, 123, 125–127, 258 Poland, invasion of, 71 post–World War I conditions in, 6 postwar financial continuity in, 152–156 repatriation of gold reserves by, 263–264 SS (Schutzstaffel), financial empire of, 154–155 Treaty of Rome (1957), signing of, 219 See also Reichsbank; reparation payments Gewirtz, Paul, 107 Gilbert, Seymour Parker, 10 Gisevius, Hans Bernd, 160–161 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 225, 238 Global Economy Meetings, xii, 247 Globke, Hans, 182 Goering, Hermann, 105, 183 Gold Baltic gold, management of by BIS, 79–80 Bank of Greece’s missing gold, 23 Belgian gold reserves, fate of, 85–86 Czechoslovak gold affair, 59–63 gold exchange standard, 42 gold standard, 42 London Gold Pool (LGP), xvi, 188–189 looted, xix, 53, 61, 78, 85, 87–88, 132, 262–266 new emphasis on, 264 repatriation of German gold, 263 reserves of, xxii, 55–56 storage of in Switzerland, 115 Swiss-German gold-for-coal arrangement, 87 Gold Discount Bank, 9, 106 Goldman Sachs, 257 Governors’ Meeting, xii–xiii, 49–50, 256 Graffman, J.


pages: 358 words: 106,729

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, diversification, Edward Glaeser, financial innovation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, illegal immigration, implied volatility, income inequality, index fund, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, machine readable, market bubble, Martin Wolf, medical malpractice, microcredit, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, Phillips curve, price stability, profit motive, proprietary trading, Real Time Gross Settlement, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, seminal paper, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, tail risk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

The government has repeatedly intervened to limit the power of banks—as in Andrew Jackson’s fight to close the Second Bank of the United States (after he accused it of political meddling), the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 so that banks had an alternative to J. P. Morgan as the lender of last resort, and the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which broke up the most powerful banks. Similarly, through antitrust investigations, most famously against John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Bill Gates’s Microsoft, the government has sought to rein in the power of big business. But with the exception of some episodes—for example, during the Great Depression—the government and the public have not been strongly predisposed toward punitive taxation of the rich to achieve a more equitable distribution of income.

Although there are always concerns about whether regulators will use these sorts of powers arbitrarily, they are no more difficult for legislators and courts to oversee than are powers based on anticompetitive considerations. Turning to proposals to limit activities by insured banks through some modern version of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, these again seem less attractive on further reflection. Obviously, some activities of a large bank add considerably to risk and opacity. To the extent possible, these should be clearly separated in legal entities that are not affected by the bank’s failure. For instance, banks should not attempt to use client assets that are pledged to them in their prime brokerage units (units that lend securities, offer loans, and undertake asset-management functions for clients, typically hedge funds) in further transactions.11 The commingling of client assets with the bank’s own funding activities reduces transparency, increases risk, and was an important reason why many investment banks experienced runs in the current crisis, as clients tried to withdraw their assets before they got entangled in the bank’s bankruptcy.

See Fannie Mae food prices foreign debt: of developing countries fickleness of financers, in foreign currencies, Mexican crisis (1994) reducing short-term foreign exchange reserves: of China of developing countries foreign investment: in developing countries in East Asia in mortgage-backed securities in U.S. government bonds Formosa Plastics Group France: annuities sold by monarchy automobile industry in energy consumption in health care costs in social welfare spending in state-owned enterprises in unemployment benefits in Franklin, Benjamin fraud Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation): establishment of foreign investors in government takeover of lending to support housing prices losses of mandate of mortgage-backed securities issued by reforms of role in subprime crisis free-enterprise capitalism French, Ken French Revolution Frieden, Jeffry Fuld, Richard G-7 (Group of) G-20 (Group of) Gelband, Michael Gender, Robert General Motors Germany: banks in energy consumption in export-led growth strategy of health care costs in Landesbanks in social welfare spending in unemployment benefits in Weimar Republic Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association) Glass-Steagall Act of global economic governance reforms GNMA (Government National Mortgage Association). See Ginnie Mae Goldin, Claudia Goldman Sachs government bonds: foreign investors in, risk premium on government intervention: attitudes toward corruption and in credit markets in early developers expectations of in financial systems in housing market in India limitations of managed capitalism strategy in market economies private sector influence on reducing risk taking and role in financial crisis state-owned enterprises unintended consequences of, See also exchange-rate policies; exportled growth strategies; regulation Government National Mortgage Association.


pages: 398 words: 105,917

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism by Richard Brooks

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blockchain, BRICs, British Empire, business process, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Strachan, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, energy security, Etonian, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, Frederick Winslow Taylor, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, principal–agent problem, profit motive, race to the bottom, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, supply-chain management, The Chicago School, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks

The theory went that one company would buy another (which following a 1950 anti-trust law had to be in a different sector), impose superior management, cost accounting and reorganization, and then reap the rewards. It was a seductive picture painted by accountants who had taken over the job of advising on investment decisions from the banks. The same post-Great Crash legislation that had split investment and commercial banks, the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act, had also barred them from advising on deals from which they would earn banking fees. But with the accountancy firms also responsible for auditing the companies and standing to earn more fees advising on the many accounting issues thrown up by mergers, the result was simply to create another, arguably more harmful, conflict of interest.

(Jennings), 224 Foxley, Ian, 214, 216 France, 31, 46, 89, 127, 171–7, 204, 205 Franklin, Benjamin, 53 Friedman, Milton, 84 FTSE100 Index, 5, 14, 90, 125 FTSE350 Index, 259 Fuld, Richard ‘Dick’, 132 Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft, 189 G4S, 148, 201 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 14, 57, 263 Galbraith, Thomas, 2nd Baron Strathclyde, 208 Galilei, Galileo, 22 Gap, 163 Gauke, David, 179 Gazprom, 236, 237 GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), 272 General Electric, 5–6, 55, 78, 154 General Electric Company (GEC), 66 General Motors, 57 General Survey Outline, 75 generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), 109 Geneva, Switzerland, 27, 29, 178 geometry, 21, 33 Germany, 220, 233–4, 235, 240, 247, 251 Gilbert, William Schwenck, 52 Gilby, Nicholas, 215 Gladstone, William, 45, 47, 50 Glasgow, Scotland, 45, 48 City of Glasgow Bank, 51, 147 Institute of Accountants and Actuaries, 47 University of Glasgow, 136 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 60 GlaxoSmithKline, 163, 167, 169 Glickauf, Joseph, 77–8 ‘Go-Go’ years (1960s), 59, 62, 65, 67 Goerdeler, Reinhard, ix, 235, 240 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 235 Gol, 242–3 Goldman Sachs, 121, 134–5, 139, 148, 157 Goldsmith, James, 66, 86 goodwill, 60–61 Goodwin, Fred, 136, 137, 139 Google, 164, 165, 178, 271 Gordhan, Pravin, 250 Gordon Riots (1780), 38 Gordon, Andrew, 218 Gosling, Richard, 202 GPT, 214–19 Gramegna, Pierre, 170 Great Crash and Depression (1929–39), 14, 57–8, 59–60, 66, 73, 75, 80, 118 Great Northern Railway, 46 Great Western Railway, 46 Green, Philip, 260 Greenspan, Alan, 122 Greenwich Capital Markets Inc., 136 Griffith-Jones, John, 146, 149, 150 Grigsby, John, 39, 40–41 Grondona, Julio, 225, 227 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair, ix–x, x, 277–8 Guardian, 170, 213 Gupta, Atul, 250 Haddrill, Stephen, 143, 209, 210 Halet, Raphaël, 171–7, 176, 181 Halet, Sophie, 172, 173 Halifax, 140 Hamersley, Michael, 161 Hamilton, Lewis, 7 Hamilton, Robert, 70 Hanson, Walter, 64 Harley, Robert, 39 Harris, Steven, 264 Hartnett, David, 166, 207 Harvard University, 57, 75, 99 Haskins & Sells, 56, 58 Haskins, Charles Waldo, 56 Haughey, Charles, 163 Haute Comité de la Place Financière, 171 Havelange, João, 220, 221 HBOS, x, 13, 140–41, 142–3, 149, 150, 257 Healey, Denis, 184 HealthSouth, 109 hedge funds, 113, 115 hedging, 99 Heineken, 246 Heintz, Guy, 175 Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), 179, 182 Hewitt, Patricia, 184 Hexham General Hospital, Northumbria, 191 HIH, 240 Hinchingbrooke hospital, Cambridgeshire, 193 Hinkley Point, Somerset, 204–6 Hippocratic oath, 276 Hodge, Margaret, 178 Hollinger, 154–5 Holocaust, 4 Holyland, William Hopkins, 49 Home Office, 201 Hong Kong, 240, 251–2 Hotel Baur au Lac, Zurich, 219, 224 House of Commons, 68 House of Lords, 68, 92, 93, 143, 146–7 Houston, Texas, 99–108 HS2, 197–9, 266 HSBC, 166, 215, 229–30, 231, 256 Hudson, George, 44–5 humanism, 28 Hungary, 213 hypothetical future value, 100 IBM, 82, 272 Iceland, 127 ICI, 69 IKEA, 166 Illinois, United States, 54, 72–4 Imperial College, London, 197 Imperial Tobacco, 202 income tax, 46, 67, 153 Income Tax Act (1842), 46 India, 233, 238, 242, 245, 249 Industrial Revolution, 18, 42–7 Inferno (Dante), 33 inflation, 85 Inglis, John, 78–9 Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), 49, 52, 93, 210 integrated reporting, 18 interest rates, 85 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 159, 160 International Accounting Congress (1938), 234 International Accounting Standards Board, 123–5, 126, 127, 147 International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 169, 230, 247 International Financial Services Centre, 163 International Fiscal Association, 245 International Integrated Reporting Council, 18 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 273 International Sport & Leisure (ISL), 220–21, 222 Internet, 95 Introduction to Merchandise (Hamilton), 70 Iran, 230 Iraq, 225, 240 Ireland, 127, 143–4, 163–5 Isle of Man, 247–8 Issuers’ and Investors’ Summit on CDOs/Credit Derivatives (2006), 121 Istace, Vinciane, 173 Italy, 3, 16, 21–2, 24–36, 37, 239 ITT Corporation, 59, 61 Ivy League, 68 J.

, 248 UK Uncut, 166 Ukraine, 238 United Kingdom, 2, 6, 39–41, 42–52, 55–6, 65–9 Bank of England, 38, 91, 126, 140, 273 Banking Act (1879), 51 Barlow Clowes collapse (1988), 89–90, 136, 209 Blair ministries (1997–2007), 114, 157, 179, 184–92, 194, 209, 213 Brexit, 195, 203–4, 273 British Home Stores collapse (2015–16), 260–61 Bubble Act (1720), 44 Cabinet Office, 200, 201 Cameron ministries (2010–16), 149, 182, 192, 194, 195, 203 chartered accountancy, 14, 16, 45, 47–8, 49, 53, 67 City of Glasgow Bank collapse (1878), 51, 147 Companies Acts, 51, 52, 58, 66, 93 credit crisis (1772), 43 Davey committee (1894), 52 Department for Business, 201 Department for Exiting the EU, 204 Department of Health, 188, 191, 192 Financial Conduct Authority, 140, 149, 281 financial crisis (2007–8), see under financial crisis Financial Reporting Council, 138, 142, 144, 149, 182, 209–10, 213–14, 259, 261 Financial Services Authority, 127, 128, 137, 138, 140 First World War (1914–18), 71 GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), 272 Gordon Riots (1780), 38 Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), 179, 182 HBOS bailout (2008), x, 140–41, 142–3, 149, 257 Home Office, 201 HS2, 197–9, 266 Income Tax Act (1842), 46 Industrial Revolution, 18, 42–7 Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), 49, 52, 93, 210 IAS39 rules, 123, 125, 127, 147 Johnson Matthey collapse (1984), 91, 128 Joint Stock Companies Acts (1844, 1856), 47, 50 ‘light touch’ regulation, 114, 131, 209 limited liability, 92–5 May ministries (2016–), 203 Maxwell publishing empire, 66, 87–8, 91 mergers and acquisitions, 65–9 Ministry of Defence, 188–90, 202, 212, 215–19 National Audit Office, 187, 189, 206 National Crime Agency (NCA), 272 National Health Service (NHS), 183–4, 187, 190, 191–5, 266 Northern Rock collapse (2007), 125–9, 142–3, 148 Overend & Gurney collapse (1866), 51, 126 Paradise Papers scandal (2017), 7 private finance initiative (PFI), 185–91, 196, 203, 249 Public Accounts Committee, 281 railways, 44–7, 49, 115 Railway Regulation Act (1844), 45 regulation, see under regulation Royal Bank of Scotland bailout (2008), 47, 136–40, 142, 241 Saudi Arabia, relations with, 212–19 Secret Intelligence Service, 207, 272 Serious Fraud Office, 213, 216, 217, 218, 219 South Sea Company, 39–41, 42, 44 Tate, 16 taxation, 7, 46, 67, 94, 153, 155–9, 163–6, 177–82, 203, 247–8 Thatcher ministries (1979–90), 84, 184 Treasury, 39, 68, 146, 179, 180, 189, 201, 203 War of the Spanish Succession (1707–13), 38 Wilson ministry, first (1964–70), 66, 68 United Nations, 225, 245 United States, 2, 4, 52–8, 59–65, 66–9 American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, 61 American International Group bailout (2008), 133–5, 144, 145, 148 antitrust laws, 59, 61, 75 Bear Stearns bailout (2008), 139, 145 Big Bang (1986), 156 Big Four, 2, 6, 9, 10 Bush administration (2001–2009), 98, 114, 145, 253 Celler–Kefauver Act (1950), 59, 61 certified public accountants, 53 Civil Rights Movement, 64 class-action lawsuit law (1966), 64 Congress, 56, 57, 58, 68, 73, 79–80, 98, 145 consultancy, 70–83 Department of Justice, 144, 161, 223 Eisenhower administration (1953–61), 76 Enron scandal (2001), see under Enron Federal National Mortgage Association (‘Fannie Mae’), 118–19, 145, 257 Federal Reserve, 122, 133 Federal Trade Commission, 79 FIFA indictment (2015), 219, 223 financial crisis (1873), 53 financial crisis (2007–8), see under financial crisis Founding Fathers, 53 Gilded Age (c. 1870–1900), 48 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 60 ‘Go-Go’ years (1960s), 59, 62, 65 Great Crash and Depression (1929–39), 14, 57–8, 59–60, 66, 73, 75, 80, 118 Internal Revenue Code (1954), 154 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 159, 160 International Accounting Standards, 123 Ivy League, 68 Johnson administration (1963–9), 63 Lehman Brothers collapse (2008), 12, 13, 92, 131–3, 138, 145, 148–9 limited liability partnerships, 91–2 Long Term Capital Management collapse (1998), 113 mergers and acquisitions, 59–62, 71 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 76 Navy, 77 New Century Financial Corporation collapse (2007), 115–18, 257 Penn Central Transport Company collapse (1970), 64 presidential election (2000), 98 Public Company Accounting and Oversight Board (PCAOB), 144–5, 242–3, 253, 261, 274 railroads, 51, 52, 53, 70, 73 Reagan administration (1981–9), 80, 84, 154, 184 Roosevelt, Franklin administration (1933–45), 58 Roosevelt, Theodore administration (1901–9), 56–7 Sarbanes–Oxley Act (2002), 114, 122 savings-and-loan mutuals, 84–7, 91, 99 Securities Act (1933), 58 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), see under Securities and Exchange Commission Sunbeam collapse (2001), 97 Tax Reform Act (1986), 154 taxation, 67, 153–5, 159–63, 178 Trump administration (2017–), 17, 161, 273, 274 Vietnam War (1955–75), 63 Wall Street, 54, 69, 96, 101, 120–21 Washington Mutual collapse (2008), 145 Watergate Scandal (1972–4), 212 Westec collapse (1966), 63 World Congress of Accountants (1904), 56 WorldCom scandal (2002), 6, 10, 109, 110, 130, 209, 264, 274 United States Steel Corporation, 55, 62, 233 universal automatic computer (UNIVAC), 77–8 University of Chicago, 75, 84 University of Pennsylvania, 77 Unleashing the Department Store (Bower), 75 usury, 24, 26 Utopia, Limited, 52 Valcke, Jérôme, 225 value-added tax (VAT), 7, 179, 247 Vandemeulebroeke, Marc, 172, 173 Varley, Steve, 16, 200, 256, 258 Vatican, 25 Veihmeyer, John, 250 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 18, 21, 24, 26, 32–6 Victoria, queen of the United Kingdom, 47 Vietnam, 102 Vietnam War (1955–75), 63 Vincent, Janice, 86 Virgil, 33 Virley, Simon, 205, 206, 207 Vodafone, 165–6 W.


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The Devil's Derivatives: The Untold Story of the Slick Traders and Hapless Regulators Who Almost Blew Up Wall Street . . . And Are Ready to Do It Again by Nicholas Dunbar

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, delayed gratification, diversification, Edmond Halley, facts on the ground, fear index, financial innovation, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market bubble, money market fund, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, Thomas Bayes, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, Vanguard fund, yield curve, zero-sum game

Sixty years earlier, Congress tried to answer that question with the Glass-Steagall Act, which forbade banks from trading and issuing securities. But Senator Glass and Representative Steagall hadn’t anticipated that banks would get around this restriction by trading derivatives. Nor did they anticipate the growth of an offshore dollar market and how U.S. banks (at holding company level) could enter the securities business by setting up subsidiaries in Europe.1 These banks were tightly regulated because taxpayers were on the hook if they failed, but now that they had figured out how to legally circumvent the Glass-Steagall Act, they were taking more risks, sometimes huge ones.

One way around the problem was to make more loans but then immediately distribute them to investors in the form of bonds. As long as the bonds didn’t go bad immediately, the credit risk was now the investors’ problem, not the bank’s. This was the world of the securities firms: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers. The Glass-Steagall Act, which kept commercial banks out of securities, was about to be abolished in 1999 and was becoming increasingly irrelevant anyway: by using new products like derivatives, or by basing subsidiaries outside the United States, American banks could do as much underwriting and trading as they liked.


pages: 385 words: 111,807

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, antiwork, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, discovery of the americas, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, inventory management, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, liberation theology, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, post-industrial society, precariat, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, search costs, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey

The reforms were particularly widespread and far-reaching in the US, where the Depression was the greatest and lasted the longest. The so-called First New Deal programme (1933–4) under the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, separated the commercial and investment arms of banks (the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act), set up the bank deposit insurance system to protect small savers against bank failures, tightened stock market regulation (the 1933 Federal Securities Act), expanded and strengthened the farm credit system, provided a minimum farm price guarantee and developed infrastructure (such as the Hoover Dam – that’s the one you see in the 1978 Superman movie, starring the late Christopher Reeve), and so on.

All was not well with the new global economy. The false dawn: from the dot.com boom to the Great Moderation When these crises were brought under control, talk of global financial reform receded. In the US, a major push in the other direction came in the form of the 1999 repeal of the iconic New Deal legislation, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which structurally separated commercial banking from investment banking. There was another moment of panic in 2000, when the so-called dot.com bubble – in which internet-based companies with no prospect of generating any profit in the foreseeable future had their shares valued at absurdly high levels – burst in the US.

Most of us have heard of them – especially Goldman Sachs, who have been infamously likened to a ‘vampire squid’ by the journalist Matt Taibbi – but don’t fully understand what they do. Investment banks have existed since the nineteenth century – sometimes as independent entities but often as parts of universal banks that perform both types of banking. German banks, such as Deutsche Bank or Commerzbank, are the quintessential examples. In the US, due to the Glass-Steagall Act, the combination of investment banking and commercial banking in a single entity was not allowed between 1933 and 1999. Since the 1980s, these banks have played the leading role in reshaping the financial system on a global scale. Investment banks’ key role is (or used to be) to facilitate the creation and the trading of shares and bonds Investment banks are so called because they help companies raise money from investors – at least that was their original purpose.


pages: 432 words: 106,612

Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever by Robin Wigglesworth

Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Brownian motion, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, cloud computing, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, index fund, industrial robot, invention of the wheel, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, lockdown, Louis Bachelier, machine readable, money market fund, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, RAND corporation, random walk, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, rolodex, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, transaction costs, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund

He eventually triumphed in the heated internal debate, to the consternation of the normally phlegmatic Black, who stormed out of the pivotal meeting in a rare fit of anger.17 As it turns out, the Stagecoach Fund was eventually killed anyway by the fallout from a 1971 Supreme Court ruling that the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act prevented commercial banks like Wells Fargo from marketing mutual funds to ordinary investors. Wells Fargo’s trust department had already secured commitments from the pension funds of Greyhound and Illinois Bell. But given that the hope of also attracting retail investors alongside them was now stymied, and otherwise tepid interest from institutional investors, the Stagecoach Fund initiative wound down.

It reached the $1 billion milestone in 1988, ranking 41st among 1,048 funds.7 By then, a smattering of rivals had launched similar index funds for ordinary investors, but they were either shut down or struggled for traction.8 Investment groups that could have competed more aggressively with Vanguard—Wells Fargo Investment Advisors, State Street, and Bankers Trust, whose index strategies were all growing strongly among institutional investors like pension funds—were precluded from entering the retail arena. The Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act still banned bank-owned money managers from selling products to ordinary investors, and due to this regulatory quirk, and the reluctance of retail-oriented investment groups to cannibalize their own traditional funds, Vanguard for a long time enjoyed an unimpeded run selling index funds to ordinary investors.

See Dimensional Fund Advisors DFA Way, 163–64, 165 Diamond, Bob, 198, 202, 203–5 Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), 144–51, 159–65 board of directors, 146–47 Butler at, 137–39, 144–48 conferences of, 138, 163–64 factor investing approach of, 156, 159–60, 163, 191 Financial Advisor Services, 163 first fund (9-10 Fund), 148, 150, 151 founding of, 144–46 investment funds, 154, 156, 159–60, 162–64 Klotz’s departure, 156–59 Schroders’ investment, 145, 160 Wheeler at, 138, 161, 162–64 direct indexing, 249–50 diversification, 7, 40–41, 138, 142–43 dividend yield, 263 Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, 35, 109 Doran, Robert, 94–96, 97–99, 102, 116–17, 118, 131, 133 dot-com bubble, 51, 154, 156, 197, 214, 215, 246 Dow, Charles, 27, 29, 152 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 7, 29, 34, 252 Dow Theory, 27, 151–52 Duffield, Jeremy, 94, 124, 125, 129, 130, 134 Dunn, Patricia, xiii, 192–95 background of, 193–94 at BGI, 192–95, 196–99, 201–2, 215, 232 cancer of, 201–2, 215 at Hewlett-Packard, 193, 202 at WFIA, 185–86, 192–95 Dunn, Ruth, 193 Eastman Kodak, 5–6 Eastwood, Clint, 189 École Polytechnique, 23 “Economic Role of the Investment Company, The” (Bogle), 91–92 Eendragt Maakt Magt, 300–301 “Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work” (Fama), 50 Efficient Frontiersmen, 82 efficient-markets hypothesis, 48–52, 63, 64, 65, 67, 106–7, 152–55, 160, 165, 268, 280 Einstein, Albert, 25 Eisenreich, Gary, 180, 181 Elhauge, Einer, 296–97 Elliott Management, 19, 287–88 Ellis, Charles, “The Loser’s Game,” 35, 109, 186, 276 emerging markets, 257, 258 employee stock options, 194–95 Engel, Louis, 30–31 environmental, social, and governance (ESG), 290–94 “equal-weighted” indices, 76–77 ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF (HACK), 241 Evercore, 219 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), 17, 239–46, 262–64 actively managed, 244–46 Amex and Most, 166–68, 173–76, 178–79 BGI and, 196–201, 233–34 biblical, 236–39 bond, 248, 271–73 sustainability-focused, 291–92 thematic, 241–42, 246 exchange-traded products (ETPs), 247–48 executive compensation, 194–95, 289, 296 ExxonMobil, 269–70 Facebook, 255, 256 factor investing, 151, 155 154, 159–60, 191 Fair, Bill, 61n Fair, Isaac and Company, 61 Fama, Eugene, x, 37, 46–52 background of, 46–48 “The Behavior of Stock-Market Prices,” 48–50 at Chicago, 47–50, 140 at DFA, 146–47, 157, 159–60 efficient-markets hypothesis, 48–52, 63, 139, 152, 268, 280 three-factor model, 155–56, 159–60 Wells Fargo and, 70 Fama, Guy, 45–46 Fama, Sallyann Dimeco, 46–47 Fannie Mae, 219 “fat tails,” 49, 51 Federal Reserve, 115, 119, 270, 273 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 294, 295–96 Feldstein, Paul, 34 Ferguson, Alex, 218 Fernandez, Henry, 259 Fernando, Elizabeth, 274–76, 278–79 Fichtner, Jan, 256–57 FICO (Fair, Isaac and Company), 61 Fidelity Investments, 18, 34, 114, 122, 223, 233, 244, 283 Fina, Philip, 117 Financial Analysts Journal, 34–35, 50, 86, 87–88, 109 financial crisis of 2007-2008, 51, 203–4, 219–21, 236, 275n Financial Times, 252 Fink, Larry, xiii, 206–12, 273 background of, 206–7 at BlackRock, 209–21, 234–35 BGI acquisition, 204–6, 215–16, 222–34, 235 financial crisis and, 219–21 founding, 209–12 IPO, 214–15 MLIM acquisition, 217–19 naming, 213–14 climate change and, 289–93 at First Boston, 207–9 on “Giant Three” scenario, 298–99 Icahn and, 271 Fink, Lori, 206–7, 291 fire insurance, 27–28 First Boston, 207–9 First Chicago Bank, 81, 141–42 Fisher, Lawrence, 32–33, 49, 52–53, 70 fixed commissions, 79, 111 Forbes (magazine), 91n, 105 Ford, Gerald, 115 Ford, Henry, 232–33 Fort Knox, 17 Fortran, 44, 66 Fort Riley, 63 Fortune (magazine), 10, 15, 91, 111–12, 151 401(k) retirement plans, 119, 120 Fouse, William, xi, 53, 72–74 background of, 72–73 on Goebbels, 85, 164 at Wells Fargo, 73–74, 75, 81, 184, 187, 189n, 194 fractional shares, 250 Francis, Glenn, 176 Franklin Custodian Funds, 94 Franklin Templeton, 234 Fraser-Jenkins, Inigo, 242–43, 279 Frater, Hugh, 210, 212, 219 free-rider problem, 279 French, Ken, 155–56 Freud, Sigmund, 31 Friedman, Milton, 24, 41, 141 frontier markets, 257 FTSE Russell, 111n, 252 FTSE 100, 7, 249, 256 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 26 Galbraith, Steven, 11–14 Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 49 Gaussian distribution, 49 General Electric, 115, 143, 220 Getz Bros., 169–70 “Giant Three” scenario, 297–99 Gibson, George Rutledge, 50 Girls Inc., 9, 16 Glass, Lewis & Co., 288–89 Glass-Steagall Act, 75, 122 Goddard, Bruce, 186, 193, 194 Goebbels, Joseph, 85, 164 Golden State Warriors, 56 gold funds, 17, 242, 262–63 Goldman Sachs, 189, 207, 234 Goldstein, Rob, 220–21 Golub, Ben, 209–12, 226 Google, 255, 256 Gore, Al, 293 Gormley, Todd, 290 Gould, Jack, 147 Graham, Benjamin, 7, 52, 83, 152, 154 Graham, Katharine “Kay,” 4, 6, 10, 36 Graham and Dodd Awards, 87 Grantham, Jeremy, 66–68 Grauer, Frederick “Fred,” xii–xiii, 186–93 background of, 186–87 BGI and BlackRock, 228–29, 232 at Merrill Lynch, 187–88 at WFIA, 188–93, 194 departure, 192–93 Great Crash of 1929, 27, 88, 89, 92, 225–26 Great Depression, 26, 30, 39, 40, 88, 122, 169, 214 “Great Man” theory, 57–58 Greece, 258 Green, Michael, 266–71, 281 “greenwashing,” 290 Greenwich Associates, 35, 109 Griffin, Ken, 2 Gross, Bill, 124, 261 Grossman, Blake, 185, 191, 196, 200, 225–26, 227 Grossman, Sanford, 280 Grossman-Stiglitz Paradox, 280 Gucci, 198 Hahnemann Hospital, 130–31 Hallac, Charlie, 211, 212, 219, 229 Hangzhou Hikvision, 259 Harvard Business School, 60, 65–66, 67, 128 Harvard Law School, 296–97, 298 Harvard University, 40, 47, 171, 223, 292 Hauptfuhrer, Barbara, 98n Haynes, Peter, 179n hedge funds, 2, 18, 283 Buffett-Seides wager, 1–2, 3–4, 6, 9–11, 15–17 Hedgehog and the Fox, 88 Heemskerk, Eelke, 256–57 Hellman & Friedman, 201 Herbst, Clarence, 278 Hewlett-Packard, 193, 202 Hirst, Scott, 298 Hogg, David, 285–86 Holland, Mary Onie, 83 Holmes, Douglas, 176 Honeywell, 150 How to Buy Stocks (Engel), 30 Hughes, John, 227 Hume, David, 39 Ibbotson, Roger, 64, 144, 147 IBM, 28, 43, 44, 56–57, 60, 83, 143 IBM Personal Computer, 145 IBM 305 RAMAC, 59 IBM 7090, 44, 56 Icahn, Carl, 271 Illinois Bell, 75, 77, 84 incremental investing, 269 Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, 121 indexes, 7, 29–30, 242–44, 251–62.


pages: 559 words: 169,094

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bank run, Bear Stearns, big-box store, citizen journalism, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, company town, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, DeepMind, deindustrialization, diversified portfolio, East Village, El Camino Real, electricity market, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, food desert, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, intentional community, Jane Jacobs, Larry Ellison, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Neal Stephenson, Neil Kinnock, new economy, New Journalism, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, oil shock, PalmPilot, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, public intellectual, Richard Florida, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, smart grid, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, too big to fail, union organizing, uptick rule, urban planning, vertical integration, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, white picket fence, zero-sum game

President, you’ll have some cover when the financial and political elite come after you,” because the establishment was much bigger than any president. In his second term, Clinton would prove it by moving in the opposite direction, supporting the deregulation of banks, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and preventing financial derivatives from being regulated. For now, though, he stood fast. The Senate passed the securities litigation bill in spite of the president’s objections. Clinton vetoed it, and Congress overrode the veto, one of only two times that happened to Clinton. Even Ted Kennedy changed his mind and joined Dodd in voting with the corporations.

So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns … COUNTRYWIDE BEEFING UP SUBPRIME MORTGAGE LOANS … Today’s postfeminist era is also today’s postmodern era, in which supposedly everybody now knows everything about what’s really going on underneath all the semiotic codes and cultural conventions, and everybody supposedly knows what paradigms everybody … US BANKS UNLEASHED Imminent Death of Glass-Steagall Act Will Create Giant US Financial Firms … The United States seems keener than most countries to celebrate the new millennium in style: maybe the nation is wealthy and optimistic enough that big parties seem apropos.… COAST-TO-COAST FIREWORKS … “This is a unique moment for our country,” Clinton told a crowd assembled just off the National Mall, where a gala public celebration was scheduled for later Friday night.

(By the time the Commodity Futures Modernization Act became law, Rubin was no longer in government, so he couldn’t be held responsible for any negative effects it might have had, as he would point out in later years.) The same was true of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, passed by Congress and signed by Clinton in 1999, which repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and allowed commercial and investment banking under one roof. (Yes, Rubin vocally supported Glass-Steagall’s repeal, mainly because the wall between commercial and investment banks had already eroded—a fait accompli that the most admired Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton was powerless to fix.)


The Global Money Markets by Frank J. Fabozzi, Steven V. Mann, Moorad Choudhry

asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, currency risk, discounted cash flows, discrete time, disintermediation, Dutch auction, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, intangible asset, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, land bank, large denomination, locking in a profit, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market fundamentalism, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, paper trading, Right to Buy, short selling, stocks for the long run, time value of money, value at risk, Y2K, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Historically, the dealer market has been dominated by large investment banking firms because the Glass-Steagall Act prohibited commercial banks from underwriting commercial paper. In June 1987, however, the Federal Reserve granted subsidiaries of bank holding companies the power to underwrite commercial paper. Commercial banks began immediately making inroads into the dealer market that was once the exclusive province of investment banking firms. This process was further accelerated when the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was signed into law in November 1999. The reforms enacted in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that mandated artificial barriers between commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies.

., 34 GE Capital commercial paper, 73 maturity (time), 74 GE Capital Corporation, 82 GE Life and Annuity Assurance Co., 99 General American Life Insurance Co., 98 General collateral (GC), 130, 136 General Services Administration, 45 Gift taxes, 66 Gilt repo, 138 market. See United Kingdom gilt repo market users, 140 Gilt-edged Market Makers (GEMMs), 136 Glass-Steagall Act, 70 Global Debt Securities, 60 Global Master Repurchase Agreement, 123 321 Index Global money markets introduction, 1 LIBOR, importance, 36 overview, 3–6 Global MTNs, 98 Gold, recognition, 308 Goldman Sachs, 83. See also Universal Commercial Paper Government bond. See Maturity auctions, 130 securities, 308 dealers, 133 Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), 45, 154–155, 160, 197 passthroughs, 162 Government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), 45–47, 53 creation, 57, 62, 64 status, 65 GovPX (venture), 34 Grace period, 204 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), 70 Gree Tree Financial Corporation, 202 Grieves, Robin, 41, 42, 51 Gross portfolio yield, 196 Gross WAC, 182 Guarantee fee, 154 Haircut, 124, 308 inclusion, 125 Hard bullet (HB), 190 Health care receivables, 76 Hedging, 131, 259.


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Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global village, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Minsky moment, mobile money, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, price mechanism, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, smart meter, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, the market place, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, wikimedia commons

Such credit creation is hardly new – it started several thousand years ago – and it can play a valuable role, but it has grown hugely in scale since the 1980s. That expansion was triggered by financial deregulation (think reregulation) – including the 1986 Big Bang in the UK and the 1999 repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act in the US – which ended the requirement for banks to keep customers’ savings and loans separate from their own speculative investments. Second, financial markets do not tend to promote economic stability, despite the claims that they do. Thanks to financial deregulation, said US Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan in 2004, ‘not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.’45 Four years later, the financial crash disproved that claim in a fairly decisive way.

Page numbers in italics denote illustrations A Aalborg, Denmark, 290 Abbott, Anthony ‘Tony’, 31 ABCD group, 148 Abramovitz, Moses, 262 absolute decoupling, 260–61 Acemoglu, Daron, 86 advertising, 58, 106–7, 112, 281 Agbodjinou, Sénamé, 231 agriculture, 5, 46, 72–3, 148, 155, 178, 181, 183 Alaska, 9 Alaska Permanent Fund, 194 Alperovitz, Gar, 177 alternative enterprise designs, 190–91 altruism, 100, 104 Amazon, 192, 196, 276 Amazon rainforest, 105–6, 253 American Economic Association, 3 American Enterprise Institute, 67 American Tobacco Corporation, 107 Andes, 54 animal spirits, 110 Anthropocene epoch, 48, 253 anthropocentrism, 115 Apertuso, 230 Apple, 85, 192 Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), 148 Arendt, Hannah, 115–16 Argentina, 55, 274 Aristotle, 32, 272 Arrow, Kenneth, 134 Articles of Association and Memoranda, 233 Arusha, Tanzania, 202 Asia Wage Floor Alliance, 177 Asian financial crisis (1997), 90 Asknature.org, 232 Athens, 57 austerity, 163 Australia, 31, 103, 177, 180, 211, 224–6, 255, 260 Austria, 263, 274 availability bias, 112 AXIOM, 230 Axtell, Robert, 150 Ayres, Robert, 263 B B Corp, 241 Babylon, 13 Baker, Josephine, 157 balancing feedback loops, 138–41, 155, 271 Ballmer, Steve, 231 Bangla Pesa, 185–6, 293 Bangladesh, 10, 226 Bank for International Settlements, 256 Bank of America, 149 Bank of England, 145, 147, 256 banking, see under finance Barnes, Peter, 201 Barroso, José Manuel, 41 Bartlett, Albert Allen ‘Al’, 247 basic income, 177, 194, 199–201 basic personal values, 107–9 Basle, Switzerland, 80 Bauwens, Michel, 197 Beckerman, Wilfred, 258 Beckham, David, 171 Beech-Nut Packing Company, 107 behavioural economics, 11, 111–14 behavioural psychology, 103, 128 Beinhocker, Eric, 158 Belgium, 236, 252 Bentham, Jeremy, 98 Benyus, Janine, 116, 218, 223–4, 227, 232, 237, 241 Berger, John, 12, 281 Berlin Wall, 141 Bermuda, 277 Bernanke, Ben, 146 Bernays, Edward, 107, 112, 281–3 Bhopal gas disaster (1984), 9 Bible, 19, 114, 151 Big Bang (1986), 87 billionaires, 171, 200, 289 biodiversity, 10, 46, 48–9, 52, 85, 115, 155, 208, 210, 242, 299 as common pool resource, 201 and land conversion, 49 and inequality, 172 and reforesting, 50 biomass, 73, 118, 210, 212, 221 biomimicry, 116, 218, 227, 229 bioplastic, 224, 293 Birmingham, West Midlands, 10 Black, Fischer, 100–101 Blair, Anthony ‘Tony’, 171 Blockchain, 187, 192 blood donation, 104, 118 Body Shop, The, 232–4 Bogotá, Colombia, 119 Bolivia, 54 Boston, Massachusetts, 3 Bowen, Alex, 261 Bowles, Sam, 104 Box, George, 22 Boyce, James, 209 Brasselberg, Jacob, 187 Brazil, 124, 226, 281, 290 bread riots, 89 Brisbane, Australia, 31 Brown, Gordon, 146 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 193, 194, 258 Buddhism, 54 buen vivir, 54 Bullitt Center, Seattle, 217 Bunge, 148 Burkina Faso, 89 Burmark, Lynell, 13 business, 36, 43, 68, 88–9 automation, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 boom and bust, 246 and circular economy, 212, 215–19, 220, 224, 227–30, 232–4, 292 and complementary currencies, 184–5, 292 and core economy, 80 and creative destruction, 142 and feedback loops, 148 and finance, 183, 184 and green growth, 261, 265, 269 and households, 63, 68 living metrics, 241 and market, 68, 88 micro-businesses, 9 and neoliberalism, 67, 87 ownership, 190–91 and political funding, 91–2, 171–2 and taxation, 23, 276–7 workers’ rights, 88, 91, 269 butterfly economy, 220–42 C C–ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support), 153 C40 network, 280 calculating man, 98 California, United States, 213, 224, 293 Cambodia, 254 Cameron, David, 41 Canada, 196, 255, 260, 281, 282 cancer, 124, 159, 196 Capital Institute, 236 carbon emissions, 49–50, 59, 75 and decoupling, 260, 266 and forests, 50, 52 and inequality, 58 reduction of, 184, 201, 213, 216–18, 223–7, 239–41, 260, 266 stock–flow dynamics, 152–4 taxation, 201, 213 Cargill, 148 Carney, Mark, 256 Caterpillar, 228 Catholic Church, 15, 19 Cato Institute, 67 Celts, 54 central banks, 6, 87, 145, 146, 147, 183, 184, 256 Chang, Ha-Joon, 82, 86, 90 Chaplin, Charlie, 157 Chiapas, Mexico, 121–2 Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), 100–101 Chicago School, 34, 99 Chile, 7, 42 China, 1, 7, 48, 154, 289–90 automation, 193 billionaires, 200, 289 greenhouse gas emissions, 153 inequality, 164 Lake Erhai doughnut analysis, 56 open-source design, 196 poverty reduction, 151, 198 renewable energy, 239 tiered pricing, 213 Chinese Development Bank, 239 chrematistics, 32, 273 Christianity, 15, 19, 114, 151 cigarettes, 107, 124 circular economy, 220–42, 257 Circular Flow diagram, 19–20, 28, 62–7, 64, 70, 78, 87, 91, 92, 93, 262 Citigroup, 149 Citizen Reaction Study, 102 civil rights movement, 77 Cleveland, Ohio, 190 climate change, 1, 3, 5, 29, 41, 45–53, 63, 74, 75–6, 91, 141, 144, 201 circular economy, 239, 241–2 dynamics of, 152–5 and G20, 31 and GDP growth, 255, 256, 260, 280 and heuristics, 114 and human rights, 10 and values, 126 climate positive cities, 239 closed systems, 74 coffee, 221 cognitive bias, 112–14 Colander, David, 137 Colombia, 119 common-pool resources, 82–3, 181, 201–2 commons, 69, 82–4, 287 collaborative, 78, 83, 191, 195, 196, 264, 292 cultural, 83 digital, 82, 83, 192, 197, 281 and distribution, 164, 180, 181–2, 205, 267 Embedded Economy, 71, 73, 77–8, 82–4, 85, 92 knowledge, 197, 201–2, 204, 229, 231, 292 commons and money creation, see complementary currencies natural, 82, 83, 180, 181–2, 201, 265 and regeneration, 229, 242, 267, 292 and state, 85, 93, 197, 237 and systems, 160 tragedy of, 28, 62, 69, 82, 181 triumph of, 83 and values, 106, 108 Commons Trusts, 201 complementary currencies, 158, 182–8, 236, 292 complex systems, 28, 129–62 complexity science, 136–7 Consumer Reaction Study, 102 consumerism, 58, 102, 121, 280–84 cooking, 45, 80, 186 Coote, Anna, 278 Copenhagen, Denmark, 124 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 14–15 copyright, 195, 197, 204 core economy, 79–80 Corporate To Do List, 215–19 Costa Rica, 172 Council of Economic Advisers, US, 6, 37 Cox, Jo, 117 cradle to cradle, 224 creative destruction, 142 Cree, 282 Crompton, Tom, 125–6 cross-border flows, 89–90 crowdsourcing, 204 cuckoos, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 54, 60, 159, 244, 256, 271 currencies, 182–8, 236, 274, 292 D da Vinci, Leonardo, 13, 94–5 Dallas, Texas, 120 Daly, Herman, 74, 143, 271 Danish Nudging Network, 124 Darwin, Charles, 14 Debreu, Gerard, 134 debt, 37, 146–7, 172–3, 182–5, 247, 255, 269 decoupling, 193, 210, 258–62, 273 defeat device software, 216 deforestation, 49–50, 74, 208, 210 degenerative linear economy, 211–19, 222–3, 237 degrowth, 244 DeMartino, George, 161 democracy, 77, 171–2, 258 demurrage, 274 Denmark, 180, 275, 290 deregulation, 82, 87, 269 derivatives, 100–101, 149 Devas, Charles Stanton, 97 Dey, Suchitra, 178 Diamond, Jared, 154 diarrhoea, 5 differential calculus, 131, 132 digital revolution, 191–2, 264 diversify–select–amplify, 158 double spiral, 54 Doughnut model, 10–11, 11, 23–5, 44, 51 and aspiration, 58–9, 280–84 big picture, 28, 42, 61–93 distribution, 29, 52, 57, 58, 76, 93, 158, 163–205 ecological ceiling, 10, 11, 44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 218, 254, 295, 298 goal, 25–8, 31–60 and governance, 57, 59 growth agnosticism, 29–30, 243–85 human nature, 28–9, 94–128 and population, 57–8 regeneration, 29, 158, 206–42 social foundation, 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 51, 58, 77, 174, 200, 254, 295–6 systems, 28, 129–62 and technology, 57, 59 Douglas, Margaret, 78–9 Dreyfus, Louis, 148 ‘Dumb and Dumber in Macroeconomics’ (Solow), 135 Durban, South Africa, 214 E Earning by Learning, 120 Earth-system science, 44–53, 115, 216, 288, 298 Easter Island, 154 Easterlin, Richard, 265–6 eBay, 105, 192 eco-literacy, 115 ecological ceiling, 10, 11, 44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 218, 254, 295, 298 Ecological Performance Standards, 241 Econ 101 course, 8, 77 Economics (Lewis), 114 Economics (Samuelson), 19–20, 63–7, 70, 74, 78, 86, 91, 92, 93, 262 Economy for the Common Good, 241 ecosystem services, 7, 116, 269 Ecuador, 54 education, 9, 43, 45, 50–52, 85, 169–70, 176, 200, 249, 279 economic, 8, 11, 18, 22, 24, 36, 287–93 environmental, 115, 239–40 girls’, 57, 124, 178, 198 online, 83, 197, 264, 290 pricing, 118–19 efficient market hypothesis, 28, 62, 68, 87 Egypt, 48, 89 Eisenstein, Charles, 116 electricity, 9, 45, 236, 240 and Bangla Pesa, 186 cars, 231 Ethereum, 187–8 and MONIAC, 75, 262 pricing, 118, 213 see also renewable energy Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, 145 Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 220 Embedded Economy, 71–93, 263 business, 88–9 commons, 82–4 Earth, 72–6 economy, 77–8 finance, 86–8 household, 78–81 market, 81–2 power, 91–92 society, 76–7 state, 84–6 trade, 89–90 employment, 36, 37, 51, 142, 176 automation, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 labour ownership, 188–91 workers’ rights, 88, 90, 269 Empty World, 74 Engels, Friedrich, 88 environment and circular economy, 220–42, 257 conservation, 121–2 and degenerative linear economy, 211–19, 222–3 degradation, 5, 9, 10, 29, 44–53, 74, 154, 172, 196, 206–42 education on, 115, 239–40 externalities, 152 fair share, 216–17 and finance, 234–7 generosity, 218–19, 223–7 green growth, 41, 210, 243–85 nudging, 123–5 taxation and quotas, 213–14, 215 zero impact, 217–18, 238, 241 Environmental Dashboard, 240–41 environmental economics, 7, 11, 114–16 Environmental Kuznets Curve, 207–11, 241 environmental space, 54 Epstein, Joshua, 150 equilibrium theory, 134–62 Ethereum, 187–8 ethics, 160–62 Ethiopia, 9, 226, 254 Etsy, 105 Euclid, 13, 15 European Central Bank, 145, 275 European Commission, 41 European Union (EU), 92, 153, 210, 222, 255, 258 Evergreen Cooperatives, 190 Evergreen Direct Investing (EDI), 273 exogenous shocks, 141 exponential growth, 39, 246–85 externalities, 143, 152, 213 Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), 9 F Facebook, 192 fair share, 216–17 Fama, Eugene, 68, 87 fascism, 234, 277 Federal Reserve, US, 87, 145, 146, 271, 282 feedback loops, 138–41, 143, 148, 155, 250, 271 feminist economics, 11, 78–81, 160 Ferguson, Thomas, 91–2 finance animal spirits, 110 bank runs, 139 Black–Scholes model, 100–101 boom and bust, 28–9, 110, 144–7 and Circular Flow, 63–4, 87 and complex systems, 134, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145–7 cross-border flows, 89 deregulation, 87 derivatives, 100–101, 149 and distribution, 169, 170, 173, 182–4, 198–9, 201 and efficient market hypothesis, 63, 68 and Embedded Economy, 71, 86–8 and financial-instability hypothesis, 87, 146 and GDP growth, 38 and media, 7–8 mobile banking, 199–200 and money creation, 87, 182–5 and regeneration, 227, 229, 234–7 in service to life, 159, 234–7 stakeholder finance, 190 and sustainability, 216, 235–6, 239 financial crisis (2008), 1–4, 5, 40, 63, 86, 141, 144, 278, 290 and efficient market hypothesis, 87 and equilibrium theory, 134, 145 and financial-instability hypothesis, 87 and inequality, 90, 170, 172, 175 and money creation, 182 and worker’s rights, 278 financial flows, 89 Financial Times, 183, 266, 289 financial-instability hypothesis, 87, 146 First Green Bank, 236 First World War (1914–18), 166, 170 Fisher, Irving, 183 fluid values, 102, 106–9 food, 3, 43, 45, 50, 54, 58, 59, 89, 198 food banks, 165 food price crisis (2007–8), 89, 90, 180 Ford, 277–8 foreign direct investment, 89 forest conservation, 121–2 fossil fuels, 59, 73, 75, 92, 212, 260, 263 Foundations of Economic Analysis (Samuelson), 17–18 Foxconn, 193 framing, 22–3 France, 43, 165, 196, 238, 254, 256, 281, 290 Frank, Robert, 100 free market, 33, 37, 67, 68, 70, 81–2, 86, 90 free open-source hardware (FOSH), 196–7 free open-source software (FOSS), 196 free trade, 70, 90 Freeman, Ralph, 18–19 freshwater cycle, 48–9 Freud, Sigmund, 107, 281 Friedman, Benjamin, 258 Friedman, Milton, 34, 62, 66–9, 84–5, 88, 99, 183, 232 Friends of the Earth, 54 Full World, 75 Fuller, Buckminster, 4 Fullerton, John, 234–6, 273 G G20, 31, 56, 276, 279–80 G77, 55 Gal, Orit, 141 Gandhi, Mohandas, 42, 293 Gangnam Style, 145 Gardens of Democracy, The (Liu & Hanauer), 158 gender equality, 45, 51–2, 57, 78–9, 85, 88, 118–19, 124, 171, 198 generosity, 218–19, 223–9 geometry, 13, 15 George, Henry, 149, 179 Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, 252 geothermal energy, 221 Gerhardt, Sue, 283 Germany, 2, 41, 100, 118, 165, 189, 211, 213, 254, 256, 260, 274 Gessel, Silvio, 274 Ghent, Belgium, 236 Gift Relationship, The (Titmuss), 118–19 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 112–14 Gintis, Herb, 104 GiveDirectly, 200 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 87 Glennon, Roger, 214 Global Alliance for Tax Justice, 277 global material footprints, 210–11 Global Village Construction Set, 196 globalisation, 89 Goerner, Sally, 175–6 Goffmann, Erving, 22 Going for Growth, 255 golden rule, 91 Goldman Sachs, 149, 170 Gómez-Baggethun, Erik, 122 Goodall, Chris, 211 Goodwin, Neva, 79 Goody, Jade, 124 Google, 192 Gore, Albert ‘Al’, 172 Gorgons, 244, 256, 257, 266 graffiti, 15, 25, 287 Great Acceleration, 46, 253–4 Great Depression (1929–39), 37, 70, 170, 173, 183, 275, 277, 278 Great Moderation, 146 Greece, Ancient, 4, 13, 32, 48, 54, 56–7, 160, 244 green growth, 41, 210, 243–85 Greenham, Tony, 185 greenhouse gas emissions, 31, 46, 50, 75–6, 141, 152–4 and decoupling, 260, 266 and Environmental Kuznets Curve, 208, 210 and forests, 50, 52 and G20, 31 and inequality, 58 reduction of, 184, 201–2, 213, 216–18, 223–7, 239–41, 256, 259–60, 266, 298 stock–flow dynamics, 152–4 and taxation, 201, 213 Greenland, 141, 154 Greenpeace, 9 Greenspan, Alan, 87 Greenwich, London, 290 Grenoble, France, 281 Griffiths, Brian, 170 gross domestic product (GDP), 25, 31–2, 35–43, 57, 60, 84, 164 as cuckoo, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 54, 60, 159, 244, 256, 271 and Environmental Kuznets Curve, 207–11 and exponential growth, 39, 53, 246–85 and growth agnosticism, 29–30, 240, 243–85 and inequality, 173 and Kuznets Curve, 167, 173, 188–9 gross national product (GNP), 36–40 Gross World Product, 248 Grossman, Gene, 207–8, 210 ‘grow now, clean up later’, 207 Guatemala, 196 H Haifa, Israel, 120 Haldane, Andrew, 146 Han Dynasty, 154 Hanauer, Nick, 158 Hansen, Pelle, 124 Happy Planet Index, 280 Hardin, Garrett, 69, 83, 181 Harvard University, 2, 271, 290 von Hayek, Friedrich, 7–8, 62, 66, 67, 143, 156, 158 healthcare, 43, 50, 57, 85, 123, 125, 170, 176, 200, 269, 279 Heilbroner, Robert, 53 Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland, 180 Hepburn, Cameron, 261 Herbert Simon, 111 heuristics, 113–14, 118, 123 high-income countries growth, 30, 244–5, 254–72, 282 inequality, 165, 168, 169, 171 labour, 177, 188–9, 278 overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–9 resource intensive lifestyles, 46, 210–11 trade, 90 Hippocrates, 160 History of Economic Analysis (Schumpeter), 21 HIV/AIDS, 123 Holocene epoch, 46–8, 75, 115, 253 Homo economicus, 94–103, 109, 127–8 Homo sapiens, 38, 104, 130 Hong Kong, 180 household, 78 housing, 45, 59, 176, 182–3, 269 Howe, Geoffrey, 67 Hudson, Michael, 183 Human Development Index, 9, 279 human nature, 28 human rights, 10, 25, 45, 49, 50, 95, 214, 233 humanistic economics, 42 hydropower, 118, 260, 263 I Illinois, United States, 179–80 Imago Mundi, 13 immigration, 82, 199, 236, 266 In Defense of Economic Growth (Beckerman), 258 Inclusive Wealth Index, 280 income, 51, 79–80, 82, 88, 176–8, 188–91, 194, 199–201 India, 2, 9, 10, 42, 124, 164, 178, 196, 206–7, 242, 290 Indonesia, 90, 105–6, 164, 168, 200 Indus Valley civilisation, 48 inequality, 1, 5, 25, 41, 63, 81, 88, 91, 148–52, 209 and consumerism, 111 and democracy, 171 and digital revolution, 191–5 and distribution, 163–205 and environmental degradation, 172 and GDP growth, 173 and greenhouse gas emissions, 58 and intellectual property, 195–8 and Kuznets Curve, 29, 166–70, 173–4 and labour ownership, 188–91 and land ownership, 178–82 and money creation, 182–8 and social welfare, 171 Success to the Successful, 148, 149, 151, 166 inflation, 36, 248, 256, 275 insect pollination services, 7 Institute of Economic Affairs, 67 institutional economics, 11 intellectual property rights, 195–8, 204 interest, 36, 177, 182, 184, 275–6 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 25 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 170, 172, 173, 183, 255, 258, 271 Internet, 83–4, 89, 105, 192, 202, 264 Ireland, 277 Iroquois Onondaga Nation, 116 Israel, 100, 103, 120 Italy, 165, 196, 254 J Jackson, Tim, 58 Jakubowski, Marcin, 196 Jalisco, Mexico, 217 Japan, 168, 180, 211, 222, 254, 256, 263, 275 Jevons, William Stanley, 16, 97–8, 131, 132, 137, 142 John Lewis Partnership, 190 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 37 Johnson, Mark, 38 Johnson, Todd, 191 JPMorgan Chase, 149, 234 K Kahneman, Daniel, 111 Kamkwamba, William, 202, 204 Kasser, Tim, 125–6 Keen, Steve, 146, 147 Kelly, Marjorie, 190–91, 233 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 37, 250 Kennedy, Paul, 279 Kenya, 118, 123, 180, 185–6, 199–200, 226, 292 Keynes, John Maynard, 7–8, 22, 66, 69, 134, 184, 251, 277–8, 284, 288 Kick It Over movement, 3, 289 Kingston, London, 290 Knight, Frank, 66, 99 knowledge commons, 202–4, 229, 292 Kokstad, South Africa, 56 Kondratieff waves, 246 Korzybski, Alfred, 22 Krueger, Alan, 207–8, 210 Kuhn, Thomas, 22 Kumhof, Michael, 172 Kuwait, 255 Kuznets, Simon, 29, 36, 39–40, 166–70, 173, 174, 175, 204, 207 KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, 56 L labour ownership, 188–91 Lake Erhai, Yunnan, 56 Lakoff, George, 23, 38, 276 Lamelara, Indonesia, 105–6 land conversion, 49, 52, 299 land ownership, 178–82 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 Landesa, 178 Landlord’s Game, The, 149 law of demand, 16 laws of motion, 13, 16–17, 34, 129, 131 Lehman Brothers, 141 Leopold, Aldo, 115 Lesotho, 118, 199 leverage points, 159 Lewis, Fay, 178 Lewis, Justin, 102 Lewis, William Arthur, 114, 167 Lietaer, Bernard, 175, 236 Limits to Growth, 40, 154, 258 Linux, 231 Liu, Eric, 158 living metrics, 240–42 living purpose, 233–4 Lomé, Togo, 231 London School of Economics (LSE), 2, 34, 65, 290 London Underground, 12 loss aversion, 112 low-income countries, 90, 164–5, 168, 173, 180, 199, 201, 209, 226, 254, 259 Lucas, Robert, 171 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 124 Luxembourg, 277 Lyle, John Tillman, 214 Lyons, Oren, 116 M M–PESA, 199–200 MacDonald, Tim, 273 Machiguenga, 105–6 MacKenzie, Donald, 101 macroeconomics, 36, 62–6, 76, 80, 134–5, 145, 147, 150, 244, 280 Magie, Elizabeth, 149, 153 Malala effect, 124 malaria, 5 Malawi, 118, 202, 204 Malaysia, 168 Mali, Taylor, 243 Malthus, Thomas, 252 Mamsera Rural Cooperative, 190 Manhattan, New York, 9, 41 Mani, Muthukumara, 206 Manitoba, 282 Mankiw, Gregory, 2, 34 Mannheim, Karl, 22 Maoris, 54 market, 81–2 and business, 88 circular flow, 64 and commons, 83, 93, 181, 200–201 efficiency of, 28, 62, 68, 87, 148, 181 and equilibrium theory, 131–5, 137, 143–7, 155, 156 free market, 33, 37, 67–70, 90, 208 and households, 63, 69, 78, 79 and maxi-max rule, 161 and pricing, 117–23, 131, 160 and rational economic man, 96, 100–101, 103, 104 and reciprocity, 105, 106 reflexivity of, 144–7 and society, 69–70 and state, 84–6, 200, 281 Marshall, Alfred, 17, 98, 133, 165, 253, 282 Marx, Karl, 88, 142, 165, 272 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 17–20, 152–5 massive open online courses (MOOCs), 290 Matthew Effect, 151 Max-Neef, Manfred, 42 maxi-max rule, 161 maximum wage, 177 Maya civilisation, 48, 154 Mazzucato, Mariana, 85, 195, 238 McAfee, Andrew, 194, 258 McDonough, William, 217 Meadows, Donella, 40, 141, 159, 271, 292 Medusa, 244, 257, 266 Merkel, Angela, 41 Messerli, Elspeth, 187 Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson), 38 Mexico, 121–2, 217 Michaels, Flora S., 6 micro-businesses, 9, 173, 178 microeconomics, 132–4 microgrids, 187–8 Micronesia, 153 Microsoft, 231 middle class, 6, 46, 58 middle-income countries, 90, 164, 168, 173, 180, 226, 254 migration, 82, 89–90, 166, 195, 199, 236, 266, 286 Milanovic, Branko, 171 Mill, John Stuart, 33–4, 73, 97, 250, 251, 283, 284, 288 Millo, Yuval, 101 minimum wage, 82, 88, 176 Minsky, Hyman, 87, 146 Mises, Ludwig von, 66 mission zero, 217 mobile banking, 199–200 mobile phones, 222 Model T revolution, 277–8 Moldova, 199 Mombasa, Kenya, 185–6 Mona Lisa (da Vinci), 94 money creation, 87, 164, 177, 182–8, 205 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 Monoculture (Michaels), 6 Monopoly, 149 Mont Pelerin Society, 67, 93 Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, The (Friedman), 258 moral vacancy, 41 Morgan, Mary, 99 Morogoro, Tanzania, 121 Moyo, Dambisa, 258 Muirhead, Sam, 230, 231 MultiCapital Scorecard, 241 Murphy, David, 264 Murphy, Richard, 185 musical tastes, 110 Myriad Genetics, 196 N national basic income, 177 Native Americans, 115, 116, 282 natural capital, 7, 116, 269 Natural Economic Order, The (Gessel), 274 Nedbank, 216 negative externalities, 213 negative interest rates, 275–6 neoclassical economics, 134, 135 neoliberalism, 7, 62–3, 67–70, 81, 83, 84, 88, 93, 143, 170, 176 Nepal, 181, 199 Nestlé, 217 Netherlands, 211, 235, 224, 226, 238, 277 networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6, 174–6 neuroscience, 12–13 New Deal, 37 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 New Year’s Day, 124 New York, United States, 9, 41, 55 Newlight Technologies, 224, 226, 293 Newton, Isaac, 13, 15–17, 32–3, 95, 97, 129, 131, 135–7, 142, 145, 162 Nicaragua, 196 Nigeria, 164 nitrogen, 49, 52, 212–13, 216, 218, 221, 226, 298 ‘no pain, no gain’, 163, 167, 173, 204, 209 Nobel Prize, 6–7, 43, 83, 101, 167 Norway, 281 nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 O Obama, Barack, 41, 92 Oberlin, Ohio, 239, 240–41 Occupy movement, 40, 91 ocean acidification, 45, 46, 52, 155, 242, 298 Ohio, United States, 190, 239 Okun, Arthur, 37 onwards and upwards, 53 Open Building Institute, 196 Open Source Circular Economy (OSCE), 229–32 open systems, 74 open-source design, 158, 196–8, 265 open-source licensing, 204 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 38, 210, 255–6, 258 Origin of Species, The (Darwin), 14 Ormerod, Paul, 110, 111 Orr, David, 239 Ostrom, Elinor, 83, 84, 158, 160, 181–2 Ostry, Jonathan, 173 OSVehicle, 231 overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 ownership of wealth, 177–82 Oxfam, 9, 44 Oxford University, 1, 36 ozone layer, 9, 50, 115 P Pachamama, 54, 55 Pakistan, 124 Pareto, Vilfredo, 165–6, 175 Paris, France, 290 Park 20|20, Netherlands, 224, 226 Parker Brothers, 149 Patagonia, 56 patents, 195–6, 197, 204 patient capital, 235 Paypal, 192 Pearce, Joshua, 197, 203–4 peer-to-peer networks, 187, 192, 198, 203, 292 People’s QE, 184–5 Perseus, 244 Persia, 13 Peru, 2, 105–6 Phillips, Adam, 283 Phillips, William ‘Bill’, 64–6, 75, 142, 262 phosphorus, 49, 52, 212–13, 218, 298 Physiocrats, 73 Pickett, Kate, 171 pictures, 12–25 Piketty, Thomas, 169 Playfair, William, 16 Poincaré, Henri, 109, 127–8 Polanyi, Karl, 82, 272 political economy, 33–4, 42 political funding, 91–2, 171–2 political voice, 43, 45, 51–2, 77, 117 pollution, 29, 45, 52, 85, 143, 155, 206–17, 226, 238, 242, 254, 298 population, 5, 46, 57, 155, 199, 250, 252, 254 Portugal, 211 post-growth society, 250 poverty, 5, 9, 37, 41, 50, 88, 118, 148, 151 emotional, 283 and inequality, 164–5, 168–9, 178 and overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 and taxation, 277 power, 91–92 pre-analytic vision, 21–2 prescription medicines, 123 price-takers, 132 prices, 81, 118–23, 131, 160 Principles of Economics (Mankiw), 34 Principles of Economics (Marshall), 17, 98 Principles of Political Economy (Mill), 288 ProComposto, 226 Propaganda (Bernays), 107 public relations, 107, 281 public spending v. investment, 276 public–private patents, 195 Putnam, Robert, 76–7 Q quantitative easing (QE), 184–5 Quebec, 281 Quesnay, François, 16, 73 R Rabot, Ghent, 236 Rancière, Romain, 172 rating and review systems, 105 rational economic man, 94–103, 109, 111, 112, 126, 282 Reagan, Ronald, 67 reciprocity, 103–6, 117, 118, 123 reflexivity of markets, 144 reinforcing feedback loops, 138–41, 148, 250, 271 relative decoupling, 259 renewable energy biomass energy, 118, 221 and circular economy, 221, 224, 226, 235, 238–9, 274 and commons, 83, 85, 185, 187–8, 192, 203, 264 geothermal energy, 221 and green growth, 257, 260, 263, 264, 267 hydropower, 118, 260, 263 pricing, 118 solar energy, see solar energy wave energy, 221 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 rentier sector, 180, 183, 184 reregulation, 82, 87, 269 resource flows, 175 resource-intensive lifestyles, 46 Rethinking Economics, 289 Reynebeau, Guy, 237 Ricardo, David, 67, 68, 73, 89, 250 Richardson, Katherine, 53 Rifkin, Jeremy, 83, 264–5 Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The (Kennedy), 279 risk, 112, 113–14 Robbins, Lionel, 34 Robinson, James, 86 Robinson, Joan, 142 robots, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 Rockefeller Foundation, 135 Rockford, Illinois, 179–80 Rockström, Johan, 48, 55 Roddick, Anita, 232–4 Rogoff, Kenneth, 271, 280 Roman Catholic Church, 15, 19 Rombo, Tanzania, 190 Rome, Ancient, 13, 48, 154 Romney, Mitt, 92 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 37 rooted membership, 190 Rostow, Walt, 248–50, 254, 257, 267–70, 284 Ruddick, Will, 185 rule of thumb, 113–14 Ruskin, John, 42, 223 Russia, 200 rust belt, 90, 239 S S curve, 251–6 Sainsbury’s, 56 Samuelson, Paul, 17–21, 24–5, 38, 62–7, 70, 74, 84, 91, 92, 93, 262, 290–91 Sandel, Michael, 41, 120–21 Sanergy, 226 sanitation, 5, 51, 59 Santa Fe, California, 213 Santinagar, West Bengal, 178 São Paolo, Brazil, 281 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 43 Saumweder, Philipp, 226 Scharmer, Otto, 115 Scholes, Myron, 100–101 Schumacher, Ernst Friedrich, 42, 142 Schumpeter, Joseph, 21 Schwartz, Shalom, 107–9 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 163, 167, 204 ‘Science and Complexity’ (Weaver), 136 Scotland, 57 Seaman, David, 187 Seattle, Washington, 217 second machine age, 258 Second World War (1939–45), 18, 37, 70, 170 secular stagnation, 256 self-interest, 28, 68, 96–7, 99–100, 102–3 Selfish Society, The (Gerhardt), 283 Sen, Amartya, 43 Shakespeare, William, 61–3, 67, 93 shale gas, 264, 269 Shang Dynasty, 48 shareholders, 82, 88, 189, 191, 227, 234, 273, 292 sharing economy, 264 Sheraton Hotel, Boston, 3 Siegen, Germany, 290 Silicon Valley, 231 Simon, Julian, 70 Sinclair, Upton, 255 Sismondi, Jean, 42 slavery, 33, 77, 161 Slovenia, 177 Small Is Beautiful (Schumacher), 42 smart phones, 85 Smith, Adam, 33, 57, 67, 68, 73, 78–9, 81, 96–7, 103–4, 128, 133, 160, 181, 250 social capital, 76–7, 122, 125, 172 social contract, 120, 125 social foundation, 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 51, 58, 77, 174, 200, 254, 295–6 social media, 83, 281 Social Progress Index, 280 social pyramid, 166 society, 76–7 solar energy, 59, 75, 111, 118, 187–8, 190 circular economy, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226–7, 239 commons, 203 zero-energy buildings, 217 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84 Solow, Robert, 135, 150, 262–3 Soros, George, 144 South Africa, 56, 177, 214, 216 South Korea, 90, 168 South Sea Bubble (1720), 145 Soviet Union (1922–91), 37, 67, 161, 279 Spain, 211, 238, 256 Spirit Level, The (Wilkinson & Pickett), 171 Sraffa, Piero, 148 St Gallen, Switzerland, 186 Stages of Economic Growth, The (Rostow), 248–50, 254 stakeholder finance, 190 Standish, Russell, 147 state, 28, 33, 69–70, 78, 82, 160, 176, 180, 182–4, 188 and commons, 85, 93, 197, 237 and market, 84–6, 200, 281 partner state, 197, 237–9 and robots, 195 stationary state, 250 Steffen, Will, 46, 48 Sterman, John, 66, 143, 152–4 Steuart, James, 33 Stiglitz, Joseph, 43, 111, 196 stocks and flows, 138–41, 143, 144, 152 sub-prime mortgages, 141 Success to the Successful, 148, 149, 151, 166 Sugarscape, 150–51 Summers, Larry, 256 Sumner, Andy, 165 Sundrop Farms, 224–6 Sunstein, Cass, 112 supply and demand, 28, 132–6, 143, 253 supply chains, 10 Sweden, 6, 255, 275, 281 swishing, 264 Switzerland, 42, 66, 80, 131, 186–7, 275 T Tableau économique (Quesnay), 16 tabula rasa, 20, 25, 63, 291 takarangi, 54 Tanzania, 121, 190, 202 tar sands, 264, 269 taxation, 78, 111, 165, 170, 176, 177, 237–8, 276–9 annual wealth tax, 200 environment, 213–14, 215 global carbon tax, 201 global financial transactions tax, 201, 235 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 non-renewable resources, 193, 237–8, 278–9 People’s QE, 185 tax relief v. tax justice, 23, 276–7 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), 202, 258 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 61, 63, 93 Texas, United States, 120 Thailand, 90, 200 Thaler, Richard, 112 Thatcher, Margaret, 67, 69, 76 Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), 96 Thompson, Edward Palmer, 180 3D printing, 83–4, 192, 198, 231, 264 thriving-in-balance, 54–7, 62 tiered pricing, 213–14 Tigray, Ethiopia, 226 time banking, 186 Titmuss, Richard, 118–19 Toffler, Alvin, 12, 80 Togo, 231, 292 Torekes, 236–7 Torras, Mariano, 209 Torvalds, Linus, 231 trade, 62, 68–9, 70, 89–90 trade unions, 82, 176, 189 trademarks, 195, 204 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 transport, 59 trickle-down economics, 111, 170 Triodos, 235 Turkey, 200 Tversky, Amos, 111 Twain, Mark, 178–9 U Uganda, 118, 125 Ulanowicz, Robert, 175 Ultimatum Game, 105, 117 unemployment, 36, 37, 276, 277–9 United Kingdom Big Bang (1986), 87 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 free trade, 90 global material footprints, 211 money creation, 182 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 poverty, 165, 166 prescription medicines, 123 wages, 188 United Nations, 55, 198, 204, 255, 258, 279 G77 bloc, 55 Human Development Index, 9, 279 Sustainable Development Goals, 24, 45 United States American Economic Association meeting (2015), 3 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 Congress, 36 Council of Economic Advisers, 6, 37 Earning by Learning, 120 Econ 101 course, 8, 77 Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), 9 Federal Reserve, 87, 145, 146, 271, 282 free trade, 90 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 87 greenhouse gas emissions, 153 global material footprint, 211 gross national product (GNP), 36–40 inequality, 170, 171 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 political funding, 91–2, 171 poverty, 165, 166 productivity and employment, 193 rust belt, 90, 239 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 wages, 188 universal basic income, 200 University of Berkeley, 116 University of Denver, 160 urbanisation, 58–9 utility, 35, 98, 133 V values, 6, 23, 34, 35, 42, 117, 118, 121, 123–6 altruism, 100, 104 anthropocentric, 115 extrinsic, 115 fluid, 28, 102, 106–9 and networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6 and nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 and pricing, 81, 120–23 Veblen, Thorstein, 82, 109, 111, 142 Venice, 195 verbal framing, 23 Verhulst, Pierre, 252 Victor, Peter, 270 Viner, Jacob, 34 virtuous cycles, 138, 148 visual framing, 23 Vitruvian Man, 13–14 Volkswagen, 215–16 W Wacharia, John, 186 Wall Street, 149, 234, 273 Wallich, Henry, 282 Walras, Léon, 131, 132, 133–4, 137 Ward, Barbara, 53 Warr, Benjamin, 263 water, 5, 9, 45, 46, 51, 54, 59, 79, 213–14 wave energy, 221 Ways of Seeing (Berger), 12, 281 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 74, 78, 96, 104 wealth ownership, 177–82 Weaver, Warren, 135–6 weightless economy, 261–2 WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic), 103–5, 110, 112, 115, 117, 282 West Bengal, India, 124, 178 West, Darrell, 171–2 wetlands, 7 whale hunting, 106 Wiedmann, Tommy, 210 Wikipedia, 82, 223 Wilkinson, Richard, 171 win–win trade, 62, 68, 89 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 Wizard of Oz, The, 241 Woelab, 231, 293 Wolf, Martin, 183, 266 women’s rights, 33, 57, 107, 160, 201 and core economy, 69, 79–81 education, 57, 124, 178, 198 and land ownership, 178 see also gender equality workers’ rights, 88, 91, 269 World 3 model, 154–5 World Bank, 6, 41, 119, 164, 168, 171, 206, 255, 258 World No Tobacco Day, 124 World Trade Organization, 6, 89 worldview, 22, 54, 115 X xenophobia, 266, 277, 286 Xenophon, 4, 32, 56–7, 160 Y Yandle, Bruce, 208 Yang, Yuan, 1–3, 289–90 yin yang, 54 Yousafzai, Malala, 124 YouTube, 192 Yunnan, China, 56 Z Zambia, 10 Zanzibar, 9 Zara, 276 Zeitvorsoge, 186–7 zero environmental impact, 217–18, 238, 241 zero-hour contracts, 88 zero-humans-required production, 192 zero-interest loans, 183 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84, 191, 264 zero-waste manufacturing, 227 Zinn, Howard, 77 PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of: archive.org

., 6 micro-businesses, 9, 173, 178 microeconomics, 132–4 microgrids, 187–8 Micronesia, 153 Microsoft, 231 middle class, 6, 46, 58 middle-income countries, 90, 164, 168, 173, 180, 226, 254 migration, 82, 89–90, 166, 195, 199, 236, 266, 286 Milanovic, Branko, 171 Mill, John Stuart, 33–4, 73, 97, 250, 251, 283, 284, 288 Millo, Yuval, 101 minimum wage, 82, 88, 176 Minsky, Hyman, 87, 146 Mises, Ludwig von, 66 mission zero, 217 mobile banking, 199–200 mobile phones, 222 Model T revolution, 277–8 Moldova, 199 Mombasa, Kenya, 185–6 Mona Lisa (da Vinci), 94 money creation, 87, 164, 177, 182–8, 205 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 Monoculture (Michaels), 6 Monopoly, 149 Mont Pelerin Society, 67, 93 Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, The (Friedman), 258 moral vacancy, 41 Morgan, Mary, 99 Morogoro, Tanzania, 121 Moyo, Dambisa, 258 Muirhead, Sam, 230, 231 MultiCapital Scorecard, 241 Murphy, David, 264 Murphy, Richard, 185 musical tastes, 110 Myriad Genetics, 196 N national basic income, 177 Native Americans, 115, 116, 282 natural capital, 7, 116, 269 Natural Economic Order, The (Gessel), 274 Nedbank, 216 negative externalities, 213 negative interest rates, 275–6 neoclassical economics, 134, 135 neoliberalism, 7, 62–3, 67–70, 81, 83, 84, 88, 93, 143, 170, 176 Nepal, 181, 199 Nestlé, 217 Netherlands, 211, 235, 224, 226, 238, 277 networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6, 174–6 neuroscience, 12–13 New Deal, 37 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 New Year’s Day, 124 New York, United States, 9, 41, 55 Newlight Technologies, 224, 226, 293 Newton, Isaac, 13, 15–17, 32–3, 95, 97, 129, 131, 135–7, 142, 145, 162 Nicaragua, 196 Nigeria, 164 nitrogen, 49, 52, 212–13, 216, 218, 221, 226, 298 ‘no pain, no gain’, 163, 167, 173, 204, 209 Nobel Prize, 6–7, 43, 83, 101, 167 Norway, 281 nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 O Obama, Barack, 41, 92 Oberlin, Ohio, 239, 240–41 Occupy movement, 40, 91 ocean acidification, 45, 46, 52, 155, 242, 298 Ohio, United States, 190, 239 Okun, Arthur, 37 onwards and upwards, 53 Open Building Institute, 196 Open Source Circular Economy (OSCE), 229–32 open systems, 74 open-source design, 158, 196–8, 265 open-source licensing, 204 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 38, 210, 255–6, 258 Origin of Species, The (Darwin), 14 Ormerod, Paul, 110, 111 Orr, David, 239 Ostrom, Elinor, 83, 84, 158, 160, 181–2 Ostry, Jonathan, 173 OSVehicle, 231 overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 ownership of wealth, 177–82 Oxfam, 9, 44 Oxford University, 1, 36 ozone layer, 9, 50, 115 P Pachamama, 54, 55 Pakistan, 124 Pareto, Vilfredo, 165–6, 175 Paris, France, 290 Park 20|20, Netherlands, 224, 226 Parker Brothers, 149 Patagonia, 56 patents, 195–6, 197, 204 patient capital, 235 Paypal, 192 Pearce, Joshua, 197, 203–4 peer-to-peer networks, 187, 192, 198, 203, 292 People’s QE, 184–5 Perseus, 244 Persia, 13 Peru, 2, 105–6 Phillips, Adam, 283 Phillips, William ‘Bill’, 64–6, 75, 142, 262 phosphorus, 49, 52, 212–13, 218, 298 Physiocrats, 73 Pickett, Kate, 171 pictures, 12–25 Piketty, Thomas, 169 Playfair, William, 16 Poincaré, Henri, 109, 127–8 Polanyi, Karl, 82, 272 political economy, 33–4, 42 political funding, 91–2, 171–2 political voice, 43, 45, 51–2, 77, 117 pollution, 29, 45, 52, 85, 143, 155, 206–17, 226, 238, 242, 254, 298 population, 5, 46, 57, 155, 199, 250, 252, 254 Portugal, 211 post-growth society, 250 poverty, 5, 9, 37, 41, 50, 88, 118, 148, 151 emotional, 283 and inequality, 164–5, 168–9, 178 and overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 and taxation, 277 power, 91–92 pre-analytic vision, 21–2 prescription medicines, 123 price-takers, 132 prices, 81, 118–23, 131, 160 Principles of Economics (Mankiw), 34 Principles of Economics (Marshall), 17, 98 Principles of Political Economy (Mill), 288 ProComposto, 226 Propaganda (Bernays), 107 public relations, 107, 281 public spending v. investment, 276 public–private patents, 195 Putnam, Robert, 76–7 Q quantitative easing (QE), 184–5 Quebec, 281 Quesnay, François, 16, 73 R Rabot, Ghent, 236 Rancière, Romain, 172 rating and review systems, 105 rational economic man, 94–103, 109, 111, 112, 126, 282 Reagan, Ronald, 67 reciprocity, 103–6, 117, 118, 123 reflexivity of markets, 144 reinforcing feedback loops, 138–41, 148, 250, 271 relative decoupling, 259 renewable energy biomass energy, 118, 221 and circular economy, 221, 224, 226, 235, 238–9, 274 and commons, 83, 85, 185, 187–8, 192, 203, 264 geothermal energy, 221 and green growth, 257, 260, 263, 264, 267 hydropower, 118, 260, 263 pricing, 118 solar energy, see solar energy wave energy, 221 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 rentier sector, 180, 183, 184 reregulation, 82, 87, 269 resource flows, 175 resource-intensive lifestyles, 46 Rethinking Economics, 289 Reynebeau, Guy, 237 Ricardo, David, 67, 68, 73, 89, 250 Richardson, Katherine, 53 Rifkin, Jeremy, 83, 264–5 Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The (Kennedy), 279 risk, 112, 113–14 Robbins, Lionel, 34 Robinson, James, 86 Robinson, Joan, 142 robots, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 Rockefeller Foundation, 135 Rockford, Illinois, 179–80 Rockström, Johan, 48, 55 Roddick, Anita, 232–4 Rogoff, Kenneth, 271, 280 Roman Catholic Church, 15, 19 Rombo, Tanzania, 190 Rome, Ancient, 13, 48, 154 Romney, Mitt, 92 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 37 rooted membership, 190 Rostow, Walt, 248–50, 254, 257, 267–70, 284 Ruddick, Will, 185 rule of thumb, 113–14 Ruskin, John, 42, 223 Russia, 200 rust belt, 90, 239 S S curve, 251–6 Sainsbury’s, 56 Samuelson, Paul, 17–21, 24–5, 38, 62–7, 70, 74, 84, 91, 92, 93, 262, 290–91 Sandel, Michael, 41, 120–21 Sanergy, 226 sanitation, 5, 51, 59 Santa Fe, California, 213 Santinagar, West Bengal, 178 São Paolo, Brazil, 281 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 43 Saumweder, Philipp, 226 Scharmer, Otto, 115 Scholes, Myron, 100–101 Schumacher, Ernst Friedrich, 42, 142 Schumpeter, Joseph, 21 Schwartz, Shalom, 107–9 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 163, 167, 204 ‘Science and Complexity’ (Weaver), 136 Scotland, 57 Seaman, David, 187 Seattle, Washington, 217 second machine age, 258 Second World War (1939–45), 18, 37, 70, 170 secular stagnation, 256 self-interest, 28, 68, 96–7, 99–100, 102–3 Selfish Society, The (Gerhardt), 283 Sen, Amartya, 43 Shakespeare, William, 61–3, 67, 93 shale gas, 264, 269 Shang Dynasty, 48 shareholders, 82, 88, 189, 191, 227, 234, 273, 292 sharing economy, 264 Sheraton Hotel, Boston, 3 Siegen, Germany, 290 Silicon Valley, 231 Simon, Julian, 70 Sinclair, Upton, 255 Sismondi, Jean, 42 slavery, 33, 77, 161 Slovenia, 177 Small Is Beautiful (Schumacher), 42 smart phones, 85 Smith, Adam, 33, 57, 67, 68, 73, 78–9, 81, 96–7, 103–4, 128, 133, 160, 181, 250 social capital, 76–7, 122, 125, 172 social contract, 120, 125 social foundation, 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 51, 58, 77, 174, 200, 254, 295–6 social media, 83, 281 Social Progress Index, 280 social pyramid, 166 society, 76–7 solar energy, 59, 75, 111, 118, 187–8, 190 circular economy, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226–7, 239 commons, 203 zero-energy buildings, 217 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84 Solow, Robert, 135, 150, 262–3 Soros, George, 144 South Africa, 56, 177, 214, 216 South Korea, 90, 168 South Sea Bubble (1720), 145 Soviet Union (1922–91), 37, 67, 161, 279 Spain, 211, 238, 256 Spirit Level, The (Wilkinson & Pickett), 171 Sraffa, Piero, 148 St Gallen, Switzerland, 186 Stages of Economic Growth, The (Rostow), 248–50, 254 stakeholder finance, 190 Standish, Russell, 147 state, 28, 33, 69–70, 78, 82, 160, 176, 180, 182–4, 188 and commons, 85, 93, 197, 237 and market, 84–6, 200, 281 partner state, 197, 237–9 and robots, 195 stationary state, 250 Steffen, Will, 46, 48 Sterman, John, 66, 143, 152–4 Steuart, James, 33 Stiglitz, Joseph, 43, 111, 196 stocks and flows, 138–41, 143, 144, 152 sub-prime mortgages, 141 Success to the Successful, 148, 149, 151, 166 Sugarscape, 150–51 Summers, Larry, 256 Sumner, Andy, 165 Sundrop Farms, 224–6 Sunstein, Cass, 112 supply and demand, 28, 132–6, 143, 253 supply chains, 10 Sweden, 6, 255, 275, 281 swishing, 264 Switzerland, 42, 66, 80, 131, 186–7, 275 T Tableau économique (Quesnay), 16 tabula rasa, 20, 25, 63, 291 takarangi, 54 Tanzania, 121, 190, 202 tar sands, 264, 269 taxation, 78, 111, 165, 170, 176, 177, 237–8, 276–9 annual wealth tax, 200 environment, 213–14, 215 global carbon tax, 201 global financial transactions tax, 201, 235 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 non-renewable resources, 193, 237–8, 278–9 People’s QE, 185 tax relief v. tax justice, 23, 276–7 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), 202, 258 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 61, 63, 93 Texas, United States, 120 Thailand, 90, 200 Thaler, Richard, 112 Thatcher, Margaret, 67, 69, 76 Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), 96 Thompson, Edward Palmer, 180 3D printing, 83–4, 192, 198, 231, 264 thriving-in-balance, 54–7, 62 tiered pricing, 213–14 Tigray, Ethiopia, 226 time banking, 186 Titmuss, Richard, 118–19 Toffler, Alvin, 12, 80 Togo, 231, 292 Torekes, 236–7 Torras, Mariano, 209 Torvalds, Linus, 231 trade, 62, 68–9, 70, 89–90 trade unions, 82, 176, 189 trademarks, 195, 204 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 transport, 59 trickle-down economics, 111, 170 Triodos, 235 Turkey, 200 Tversky, Amos, 111 Twain, Mark, 178–9 U Uganda, 118, 125 Ulanowicz, Robert, 175 Ultimatum Game, 105, 117 unemployment, 36, 37, 276, 277–9 United Kingdom Big Bang (1986), 87 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 free trade, 90 global material footprints, 211 money creation, 182 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 poverty, 165, 166 prescription medicines, 123 wages, 188 United Nations, 55, 198, 204, 255, 258, 279 G77 bloc, 55 Human Development Index, 9, 279 Sustainable Development Goals, 24, 45 United States American Economic Association meeting (2015), 3 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 Congress, 36 Council of Economic Advisers, 6, 37 Earning by Learning, 120 Econ 101 course, 8, 77 Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), 9 Federal Reserve, 87, 145, 146, 271, 282 free trade, 90 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 87 greenhouse gas emissions, 153 global material footprint, 211 gross national product (GNP), 36–40 inequality, 170, 171 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 political funding, 91–2, 171 poverty, 165, 166 productivity and employment, 193 rust belt, 90, 239 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 wages, 188 universal basic income, 200 University of Berkeley, 116 University of Denver, 160 urbanisation, 58–9 utility, 35, 98, 133 V values, 6, 23, 34, 35, 42, 117, 118, 121, 123–6 altruism, 100, 104 anthropocentric, 115 extrinsic, 115 fluid, 28, 102, 106–9 and networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6 and nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 and pricing, 81, 120–23 Veblen, Thorstein, 82, 109, 111, 142 Venice, 195 verbal framing, 23 Verhulst, Pierre, 252 Victor, Peter, 270 Viner, Jacob, 34 virtuous cycles, 138, 148 visual framing, 23 Vitruvian Man, 13–14 Volkswagen, 215–16 W Wacharia, John, 186 Wall Street, 149, 234, 273 Wallich, Henry, 282 Walras, Léon, 131, 132, 133–4, 137 Ward, Barbara, 53 Warr, Benjamin, 263 water, 5, 9, 45, 46, 51, 54, 59, 79, 213–14 wave energy, 221 Ways of Seeing (Berger), 12, 281 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 74, 78, 96, 104 wealth ownership, 177–82 Weaver, Warren, 135–6 weightless economy, 261–2 WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic), 103–5, 110, 112, 115, 117, 282 West Bengal, India, 124, 178 West, Darrell, 171–2 wetlands, 7 whale hunting, 106 Wiedmann, Tommy, 210 Wikipedia, 82, 223 Wilkinson, Richard, 171 win–win trade, 62, 68, 89 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 Wizard of Oz, The, 241 Woelab, 231, 293 Wolf, Martin, 183, 266 women’s rights, 33, 57, 107, 160, 201 and core economy, 69, 79–81 education, 57, 124, 178, 198 and land ownership, 178 see also gender equality workers’ rights, 88, 91, 269 World 3 model, 154–5 World Bank, 6, 41, 119, 164, 168, 171, 206, 255, 258 World No Tobacco Day, 124 World Trade Organization, 6, 89 worldview, 22, 54, 115 X xenophobia, 266, 277, 286 Xenophon, 4, 32, 56–7, 160 Y Yandle, Bruce, 208 Yang, Yuan, 1–3, 289–90 yin yang, 54 Yousafzai, Malala, 124 YouTube, 192 Yunnan, China, 56 Z Zambia, 10 Zanzibar, 9 Zara, 276 Zeitvorsoge, 186–7 zero environmental impact, 217–18, 238, 241 zero-hour contracts, 88 zero-humans-required production, 192 zero-interest loans, 183 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84, 191, 264 zero-waste manufacturing, 227 Zinn, Howard, 77 PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of: archive.org


Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, colonial rule, corporate personhood, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deskilling, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, invisible hand, liberation theology, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuremberg principles, one-state solution, open borders, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus

Continuing to run through Obama’s appointments, his transition team was headed by John Podesta, Clinton’s chief of staff. The leading figures in his initial economic team were Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both enthusiasts for the deregulation that was a major factor in the current financial crisis. As treasury secretary, Rubin worked hard to abolish the Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated commercial banks from financial institutions that incur high risks. Economist Tim Canova comments that Rubin had “a personal interest in the demise of Glass-Steagall.” Soon after leaving his position as treasury secretary, he became “chair of Citigroup, a financial-services conglomerate that was facing the possibility of having to sell off its insurance underwriting subsidiary…the Clinton administration never brought charges against him for his obvious violations of the Ethics in Government Act.”24 Not surprisingly, Citigroup was a leading beneficiary of the Bush-Paulson bailout.

See “American exceptionalism” Fall, Bernard, 122 Fayyad, Salam, 253–54 Federal Reserve Board, 113 Feldman, Noah, 52 Felix, David, 71, 83, 107, 219 Ferguson, Thomas, 32, 108, 208 financial crises, 93, 107, 108, 207, 228 deregulation and, 219 financial liberalization and, 105, 108 recent and current, 63, 73, 109, 110, 212–13, 217, 221–22, 226 Savings & Loan crisis, 211 See also housing bubble financial institutions, 92, 107–11, 113, 209, 228 Charles Schumer and, 221 China as model for, 114 Glass-Steagall Act and, 219 globalization and, 35, 73 Haiti and, 10 recent bailouts of, 105, 219–21 Timothy Geithner and, 221 financial instruments, 220, 221 financial liberalization, 72, 93, 97–98, 105, 107, 108, 111, 114 financial sector, 93, 107, 110–11 financial liberalization and the power of, 212 Iran and, 174 Joe Biden and, 216 Obama and, 212, 228–29 Patriot Act and, 174 financialization of the economy, 34, 79, 93, 94, 97, 231 Fites, Donald, 218 Florida, 23, 24, 49, 51 Fourteen Points (Woodrow Wilson), 48 Framework Agreement of 1994, 138 France, 80 Franklin, Bruce, 56 Franks, Tommy, 57 Fraser, Doug, 218 free speech, corporate personhood and, 32–34 “free trade,” 6, 37, 78, 93 criticism of the term, 90 drug trade and, 78–79 “free circulation of labor” and, 29 vs. protectionism, 6, 76–78, 80, 81, 89, 211 Reagan and, 12 slavery and, 78, 79 See also neoliberalism “free trade agreements,” 31, 90–91, 93, 103–4 monopoly pricing rights in, 86 national security exemptions in, 86 See also North American Free Trade Agreement freedom of association, 208 Freeman, Chas, 171 French colonies, 7.

-Israeli attacks in, 278 Gazans kidnapped by Israeli forces, 146, 257 as “protected persons,” 45, 155, 186 Geithner, Timothy, 220–21 “genocidal” policies, 129 Gerecht, Reuel Marc, 197–98 Gerges, Fawaz, 26 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 279. See also East Germany Germany, 86, 278 Gerson, Joseph, 66 Gerson, Michael, 223 Ging, John, 151 Glass-Steagall Act, 219, 229 global warming, 95, 111, 217, 232 “globalization,” vii, 35–38, 73 neoliberal, 94 true, 118 See also specific topics Golan, Avirama, 159 Goldberg, Jeffrey, 180 Gómez, Juan Vicente, 54 Gonzales, Alberto R., 266 Gorbachev, Mikhail S., 66, 269, 273, 278–80 Gordon, Michael, 133 Gottemoeller, Rose, 196 Grande, Rutilio, 274 Great Depression, 77, 98 Greater Jerusalem, 180, 181 Greenspan, Alan, 87, 108–9, 212 Guantánamo Bay detention camp, 31, 260, 263–66 Guatemala, 105 Guernier, Maurice, 175 Hague Convention of 1907, 155 Haiti, 7–12 Bill Clinton and, 11 democracy in, 10–11, 104, 213 France and, 7, 9, 12, 66, 104, 213 overthrow of elected government in, 7, 11–12, 66, 68, 104, 213 poverty and financial problems, 7–15 Reagan and, 10 takeover by U.S. corporations, 8–9 terrorism and, 11 U.S. dumping in, 12 Venezuela and, 14 Woodrow Wilson, State Department, and, 8, 47, 48 World Bank and, 9 Hale, Kenneth, 5–6 Halliday, Denis, 129 Halper, Jeff, 186 Hamas, 147, 148, 150–53 Gaza Strip and, 143, 147, 150, 151, 155, 156 Obama and, 233–34, 254 popularity and elections won by, 145, 147, 153 proposed two-state settlement, 255 as terrorist organization, 249, 254–55 Hamilton, Alexander, 77 Harbury, Jennifer, 260 Hasenfuss, Eugene, 264 Hass, Amira, 182 Havel, Vaclav, 274, 275 health care, 92, 226–28 for “illegal aliens,” 31 health care reform, 110, 112, 226–28, 230, 231 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 243 Henríquez y Carvajal, Francisco, 48 Hernández, Gerardo, 51 Hersh, Seymour, 139 Herzog, Haim, 160 Hezbollah, 144–47, 249, 250 Hill, Christopher, 137 Hirohito, 48–49 Ho Chi Minh, 48 Hodgson, Geoffrey, 21 Holder, Eric, 225 Honduras, 58, 66–68, 117 Hoodbhoy, Pervez, 240, 241 Hoover Institution, 22 Horwitz, Morton, 30 housing bubble, 64, 108–9, 212–13 Huntington, Samuel, 40 idealism foreign policy and, 42–48, 52, 123, 143, 185 John Quincy Adams and, 23–24 Wilsonian, 8, 10, 23, 45, 47, 48, 54, 122 See also United States, political ideals Ignatius, David, 42–43 immigrants, undocumented, 31 imperialism, 3–4, 6, 14–15, 17–20, 22 culture of, 62, 134–35 “expansion is the path to security” doctrine, 27 “salt water fallacy,” 22–23 See also Spanish conquerors; specific topics import substitution industrialization, 77 India, 194–95 Indonesia, 224 Indonesia-Australia Timor Gap Treaty, 184–85 insurance industry, 110.


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The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory by Kariappa Bheemaiah

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, cellular automata, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, constrained optimization, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, Diane Coyle, discrete time, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Higgs boson, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, inventory management, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, large denomination, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, liquidity trap, London Whale, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, offshore financial centre, packet switching, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, power law, precariat, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, private sector deleveraging, profit maximization, QR code, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ray Kurzweil, Real Time Gross Settlement, rent control, rent-seeking, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, seigniorage, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Stuart Kauffman, supply-chain management, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, the market place, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, Von Neumann architecture, Washington Consensus

During the Reagan-Thatcher era, financial markets were liberated from a large number of restrictions. This action was repeated in the nineties under the Clinton-Blair era. While the Blair government handed over the responsibility of setting interest rates from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the independent Bank of England in 1997, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1999 effectively matched the same gesture in the US. The enactment of the Volker rule, which restricts US banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that do not benefit their customers, is a return to the older form of banking regulations when deposits were not used to trade on the bank’s own accounts.

In 1998, Alan Greenspan stated that, “participants in financial markets are predominantly professionals that simply do not require the customer protections that may be needed by the general public.” A year later, the American Congress almost unanimously voted in favor of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act that removed the specialization of banks by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and ending the prohibitions against the intermingling of commercial and investment banking activities. As stated by the Republican Senator Phil Gramm (who spearheaded the Gramm- Leach-Bliley Act in 1999), “We have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition is the answer” (Myers-Lipton, 2009).

As the banks were given freer rein to grow within the economy, this also aided them in expanding across geographies. For most of the 20th century, they had been constrained in terms of geographies of growth because the McFadden Act of 1927 prohibited nationally chartered lenders from establishing branches outside of their states of incorporation. At the same time, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial from investment banking while the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 extended the same prohibitions to bank holding companies, which had been developed to circumvent the restrictions against interstate banking (Maxfield, 2013). Beginning in 1994, the US government began to relax the regulations with the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act which ended the geographical limits on banking activity and thus the McFadden Act (Ansart & Monvoisin, 2015).


pages: 453 words: 117,893

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems by Linda Yueh

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bike sharing, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, forward guidance, full employment, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, lateral thinking, life extension, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working-age population

The 1933 and 1935 Banking Acts introduced changes to the Federal Reserve System to enhance the ability of the Fed to stabilize the banking system. The measures included extending the ability of the Federal Reserve to more easily lend money based on receiving collateral, including to non-financial firms; the Glass–Steagall Act, resulting in the separation of commercial and investment banking functions; regulation of deposit interest rates; and strict limits on entry to the market. Also important was the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 1933 to stem the problem of ruinous bank runs. The FDIC remains in place today and guarantees that depositors won’t lose their money (currently up to $250,000) if a bank goes under.

Friedman and the 2008 financial crisis The global financial crisis occurred in 2008 with repercussions across the world economy. Financial deregulation since the 1980s meant that financial markets and global linkages across national borders became much more diverse. Then, in 1999, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act repealed the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 that had previously separated retail from investment banking. More of the risks undertaken by investment banks could be transmitted to retail (deposit-holding) banks. In the 2008 crisis, we were at the cusp of the first potential systemic banking failure since the 1929 crash that had led to the passage of Glass–Steagall in the first place.

France French Revolution inequality Physiocrats and Trier Freddie Mac free market capitalism see also capitalism competition see competition see also free trade free trade and competition see competition in corn see also Corn Laws regional and bilateral agreements and theory of comparative advantage free trade agreements (FTAs) Friedman, David Friedman, Janet Friedman, Milton and the 2008 financial crisis Capitalism and Freedom and the Federal Reserve Free to Choose and Goldwater and the Great Depression John Bates Clark Medal and Keynes libertarian views life and times of A Monetary History of the United States, (with Schwartz) and monetary policy and Nixon Nobel Prize and Pinochet/Chile political influence and prediction and quantitative easing and Reagan and Stigler and Thatcher A Theory of the Consumption Function Two Lucky People Tyranny of the Status Quo Volker Lectures Friedman, Rose, née Director Frisch, Ragnar Fuji Furman, Jason Galbraith, John Kenneth gas industry General Electric (GE) German Historical School of economics Germany and China competitiveness and wages and the Great Depression industrialization/Industrial Revolution inequality manufacturing and Marshall and Marx productivity and wage growth retained cash of companies reunification and wages trade and the Treaty of Versailles wage stagnation worker representation gilts Glass–Steagall Act global macroeconomic imbalances globalization backlash and deindustrialization and emerging economies future of and inequality losers from and low wages and prosperity and specialization and trade gold and the dollar standard Goldwater, Barry Google Android government administration government bonds see also gilts government regulation government spending deficit spending and employment and Keynes see also fiscal policy: Keynes’ fiscal activism public investment/spending see public investment; public spending Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act Great Britain see Britain/UK Great Depression (1930s) Black Thursday Black Tuesday and the Federal Reserve Fisher and risk of repeating the 1930s and Friedman and ‘Great Contraction’ and Keynesian revolution/economics as a liquidity crisis and unemployment and US GDP Greece see also euro crisis gross domestic product (GDP) debt-to-GDP ratio emerging economies and world GDP and government spending investment as share of Japan per capita trade-to GDP ratios US 2015 GDP US decline with Great Depression world GDP growth of economies see economic growth Guillebaud, Claude Haberler, Gottfried Hansen, Alvin Hardenberg, Karl August von Harris, Seymour Harrison, George Hausmann, Ricardo Hayek, Friedrich and the 2008 global financial crisis and the backlash against globalization business cycle theory and capitalism in Collectivist Economic Planning The Constitution of Liberty The Denationalization of Money The Fatal Conceit and the IEA influence and Keynes Law, Legislation and Liberty life and times of Nobel Prize ‘Paradox of Saving’ path to fame political philosophy presidency of Mont Pelerin Society Prices and Production Pure Theory of Capital The Road to Serfdom and Schumpeter The Sensory Order and spontaneous order and Thatcher Hayek, Hella Hazard, Caroline Hazard, Margaret see Fisher, Margaret Hazard, Rowland Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Hicks, John R.


pages: 457 words: 125,329

Value of Everything: An Antidote to Chaos The by Mariana Mazzucato

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banks create money, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business cycle, butterfly effect, buy and hold, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, clean tech, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, financial repression, full employment, G4S, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Hangouts, Growth in a Time of Debt, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, interest rate derivative, Internet of things, invisible hand, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, means of production, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Post-Keynesian economics, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, QWERTY keyboard, rent control, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart meter, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software patent, Solyndra, stem cell, Steve Jobs, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, two and twenty, two-sided market, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, Works Progress Administration, you are the product, zero-sum game

In 1933, following the Wall Street Crash, the US had separated commercial banks (financial institutions which took deposits) from investment banks (financial firms raising money for companies through debt and equity issues, corporate mergers and acquisitions, and trading in securities for their own account) under the Glass-Steagall Act. The Act's regulations were in some respects strengthened by the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. In line with the so-called ‘Keynes Plan', the Bretton Woods system imposed tight curbs on international capital movements in order to preserve a system of fixed exchange rates - thereby ruling out most of the cross-border investments and currency trades which had previously been major sources of instability and speculative profits.

But in the 1960s, as the idea of ‘light-touch' regulation became increasingly attractive, such measures were increasingly viewed on both sides of the Atlantic as an obstacle to circumvent. During this time, banks never ceased to lobby against the regulations that deprived them of significant markets, and others (like the Glass-Steagall Act) which restricted their scope to combine operations in different markets. As well as pushing for an end to regulations, banks proved adept at persuading politicians that restrictive regulations were unworkable, by finding ways to work around them. Bans on speculative derivatives trading, enacted in the US in the 1930s because of its role in magnifying the 1929 Crash and Great Depression, were effectively sidestepped by the growth of unregulated over-the-counter derivatives trading, which grew explosively in the 1980s and defied subsequent efforts at re-regulation.13 Banks' invention of ‘offshore' currencies, to sidestep cross-border capital controls, was especially effective.

So from the start, commercial bankers have sought to do more with the money they create - and the additional funds they take in from depositors - than just lend it to prospective borrowers. They’ve eyed the lucrative world of financial markets - dealing in shares and bonds, on behalf of clients and on their own account - as an additional source of profit. That’s why the Glass-Steagall Act and its counterparts elsewhere, forcing banks to choose between taking customer deposits or playing the markets, was so unpopular in banking circles, and why they celebrated its repeal at the turn of the twenty-first century. The move into investment banking was made more attractive by other aspects of financial deregulation.


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Pity the Billionaire: The Unexpected Resurgence of the American Right by Thomas Frank

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, Bear Stearns, big-box store, bonus culture, business cycle, carbon tax, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, false flag, financial innovation, General Magic , Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, invisible hand, junk bonds, Kickstarter, low interest rates, money market fund, Naomi Klein, obamacare, Overton Window, payday loans, profit maximization, profit motive, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, strikebreaker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, union organizing, Washington Consensus, white flight, Works Progress Administration

Instead, it was a sort of competitor, helping to organize the business structure of the nation independently of Wall Street’s dictation.6 While Jones’s RFC did these things, the Democrats of the day regulated investment banking with the Securities and Exchange Commission, broke up the big banks with the Glass-Steagall Act, and reorganized the Federal Reserve in a way that diminished the power of the New York banks. And they repeatedly told the nation why they were doing these things. Maybe the Roosevelt/Jesse Jones approach wouldn’t have helped this time around. After all, the antibailout leaders of the last few years object when a helping hand is extended to the little guy just as much as they do when it’s Wall Street that’s soaking up the tax dollars.

See also capitalism Democrats and deification of effect of unregulated free trade Frum, David Fukuyama, Francis “Fundraising Secrets for Tea Party Leaders” (DVD) Galbraith, John Kenneth Galt, John (fictional character) Geithner, Tim General Electric (GE) General Motors “Get Back” flag Ghostbusters (film) Gingrich, Newt Give Us Liberty (Armey and Kibbe) Glass-Steagall Act (1933) Glenn Beck Program, The (TV show) “God Save the Queen” (Sex Pistols) Gohmert, Louie Goldman Sachs gold standard GOOOH Graham, Michael Gramm, Phil Grapes of Wrath, The (Steinbeck) Gray, Harold Great Britain Great Depression Atlas Shrugged and attack on “ruling class” and Beck and culture of, mimicked by Right hard-times scenario and Great Northern Railway Great Recession Greenberg, Stanley Greenspan, Alan Gregoire, Christine Guantánamo Guardian Weekly Gullett, Charly Guthrie, Woody Hannity, Sean Hanson, Stephen D.


pages: 267 words: 71,123

End This Depression Now! by Paul Krugman

airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, debt deflation, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, It's morning again in America, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price stability, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Upton Sinclair, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, working poor, Works Progress Administration

In the United States, the Panic of 1907 was met with an ad hoc response organized by J. P. Morgan, and the realization that you couldn’t always count on having J. P. Morgan around led to the creation of the Federal Reserve. But these traditional responses proved dramatically inadequate in the 1930s, so Congress stepped in. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (and similar legislation in other countries) established what amounted to a system of levees to protect the economy against financial floods. And for about half a century, that system worked pretty well. On one side, Glass-Steagall established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which guaranteed (and still guarantees) depositors against loss if their bank should happen to fail.

.), 80 General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, The (Keynes), 93, 94, 96, 205, 208 Germany, 17, 173 banking industry in, 30 capital flow from, 169 European debt crisis and, 179 fear of inflation in, 180 fiscal stimulus and, 180, 185 interest rates in, 174 lending by, 46, 200 trade imbalances and, 28, 175, 175 wages in, 165, 169, 175 Germany, Weimar: Great Depression in, 19 hyperinflation in, 150, 162 Gilded Age, second, 70, 71–72 Gini index, 77 GIPSI countries, 175, 175 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 59–60, 62, 63, 85–86, 113 global economy, debt in, 43–44, 46 God and Man at Yale (Buckley), 93 goldsmiths, 56–57 Gordon, Robert, 38 Gorton, Gary, 60 government, federal: Obama’s supposed expansion of, 118, 119–21 solvency of, 139 2008 financial crisis blamed on, 64, 65, 100 government, state and local: aid to, 125–26, 213 austerity policies and, 213–14, 220 effect of deficit-reduction policy on, 143 employment levels of, 213–14, 217 government debt, 39, 51, 136–37, 192 in global economy, 43–44, 46, 146 long-term effect of, 141 ratio of GDP to, 141–42, 145 S&P downgrading of, 140, 193–94 short-term, 153 see also deficits government spending, 24, 25–26, 136, 224 consumer spending affected by, 39 cuts to, 28, 143–44, 189, 200, 237 deficit-reduction and, 143 depressions and, 135–36, 137, 231 for emergency aid, 119–20, 120, 216 Great Depression and, 35, 38–39, 231 impact on GDP of, 143, 144, 212, 234–35, 235 Keynesian theory of, 53, 93, 94–95 as percentage of GDP, 119 recovery and, 211–16 research on, 231–38 in 2008 financial crisis, 104, 117, 188 unemployment and, 209, 212 see also stimulus, fiscal Gramm, Phil, 85–86, 113 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), 85 Great Britain, see United Kingdom Great Depression, x, 9, 13, 21, 60, 82, 91, 107, 148–49, 201, 204 credit crunch and, 110 debt levels in, 46 Friedman on causes of, 105–6 government spending and, 35, 38–39, 231 lessons learned in, xi, 20, 22, 50, 51–52, 92, 108, 188, 208 political impact of, 19 unemployment in, 38 World War II and, 148 Great Recession, see financial crisis of 2008–09 “Great Slump of 1930, The” (Keynes), 21 Greece: debt crisis in, x, 4, 18, 46, 138, 140–41, 175, 175, 177, 178, 186, 191, 192, 200 debt to GDP ratio in, 178, 178 EEC joined by, 168 unemployment in, 4 Greenspan, Alan, 54–55, 69, 99–100 Greenwich, Conn., 71–72 “Greenwich’s Outrageous Fortune” (Munk), 71 Gross, Bill, 134, 190 gross domestic product (GDP), x, 17, 136, 219 government spending as percentage of, 119 household debt as percentage of, 48–50, 51, 149 impact of government spending on, 143, 144, 212, 234–35, 235 ratio of government debt to, 141–42, 145 real, see real gross domestic product tax rates and, 232–33 “haircuts,” 114–15 Hall, Robert, 234 happiness research, 5–6, 10–11 health care, in Europe, 18 health care reform, 124, 226 health insurance, unemployment and, 10 hedge fund managers, income of, 72, 76, 78, 79 Hedge Fund Mirage, The (Lack), 79 Heim, Bradley, 78 Hicks, John, 22 Hitler, Adolf, impact of Great Depression on rise of, 19 Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), 220 hope, loss of, 4 household debt, 149 consumer spending and, 45, 47, 126, 146, 149 decline in, 210 income inequality and, 84 lack of equity and, 127, 220 Obama administration and, 128 overhang in, 93, 163–64, 219–21 as percentage of GDP, 48–50, 51, 149 see also mortgages House of Representatives, U.S.: Republican control of, 226, 228 see also Congress, U.S.; Senate, U.S.


pages: 202 words: 66,742

The Payoff by Jeff Connaughton

Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, locking in a profit, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, naked short selling, Neil Kinnock, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, Silicon Valley, TED Talk, too big to fail, two-sided market, uptick rule, young professional

I was determined that Ted (and Biden) should push for the establishment of a Justice Department task force—a strike force, really, of bank regulatory agency investigators, FBI agents, and prosecutors—dedicated to uncovering any fraud that had engendered the financial crisis. Ted was as gung-ho as I was. In our early planning sessions, we discussed what had brought on the crisis. We knew the prevailing narrative. In 1999, Congress had repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated investment from commercial banking activities. Clinton’s economic team (including Rubin and Summers) had fought to ensure that derivatives would remain unregulated. We knew that policymakers had pushed banks and quasi-agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make housing affordable; that subprime mortgages were pooled and securitized; that the rating agencies blew it and gave these pools AAA ratings; and that banks were leveraging thirty- and fifty-to-one and buying up these soon-to-be-toxic assets.

The next morning, Dodd was quoted on the front page of the Washington Post as saying that Clinton’s veto had been the result of “poor staff work.” For unrelated reasons, Mikva left the White House a short time later. Because he’d brought me with him, I followed him out the door. In his second term, President Clinton made mistakes—deregulating the financial services industry, supporting the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and leaving derivatives transactions unregulated—that would, within a decade, have devastating consequences. Once upon a time, though, in 1995, we had a president who—with the support of his advisors—was willing to do the right thing and stand up to Wall Street, which even then had already taken over most of Washington. 8: INSIDE THE INFLUENCE INDUSTRY IN EARLY 1997, it was time for Jack Quinn, Mikva’s replacement as counsel to the president, to leave the White House.


pages: 247 words: 68,918

The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, British Empire, centre right, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, household responsibility system, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, tulip mania, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

By 2007, the United States had moved far to the right along the market spectrum—especially in the financial-services sector. This shift over the past three decades produced successive pieces of deregulation—like the repeal in 1999 of the barriers between commercial banks and more speculative investment institutions, which had been in place since the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. As lawmakers removed regulatory hurdles, decision makers within many of these banks decided that prosperity (or perhaps survival) depended on willingness to embrace ever-higher levels of risk. This logic produced a kind of hypercapitalism that led some to offer credit to consumers who should not have accepted it, creating an enormous bubble in which many of the assets, particularly real estate, were considerably overvalued.

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008) emerging-markets see also specific countries Emerging Markets Century, The (Agtmael) Endiama “End of History, The” (Fukuyama) Equatorial Guinea Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip Eskom European Commission European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Excess Crude Account ExxonMobil Exxon Valdez Ezz, Ahmed Facebook Farouk I, king of Egypt Federal Anti-Monopoly Agency Fernández de Kirchner, Cristina financial crisis (2008) Financial Times Finland Formosa Plastic Group France Freedom House free-trade zone Fukuyama, Francis G20 Gandhi, Indira Gao Xiqing García Linera, Álvaro gas Gazprom General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) General Motors Georgia Germany Giuliani, Rudolph Glass-Steagall Act (1933) global foreign direct investment in China, see China, foreign direct investment in globalization Goldman Sachs Gorbachev, Mikhail Government Investment Corporation Government Pension Fund (NGPF) Great Britain Great Depression Great Firewall Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) program Gulf Cooperation Council Gulf of Mexico Gulf War Hamilton, Alexander Hanna, Don Harper, Stephen Hastings, Warren hedge funds He Yafei HIV/AIDS Hoover, Herbert Hormats, Robert HSBC Hudson Bay Company Hu Jintao Hume, David Hurricane Katrina Hussein, Saddam Hutchison Whampoa Hu Yaobang hypercapitalism Hyundai Iceland immigration import quotas India five-year plans of oil demand in Indonesia Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) Industrial Revolution Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) intellectual-property rights (IPR) International Arbitration Center International Criminal Court International Energy Agency International Monetary Fund (IMF) Internet Iran Iran-Iraq war Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivanov, Sergei Japan post-World War II economic growth in Jasser, Muhammad al- Jiang Zemin Jianlong Group Jilin, China Jiwei, Lou Kant, Immanuel Kazakhstan Kazatomprom KazMunaiGas keiretsu Kemerovo Keynes, John Maynard Keynsianism Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, Sheikh Khazanah Nasional Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Khrushchev, Nikita King Abdullah Economic City Kingdom Holding Company Klein, Naomi Kobaladze, Yuri Kovykta gas field Kuchma, Leonid Kudrin, Alexei Kuwait Kuwait Investment Authority Kuwait Petroleum Corporation Labour Party, British Latin America Lee Hsien Loong Lee Myung-bak Lehman Brothers Lenin, Vladimir Libya Liebknecht, Wilhelm Lincoln, Abraham Li Peng Louisiana Company Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio McCain, John McDonald’s Maersk Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine Mahathir Mohammad Maktoum, Mohammed bin Rashid al- Malaysia Mali Mandela, Nelson Mao Zedong Marx, Karl Marxism Medvedev, Dmitry mercantilism end of and state capitalism Merkel, Angela Merrill Lynch Mexico military-industrial complex Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Saudi Arabia Minogue, Kenneth Mississippi Bubble MITI Mitsubishi Mitsui Mitterrand, François Mohieldin, Mahmoud monopolies Morgan Stanley Mozambique Mubadala Development Company Mubarak, Gamal Mubarak, Hosni multinational corporations mutually assured economic destruction Nahyan, Khalifa bin Zayed al- Nahyan, Mohammed bin Zayed al- Nasser, Gamal Abdel National Development and Reform Commission National Development Bank (BNDES) nationalizations national oil and gas corporations (NOCs) see also specific NOCs National Petroleum Company National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) National Savings Bank nation-state NATO Nazif, Ahmed Nehru, Jawaharlal Netherlands Network (film) New Economic Policy New World Development Co.


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The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory by Andrew J. Bacevich

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, clean water, Columbian Exchange, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, illegal immigration, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, planetary scale, plutocrats, Potemkin village, price stability, Project for a New American Century, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, school choice, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, trickle-down economics, We are all Keynesians now, WikiLeaks

The most important of these were offering China most-favored-nation trade status in 1993 and joining the newly created World Trade Organization in 1995. Equally noteworthy, however, were a series of measures touted as positioning the United States to compete more effectively in a globalizing economy. Prominent among these measures was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. A response to the financial chicanery that had contributed to the Great Depression, Glass-Steagall had governed the American banking industry for decades. During that period, Clinton conceded, it had “worked pretty well for the industrial economy,” which the president characterized as “highly organized,” centralized, and national.

Scott Flynn, Michael food stamps Forbes Ford, Gerald Foreign Affairs foreign policy Bush Jr. and Sanders and Trump and fossil fuels Fountain, Ben Four Freedoms Fourteen Points Fox News France freedom three-faced, postwar unconstrained, post–Cold War Freedom Agenda Friedman, Thomas L. frontier, closing of Fukuyama, Francis Fulda Gap Full-Spectrum Dominance Gaddafi, Muammar Gates, Bill gay rights gender relations geopolitics Germany East Nazi reunification of West Gettysburg, Battle of GI Bill Gilmore, Jim Glass-Steagall Act (1933) globalized neoliberalism Global War on Terrorism Goldman Sachs gold standard Gorbachev, Mikhail government regulation Graham, Lindsey Great Britain Great Depression Greater Middle East Great Recession (2007–9) greed Greenspan, Alan Guantánamo guns Haiti Halsey, William “Bull” Hamlet (Shakespeare) Harding, Warren G.


pages: 409 words: 125,611

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, classic study, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, company town, computer age, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, deindustrialization, Detroit bankruptcy, discovery of DNA, Doha Development Round, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, gentrification, George Akerlof, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global supply chain, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, job automation, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, urban sprawl, very high income, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, white flight, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population

And yet, for all the risk, the deregulators in charge of the financial system—at the Fed, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and elsewhere—decided to do nothing, worried that any action might interfere with “innovation” in the financial system. But innovation, like “change,” has no inherent value. It can be bad (the “liar” loans are a good example) as well as good. NO. 2: TEARING DOWN THE WALLS The deregulation philosophy would pay unwelcome dividends for years to come. In November 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act—the culmination of a $300 million lobbying effort by the banking and financial-services industries, and spearheaded in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm. Glass-Steagall had long separated commercial banks (which lend money) and investment banks (which organize the sale of bonds and equities); it had been enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression and was meant to curb the excesses of that era, including grave conflicts of interest.

In some cases, the regulators had a defense: They had no legal basis for acting, even had they discovered something was wrong. They had not been given the power to regulate derivatives. But that defense is disingenuous, because some of the regulators—most notably Greenspan—had worked hard to make sure that appropriate regulations were not adopted. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act played an especial role, not just because of the conflicts of interest that it opened up (made so evident in the Enron and WorldCom scandals), but also because it transmitted the risk-taking culture of investment banking to commercial banks, which should have acted in a far more prudential manner.

Summers, have much to do with the woes faced by the middle and the bottom. The Fed has responsibilities both in regulation and in macroeconomic management. Regulatory failures were at the core of America’s crisis. As a Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration, Mr. Summers supported banking deregulation, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which was pivotal in America’s financial crisis. His great “achievement” as secretary of the Treasury, from 1999 to 2001, was passage of the law that ensured that derivatives would not be regulated—a decision that helped blow up the financial markets. (Warren E. Buffett was right to call these derivatives “financial weapons of mass financial destruction.”


pages: 481 words: 120,693

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, Bullingdon Club, business climate, call centre, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, double helix, energy security, estate planning, experimental subject, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, high net worth, income inequality, invention of the steam engine, job automation, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberation theology, light touch regulation, linear programming, London Whale, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, NetJets, new economy, Occupy movement, open economy, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, postindustrial economy, Potemkin village, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, the long tail, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wage slave, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

In the United States, this conflict gave rise to the populist and progressive movements and the trust-busting, government regulation, and income tax the disgruntled 99 percent of that age successfully demanded. A couple of decades later, the Great Depression further inflamed the American masses, who imposed further constraints on their plutocrats: the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking, FDR’s New Deal social welfare program, and ever higher taxes at the very top—by 1944 the top tax rate was 94 percent. In 1897, the year of the Bradley Martin ball, incomes taxes did not yet exist. In Europe, whose lower social orders had never had it as good as the American colonists, the industrial revolution was so socially wrenching that it inspired the first coherent political ideology of class warfare—Marxism—and ultimately a violent revolutionary movement that would install communist regimes in Russia, eastern Europe, and China by the middle of the century.

“It is a fact that the majority of the large foundations in this country, like most of our major universities, exude a climate of opinion wherein an anti-business bent becomes a perfectly natural inclination.” Judged by today’s standards, that is certainly the case. The marginal tax rate on top earners was 70 percent, capital gains were taxed at a maximum rate of 49 percent, and Wall Street, constrained by the separation between investment and retail banking of the Glass-Steagall Act, was still the rather sleepy handmaiden of industry. Like their philanthro-capitalist successors, the foundations of the 1960s and 1970s hoped to leverage their projects into influence on government policy. But rather than bringing the techniques and skills of the private sector to the social sector, the foundations of that era hoped to transform private charity into state largesse.

., 165 Forbes, 34, 45, 85, 108, 119, 148, 193, 195, 198, 208, 266–67 Ford, Edsel, 263 Ford, Henry, 168, 262, 285 Ford, Henry, II, 262–64 Ford Foundation, 262–63 Ford Motor Company, 262, 263 Forstmann, Teddy, 58 foundations, 72, 264, 265 Fox, Vicente, 197 France, 3, 273 Frank, Barney, 260 Frank, Robert, 82 Freddie Mac, 271 Fridman, Mikhail, 107, 150, 151 Friedlander, David, 70 Friedman, Milton, 250, 277 Friess, Foster, 246–47 Fuentes, Pablo, 172 Fuld, Dick, 144, 215, 216 Gabaix, Xavier, 137 Gadhafi, Saif, 215, 227 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 133–35 Game Neverending, 172 Gandhi, Indira, 200 Gartman, Dennis, 248–49 Gates, Bill, 3, 43, 70, 74–76, 190, 195, 235–36, 246, 247, 280, 282 Gates Foundation, 74–76 Gawker, 70 geeks, 46–51, 92, 94 Gehry, Frank, 103–4 Geithner, Tim, 258 General Electric (GE), 26, 63–64, 65, 155, 157–58 General Motors (GM), 187, 255 George, Henry, xv, 38–42, 47 Germany, 3, 35, 77–78 Ghonim, Wael, 80 Gilded Age, 3, 6–14, 19–21, 28–29, 31, 32, 40, 44, 47, 78, 114, 117 robber barons in, see robber barons Gilded Age, The (Twain and Warner), 6–7, 13 Ginsburgh, Victor, 126 Gladwell, Malcolm, 110–11 Glass-Steagall Act, 13, 264 global citizens, 59–61, 65, 67 globalization, xiv, 4, 15, 18, 19, 21, 25, 27, 31, 59–60, 64, 91, 102, 104, 157–58, 184, 221, 240, 285 events and destinations and, 58 O’Neill on, 29–30 rent-seeking and, 226–28 superstars and, 91–92, 108 Goldbart, Stephen, 176 Goldin, Claudia, 47, 82, 85, 218, 221 Goldman Sachs, 2, 18–19, 30, 52, 121–22, 147, 158, 170, 213, 252, 253, 266, 271, 272, 284, 286–87 Gompers, Samuel, 42 Google, 47, 55–56, 69, 100, 104, 158, 171, 175, 176, 236, 238 Zeitgeist conference of, 68–69 Goos, Maarten, 24 Gopalakrishnan, Kris, 201–2, 241 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 51–52, 180 Graham, Carol, 31, 51, 82 Great Compression, xii, 104 Great Depression, xiii, 9, 13, 29, 115 Great Gatsby Curve, 283 Green, Michael, 71 Greenberg, Hank, 101, 102 Greenspan, Alan, 5–6, 112, 229, 256, 257 Grehan, Ray, 103 Griffin, Ken, 42–43, 51, 247–48, 261, 282 Griffith, Keith, 50–51 Groupon, 51, 164, 171, 176 Grove, Andy, 286 Growth Map, The: Economic Opportunity in the BRICs and Beyond (O’Neill), 19, 29–30 Groysberg, Boris, 129 Grubman, Jack, 48 Guerrero, Isabel, 197 Gu Kailai, 209, 210 Gupta, Rajat, 121–22 Gusinsky, Vladimir, 151 Hacker, Jacob, 18 Hall, Andrew, 121 Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, Sheikh, 103 Hanson, Gordon, 23–24, 27 happiness, 31–32, 51, 82 Harris, Robert, 229 Harvard Business Review, 117, 131, 133, 267 Harvard Crimson, 268 Harvard University, 49–50, 82, 85–86, 92, 131, 147, 148, 218–19, 221, 226, 233, 234, 267–68 Haydn, Joseph, 94–95 Hayek, Friedrich, 88 Hazare, Anna, 80, 200 health care, 76 hedge funds, 2, 51, 74, 120, 121, 128, 138, 266 Heritage Foundation, 190 Hernández, Roberto, 196 Herzen, Alexander, xiv Hewitt, Abram, 39 Hewlett, Bill, 56 Hewlett-Packard (HP), 187 Hindery, Leo, 270 Hindoo, 39–40 Hirschorn, Michael, 165 Hoffman, Reid, 141, 181–85, 187 Holbrooke, Richard, 69 Holocaust, 152–53 Hölzle, Urs, 171 Hong Kong, 35, 63 Hoogewerf, Rupert, 62, 205 Howie, Fraser, 207–8 Hsieh, Tony, 69, 173, 230, 231, 233–34 Huang Guangyu, 208 Hubbard, Glenn, 213 Huffington Post, 70 humanities, 267 Huntsman, Jon, 209, 243 Hurun Report, 204–5, 208 Hutchins, Glenn, 59 Iacocca, Lee, 262 IBM, 155, 180, 187 idea conferences, 67–70, 72 ideological vs. evidence-based worldviews, 93–94 Igan, Deniz, 222, 223 Immelt, Jeff, 63–64, 245 immigration, 61, 147 inclusive societies, 279–81, 283–85 income: of average family in U.S., 34 of bankers, 218–21, 259 capital gains, 17, 44, 78, 79 comparing across history, 194–95 in economic recovery of 2009–2010, xiii happiness and, 31–32 national, 1 percent’s share of, 3, 14 of superstars vs. everyone else, 100–101 of top 0.01 percent, 44 see also wages India, xiii, 3, 10, 15–16, 19, 21–22, 28, 30, 32–33, 35, 62–63, 66, 80, 92, 146, 149, 155–59, 186, 188–89, 193–94, 197–203, 266, 267 billionaire-to-GDP ratio in, 189, 199 corruption in, 201–2 GDP in, 199 License Raj in, 198–99 rent-seeking in, 198–200, 228 Indian Institute of Technology, 188 industrial revolution, 8–16, 19–22, 29, 40–42, 50, 67, 146, 164, 178 Luddites and, 12–13, 96–97 mass production in, 99 superstars and, 95–99, 118 Infosys, 201 Ingersoll, Robert, 42 Innovator’s Dilemma, The (Christensen), 145 Inside Job, 270 insider trading, 269 Institute of International Finance, 254 intellectuals, 89–94, 110–11 Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, The (Konrád and Szelényi), 89–90, 136 interior designers, 102 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 144, 188, 189, 217, 222, 252–53 Internet, 100, 108, 109, 126, 146, 165, 176, 182 iPhone, 28 iPod, 24–26 Ireland, 32 Israel, 3 Italy, 96 Japan, 35, 64 Jefferson, Thomas, 11–12, 42 Jennings, Stephen, 65–66, 159–62, 168–69, 173 Jensen, Michael, 133–34 JetBlue, 156 Jobs, Steve, 49, 55, 190, 246, 280 John, Elton, 109, 110 Johnson, Boris, 57, 69 Johnson, Pitch, 56, 178 Johnson, Simon, 189 Jones, Alfred Winslow, 120–22 JPMorgan, 253–55, 257–58, 260 Kadyrov, Ramzan, 110 Kagalovsky, Konstantin, 223 Kahneman, Daniel, 69 Kalyani, B.


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The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy by Christopher Leonard

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, forward guidance, full employment, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Greenspan put, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Internet Archive, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, lockdown, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Money creation, mortgage debt, new economy, obamacare, pets.com, power law, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, stock buybacks, too big to fail, yield curve

FDR called this temporary shutdown a bank “holiday,” and he used the time to send in examiners and determine which banks were solvent and which were not. After that, the government restructured and reregulated the banks in a way it never did again. The New Deal banking laws were like commandments from the Old Testament—they were short, simple, and sweeping in their reach. The most famous of these laws was called the Glass-Steagall Act, which neatly divided the entire banking industry into two spheres—commercial banking, where customers put deposits into banks, and investment banking, where the banks speculated in the markets. This kept people’s bank deposits safe. The safety was further enforced by the creation of the FDIC, which created a government-backed insurance program to protect consumer deposits.

The New Deal did three important things: It put Wall Street on a tight leash, it empowered workers and labor unions, and it reduced the power of monopolistic corporations. Huge parts of the New Deal, then, were aimed squarely at Wall Street and big banks. The new deal created the FDIC and the Securities and Exchange Commission (which regulates stock trading) and it included the all-important Glass-Steagall Act, which divided American banking into commercial banks that held deposits and investment banks that made risky bets. OPEN MARKET OPERATIONS: The trading operations through which the Fed actually controls interest rates or achieves other policy goals like quantitative easing. The operations are conducted by a trading group based at the New York Federal Reserve Bank who buy and sell assets like U.S.

Federal Reserve System; the Fed), 4, 5, 44, 47–48 balance sheet of, 102, 138, 147, 211, 227, 231, 236, 256, 257, 290–91, 301–2, 343, 349 board of governors of, 48, 120, 125, 127–29, 230 charter of, 48 creation of, 9, 47, 75, 277 criticisms of, 225, 257, 286 data errors in decisions by, 61 Eccles Building offices of, 21–22, 31, 56, 69, 71, 125, 241, 265–66 economists in, 131–32, 136, 223 emergency powers of, 277 financial footprint of, 277 lack of accountability of, 75, 78 “lessons learned” sessions at, 286 long-term thinking and, 303 movement to audit, 225, 286 politics of, 16–19 proprietary trading system of, 115 public discussion about, 257 public image of, 78, 286 regional banks in, 5, 48 role in economy and policy making, 15, 75, 114–16, 120–21, 277, 291 see also Federal Open Market Committee Federal Reserve Act, 249 Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 65–66 Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 57, 67, 98, 140 Hoenig at, 3, 5, 44, 48–51, 53, 55, 58–59, 63, 67, 201, 203 Hoenig made president of, 5, 67–68 Hoenig’s retirement from, 34, 120, 200, 201 Jackson Hole symposium of, 25, 27, 28, 132–34, 136 Penn Square and, 64, 65 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 23, 113–14, 118, 241–42, 246, 263, 272, 348, 349 coronavirus and, 266 global money markets and, 242 Salomon Brothers and, 157–61 standing directive at, 255 Federal Reserve notes, 4 Fed Funds rate, 247, 250, 255, 256 defined, 345 Fed Put, 237, 257, 272, 279 defined, 345–46 Fedspeak, 77–78, 81, 101, 133 FedTrade, 115 Feldstein, Martin, 133 Feltner, John, 188–91, 196–99, 293–96 Feltner, Nina, 190, 199, 293–95 financial crashes, 19, 23, 32, 33, 345 see also bank failures; Global Financial Crisis; stock market crashes Financial Times, 264 fiscal cliff, 136 fiscal policy, 79 defined, 346 monetary policy and, 78–79, 346, 347 Fisher, Richard, 12, 17, 27, 30–31, 111, 112, 128, 130–31, 140, 182, 226 Fitts, Catherine Austin, 154, 156 Flynn, John, 214–16, 266 Florida real estate, 54–55, 86 Forbes, 193 Ford, Gerald, 67 Ford Motor Company, 270, 271, 281 Fort Madison, Iowa, 35–36 Fortune, 205 Fox Business, 133 Fox News, 109 fracking, 213–14, 216 Franklin Templeton Investments, 177 FRB/US model, 139 futures contracts, 252–53, 345, 346 futures market, 346 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 54, 86 GameStop, 300 gasoline prices, 17, 50, 54, 72, 73, 83, 84 GDP, 302 Geithner, Timothy, 23, 100, 207 General Motors, 270 George, Esther, 140 George Mason University, 257 Georgetown Preparatory School, 151–52 Germany, 68, 111, 218, 237 Gingrich, Newt, 80 Glass-Steagall Act, 80, 348 Global Capital Index, 210 global economy, 237 central banks in, 112, 139–40, 217–18, 232, 235, 237–38 Fed’s rearrangement of, 231–32 money markets in, 242 slowdown of, 234–36 Global Financial Crisis (GFC; financial crisis of 2008), 5–7, 10, 14, 23, 24, 25, 102, 118, 126, 174, 177, 180, 182, 204, 206, 210, 224, 254, 267, 277, 278, 280, 296, 302, 343, 349 banks’ power increased by, 202, 206 in Europe, 134–35 Fed’s role in, 20–21 Hoenig and, 18 as long crash, 305 quantitative easing during, 25, 101 globalization, 224 glossary, 343–52 Goldman Sachs, 115, 257, 275 gold prices, 235 gold standard, 9, 95–96 Gorsuch, Neil, 151 government debt, 135, 157 Great Depression, 17–18, 23, 49, 58, 64, 79, 89, 100, 202, 204, 228, 283, 286, 345, 348 Great Inflation of the 1970s, 53–56, 60–61, 65, 66, 82 Great Society, 80 Greece, 209 Greenspan, Alan, 22, 23, 67–69, 71–78, 81, 84–89, 92 in Congressional hearings, 75–78, 83, 86 consumer price inflation as focus of, 81–83, 87–89 Fedspeak of, 77–78, 81 Hoenig and, 82, 83, 87–88 reputation of, 76–77, 87, 93, 99 retirement of, 93 Greider, William, 47 Gruenberg, Martin, 203, 208 Guffey, Roger, 67 Guggenheim Investments, 262, 268, 282 Gutfreund, John, 161 Hanseatic League, 154 hawks, 16–19, 152 defined, 346 Hoenig as hawkish, 17, 18, 93, 94 hedge funds, 116–19, 202, 212, 224, 242, 257, 259, 291 basis risk trades and, 252–55, 265 Dune Capital, 276 leverage ratio of, 257 relative-value, 253–54 repo market and, 245, 247, 251–55 risk parity, 265 Hefner, Robert A., 64 Hetu, Robert, 170, 171–74, 176, 178–80, 182, 191–92 Hinchey, Maurice, 78 History of the Federal Reserve, The (Meltzer), 60, 62 Hitt, Robert, 164, 167 Hoenig, Arlene, 36 Hoenig, Cynthia, 41, 44, 107–8, 301 Hoenig, Leo, 35–37, 41, 49 Hoenig, Thomas, 3–13, 15–22, 35–44, 53–55, 59–60, 62–63, 67–69, 80, 89, 91–99, 122, 140, 168, 201–11, 221, 229–31, 257–59, 301–3, 305 on allocative effects of zero percent interest rates, 19, 20, 27 Bankers’ disputes with, 49–50, 55, 58–59, 65 banks as viewed by, 43–44 Bernanke and, 15, 29, 93–94, 104 big bank breakup planned by (the Hoenig rule), 203–7, 209 career of, 5, 22, 34, 71, 305 coronavirus pandemic and, 301 early life of, 4–5, 35–36, 49 economics studies and views of, 5, 36–37, 41–42, 302 essays of, 301, 302, 305 Exchequer Club speech of, 205–6 in father’s business, 5, 35, 36, 49 at FDIC, 200, 201–11, 218–19, 230–31, 257 FOMC dissents of, 3–5, 8–13, 15, 18, 19, 24–25, 29, 32, 34, 75, 82, 84, 88, 104, 107–9, 112, 120, 301 FOMC relationships of, 11–12, 15 as FOMC sitting member, 71–72, 81 as FOMC voting member, 22, 74, 75, 81, 87, 88, 92, 102, 104, 105 framed German currency given to, 68, 69 Global Capital Index created by, 210 Global Financial Crisis and, 18 Greenspan and, 82, 83, 87–88 as hawkish, 17, 18, 93, 94 housing bubble and, 89 inflation concerns of, 18, 19, 75 interest rates and, 85–86, 93–94, 104 at Iowa State, 5, 41–42 at Kansas City Fed, 3, 5, 44, 48–51, 53, 55, 58–59, 63, 67, 201, 203 Kansas City Fed presidency appointment, 5, 67–68 Kansas City Fed retirement of, 34, 120, 200, 201 long and variable lags as concern of, 62, 68, 82, 94–95 marriage of, 41 master’s thesis of, 42–43 as Mellonist, 17, 18 at Mercatus Center, 257, 301 monetary policy as viewed by, 62–63, 68, 82, 94–96 Penn Square and, 64, 65, 67 PhD dissertation of, 43 physical appearance of, 11 Powell compared with, 222 Powell’s meeting of, 200 predictions and warnings of, 19, 34, 200, 222, 258, 302 quantitative easing critiques of, 27–28, 31–33, 62, 112, 120 quantitative easing publicly condemned by, 29, 34 quantitative easing vote of, 3, 8–11, 18, 21, 32, 34, 105, 107–9, 112, 258, 280 reputation of, 18 rules-based philosophy of, 94–95 speeches of, 96–99, 202–3, 205–6, 302 Starbucks visited by, 258, 259 Trump administration and, 230 Vietnam service of, 5, 37–41, 49 Hogan, Larry, 282 Hoover, Herbert, 17–18 housing, 91, 92, 96, 99 bubble and crash in, 20, 23, 54, 89, 92, 104, 126, 174, 214, 248, 276 prices of, 92, 93, 100 see also mortgages; real estate Hubbard, Glenn, 287 Huffington Post, 110–11 Hurley, Cornelius, 209 hyperinflation, 68, 111–12, 225 IMF, 85 Indianapolis, Ind., 188–90, 197–98 IndyMac, 276 inflation, 17, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60, 62, 68, 80–82, 86, 93, 95, 111–13, 138–39, 232 absence of, 223–24 of asset prices, 50, 68–69, 81–84, 87, 95, 119, 148, 182, 224, 295, 297, 305 Bernanke and, 93 coronavirus and, 297 cost push theory of, 61, 344, 345 demand pull theory of, 61–62, 344–45 Fed’s encouraging or tolerating, 56 Fed’s focus on consumer prices, 81–83, 87–89 Hoenig’s concerns about, 18, 19, 75 hyperinflation, 68, 111–12, 225 interest rates and, 17, 22, 62 lack of, 237–38 monetary policy neglect in, 61–62 in 1970s, 53–56, 60–61, 65, 66, 82 predictions of, 223, 224 quantitative easing and, 33, 112–13, 119–20 Volcker and, 22, 56–57, 67, 68 Volcker’s “cousins” formulation of, 81, 95 ZIRP and, 138–39 insurance companies, 119, 143, 173, 175, 177, 211 interest rates, 7, 9, 17, 21, 43, 59, 117, 133, 148, 181–82, 211, 347 asset values and, 300 on corporate debt, 279 defined, 346–47 economy and, 7 Hoenig and, 85–86, 93–94, 104 inflation and, 17, 22, 62 negative-interest-rate debt, 217–18, 347–48, 351 quantitative easing and, 116–19, 133, 137–39 risky loans and, 19–20 and rolling over corporate debt, 155 stock market and, 84–85 Volcker and, 22, 56–57, 72 interest rates, Fed’s manipulation of, 7, 50, 55–56, 62, 63, 72, 74–75, 81–88, 91–96, 99, 104–5, 114–15, 126–28, 227, 228, 231–34, 236–38, 242, 244, 246, 247, 348 Fed Funds rate, 247, 250, 255, 256, 345 repo market and, 249 standing directive and, 255 see also zero bound; ZIRP Internet, 72, 84, 87 IOER (interest on excess reserves) rate, 249 Iowa, 42 Fort Madison, 35–36 Iowa State University, 5, 41–42 Italy, 262 Jackson, Andrew, 44–45 Jackson Hole symposium, 25, 27, 28, 132–34, 136 Jansen, Tom, 164–67, 169 Japan, 24 Jekyll Island, 47 Jennings, Bill “Beep,” 63, 64 jobs, see unemployment; work, workers Johnson, Lyndon, 80 Jones, Kathy A., 218 JPMorgan Chase, 66, 115, 191, 210, 244, 269, 271 junk bonds, 72, 143, 146, 156, 164, 176–78, 259, 271, 272, 281, 286, 299 defined, 347 Kansas, 55, 206 Kansas City Fed, see Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Kavanaugh, Brett, 151 Kelley, Kathleen, 35, 38 Keynes, John Maynard, 81, 347 Keynesian economics, 81, 100–101, 347 KFC, 193 KKR, 180 Kocherlakota, Narayana, 130 labor unions, 14, 61, 79, 110, 166, 194, 196–98, 344, 348 Rexnord and, 190, 194–96 Lacker, Jeffrey, 27, 30, 31, 128, 141 Lehman Brothers, 5, 6, 8, 23 Lemann, Nicholas, 81 leverage, 193n, 257, 262–63 deleveraging events, 247 leveraging up, 252, 253 leveraged loans, 142, 149, 155, 156, 162, 168, 170, 172–75, 178–80, 182, 199, 270–72, 277, 279, 281, 298, 305 collateralized loan obligation, see CLO coronavirus relief and, 288 defined, 347 downgrading of, 271 with covenants stripped out (Cov-lite), 179–81 variable rates in, 177 Liang, Nellie, 148 liberals, 16, 109–11, 257, 346 see also Democratic Party libertarians, 225 Liesman, Steve, 145 liquidity mismatch, 224–25 living wills, bank, 208–9, 269 LMR Partners, 254 loans, 27, 43, 53, 55, 88, 133 assets and, 49–51, 57–60 business development corporations and, 181 collateralized loan obligation, see CLO consumer, 43, 56 defaults on, 271, 279 demand for, 57, 61–62, 212 home (mortgages), 23, 56, 96, 97, 99–100, 102–3, 137–38, 147, 149 interest rates on, see interest rates leveraged, see leveraged loans loan-shark rates in, 251 overnight, 114, 238, 242, 243, 247–52, 254–57 by Penn Square, 63–65 repo, 243–58, 264, 265 risky, 14, 19–20, 27, 33, 49–51, 63, 91, 97, 105, 146–47 securitization and, 63 short-term corporate, 266 to small businesses, 279 zero bound and, 19–20 lobbyists, 206–7 Lockhart, Dennis, 130, 140 Logan, Lorie, 241–43, 245–47, 249, 250, 255, 263 Long-Term Capital Management, 111 LSAP (large-scale asset purchase), 132 Macy’s, 298 Maffei, Greg, 86 Main Street Lending Program, 279, 286–87, 297 Mallaby, Sebastian, 83, 87 Man Who Knew, The (Mallaby), 83, 87 McConnell, Mitch, 201–2, 276–77, 283 McDonald’s, 193 McKeon, Jon, 38, 39, 41, 206 McKinney, Stewart, 66–67 McKinsey Global Institute, 211, 216 McWilliams, Jelena, 230 media, 108–12, 144–45 Mellon, Andrew, 17–18 Meltzer, Allan, 60, 62 Mercatus Center, 257, 301 Mercury Asset Management Group, 157 Messonnier, Nancy, 262, 263 Mester, Loretta, 267–68 Mexico jobs moved to, 196–99 and search for yield, 216, 217 middle class, 295–96 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 191 Minerd, Scott, 262–63, 268, 269, 282 Mnuchin, Steven, 229, 282 career of, 275–76 coronavirus relief programs and, 273, 276–77, 283, 285–86, 299 Powell and, 275, 277–78, 299 Trump and, 275, 276 monetary base, 6, 102, 120 monetary policy, 9, 46, 56, 60, 88, 148 defined, 347 fiscal policy and, 78–79, 346, 347 Hoenig’s views on, 62–63, 68, 82, 94–96 inflation and, 61–62 quantitative easing’s role in, 127 short-term and long-term problems and, 62–63 Trump and, 233–34 money currencies, 45, 112, 217, 225, 350 Fed’s control of, 47 politics of, see politics of money value and quantity of, 4, 6, 46, 347 see also dollar money creation, 4, 6, 17, 19, 26, 27, 45, 46, 47, 50, 58, 60–63, 79–81, 84, 101–2, 113–16, 120–21, 170, 211, 223, 297, 305, 343, 348, 349 asset prices and, 224 deflation and, 223 quantitative easing and, 113, 115–16, 120–21, 177, 211 money markets, 242 monopolies, 348 Moody’s, 198, 271, 347 mortgage-backed securities, 214–16, 247, 254, 266, 268, 304, 349 mortgages, 23, 56, 96, 97, 99–100, 102–3, 137–38, 147, 149 Mozer, Paul, 158, 161 MSNBC, 109 mutual funds, 177 Nasdaq, 84, 86 National Bureau of Economic Research, 140 natural gas, 55 Navistar, 189, 295 Nebraska, 55 negative-interest-rate debt, 217–18, 347–48, 351 Nelson, Edward, 61 New Deal, 79–80, 204 defined, 348 New York Federal Reserve Bank, see Federal Reserve Bank of New York New York Times, 13, 14, 41, 86, 109, 218 Nixon, Richard, 41, 67 Nomura Securities International, 115 NPR (National Public Radio), 109, 120 Obama, Barack, 13–14, 100–101, 103, 108, 122, 126, 135, 159, 203, 204, 207, 229 Occupy Wall Street, 286 oil, 49–51, 55, 57, 61, 63, 64, 97, 117, 118, 235, 263, 345 embargo on, 344 fracking and, 213–14, 216 and search for yield, 213–14 Oklahoma, 55 OneWest, 276 Only Game in Town, The (El-Erian), 231–32 OPEC, 344 open market operations, 247–48, 349 defined, 348 Operation Twist, 127 defined, 348–49 Paul, Ron, 225 Paulson, Hank, 23 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), 284, 285 Pelley, Scott, 112 Pelosi, Nancy, 276, 283 Pence, Mike, 197 Penn Square Bank, 63–65, 67–69, 97, 98 pension funds, 119, 143, 173, 175, 177, 211, 271 Pentagon Papers, 41 Pets.com, 86–87 Pianalto, Sandra, 130, 140 Plosser, Charles, 12, 27, 30, 31, 112 Poland, 216, 217 politics, 16, 80, 202 see also Democratic Party; Republican Party politics of money, 9, 11, 46, 78 see also doves; hawks Poole, William, 85, 86 Popp, John, 174–76 populists, 46, 47 Portnoy, David, 288–90 Potter, Simon, 249–50 Powell, Jerome “Jay,” 121–22, 125–29, 132, 151–63, 199–200, 221–22, 224–29, 231–34, 236–38, 244, 246, 247, 250, 255, 256, 258, 275, 300, 305 career of, 125–26, 152–53, 163, 169, 272, 290 at Carlyle Group, 126, 161–63, 165–69, 185, 186, 229, 290 Catholic University speech of, 225–26 coronavirus crisis response and, 265, 267, 268, 272–73, 277–78, 280, 280n, 283, 290, 291, 296–97 at Dillon, Read & Co., 153–56, 161, 270 Duke and, 125, 127–28, 142–43 early life of, 126, 151–52 economics conference speech of, 256 Fed’s image and, 286 golfing of, 167 growth of influence of, 222 Hoenig compared with, 222 Hoenig’s meeting of, 200 listening tours of, 286, 290 Mnuchin and, 275, 277–78, 299 news conference of, 236–37 normalization process and, 221, 224–25, 233, 234, 236–37, 243, 245, 256 physical appearance of, 156 political alliances of, 233 political standing of, 298 as pragmatist, 153 quantitative easing and, 121–22, 127–29, 132, 141–44, 148–49, 221–22, 236 reversal of opinion on quantitative easing and ZIRP (Powell Pivot), 225–27, 236–37 Rexnord and, 163–70, 185, 186, 199 Salomon Brothers and, 159–61 speeches of, 225–26, 256, 290 at Treasury Department, 126, 156–61, 290 Trump and, 229, 233–34 warning of, 272 wealth of, 169 Williams and, 246 Powell, Patricia, 151 Power and the Independence of the Federal Reserve, The (Conti-Brown), 132 prices of assets, see asset prices and value controls on, 62 deflation of, 96n, 223–24, 237 of gasoline, 17, 50, 54, 72, 73, 83, 84 of gold, 235 of housing, 92, 93, 100 inflation of, see inflation spread in, 268–69 of stocks, 84, 119, 131, 212, 235 primary dealer(s), 26, 101, 115–16, 285, 350 defined, 349 Salomon Brothers as, 159, 160 private equity firms, 97, 116, 122, 149, 156, 161–64, 166, 168–70, 174, 178–82, 187, 202, 221, 291 Apollo Management, 168–70, 173–74, 180, 186, 191 Carlyle Group, 126, 161–63, 165–69, 174, 178–80, 182, 185, 186 put contracts, 345–46 Fed Put, 237, 257, 272, 279, 345–46 Qualcomm, 86 quantitative easing (QE), 8–11, 114–15, 126–49, 154, 170, 173, 182, 225, 247, 249, 251, 252, 262, 292, 295, 302, 304n, 305, 344, 350–52 allocative effect of, 27, 28 asset price inflation and, 119, 132, 148, 182, 300 basic mechanics and goals of, 26 Beck on, 110 Bernanke and, 10, 25–34, 105, 112–13, 118n, 121, 126–30, 132–34, 136, 140–46, 148, 182, 247 bonds in, 101, 110, 139, 227, 231–34, 236, 267, 280 coronavirus pandemic and, 267, 279–80, 297 defined, 349 developing nations and, 216–17 difficulty of undoing, 32–33, 128, 130, 140, 143, 258 Duke and, 127–28, 141–44 end of, 147–48, 227 European Central Bank’s version of, 235 excess bank reserves and, 248 Fed’s research on, 30 Feldstein on, 133 in financial crisis of 2008, 25, 101 FOMC debates on, 9, 10, 16, 27–34, 112, 121, 126–30, 132, 134, 137, 140, 142, 143 FOMC presentation on, 136–39 FOMC voting on, 3, 8–11, 18, 21, 29, 32–34, 105, 107–9, 112, 113, 134, 136–37, 141, 148 forecasting errors and, 138–40 growth-boosting channels of, 148 Hoenig’s critiques of, 27–28, 31–33, 62, 112, 120 Hoenig’s predictions about, 34, 200 Hoenig’s public condemnation of, 29, 34 Hoenig’s vote on, 3, 8–11, 18, 21, 32, 34, 105, 107–9, 112, 258, 280 inflation and, 33, 112–13, 119–20 interest rates and, 116–19, 133, 137–39 job creation and, 119, 139, 182 media and, 108–12, 144–45 money supply and, 113, 115–16, 120–21, 177, 211 negative-interest-rate bonds and, 218 normalization (reversal) of, 221, 223–25, 227–29, 231, 233–37, 243, 245, 249, 256 as normal tool of monetary policy, 127 NQE (non-QE) program, 256–57 open-ended program of, 136, 141 open market operations and, 247–48 Operation Twist, 127, 348–49 policy options in, 128–29, 132, 136, 141 political backlash against, 144 Powell and, 121–22, 127–29, 132, 141–44, 148–49, 221–22, 236 Powell’s reversal of opinion on (Powell Pivot), 225–27, 236–37 public perceptions of, 119–20, 136 risk seesaw and, 145–46 risks of, 32–33, 130, 132, 143, 226 risky loans and, 27, 33 second round of, 32, 114–15, 118n, 144, 173, 349 stock prices and, 119, 212 Taper Tantrum and, 145–47, 217 unemployment and, 121 Yellen and, 130 quantitative tightening, 233, 237 defined, 349–50 Quarles, Randal, 229, 230, 280n Reagan, Ronald, 80, 156, 158–59 real estate, 50, 51, 55, 91, 92, 262 in Florida, 54–55, 86 quantitative easing and, 117–19 and search for yield, 214–16 see also housing real estate investment trusts (REITs), 147 recessions, 8, 22, 24, 50, 56, 60, 72, 73, 75, 80, 81, 136, 186, 225, 236, 302, 347 reconciliation, 158–59 Reddy, Sudeep, 34 Reifschneider, David, 148 relative-value funds, 253–54 repo market, 243–58, 264, 265 Republican Party, 21, 80, 101, 103, 135, 197, 201, 203, 233, 276, 304 Tea Party movement in, 14, 103, 109, 135, 206, 286 see also conservatives reserve accounts, 26 defined, 350 reserve currency, 350 revolving credit facility, 170 Rexnord, 163–70, 171–73, 176–79, 183, 185–99, 281 Adams at, 186–88, 191, 192, 194, 195, 198 Apollo Management and, 168–70, 172, 173, 186, 191 Carlyle Group and, 163, 165–69, 185, 186 closure of factory and move of production to Mexico, 196–99 Feltner at, 188–91, 196–99, 293, 295 labor unions and, 190, 194–96 Powell and, 163–70, 185, 186, 199 Rexnord Business System (RBS), 186–87 SCOFR plan of, 195–96, 198, 199 stock buyback of, 193–94 ZIRP and, 187–88 Rickards, James, 111 Riksbank, 218 risk parity funds, 265 risk seesaw, 145–46, 304, 305 Robinhood, 289, 290, 300 Roblox, 297–98 Romney, Mitt, 133 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 79–80, 100, 204 Rubenstein, David, 161 Russia, 85, 111, 238 Sahm, Claudia, 267, 286 Salomon Brothers, 157–61 SARS epidemic, 261, 263 Saudi Arabia, 263 Saxton, Jim, 76, 78 Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF), 281 Secrets of the Temple (Greider), 47 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 155, 159, 160, 162, 175, 215, 348 securitization, 63 September 11 attacks, 88, 91 S.


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Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown by Philip Mirowski

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, blue-collar work, bond market vigilante , bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, constrained optimization, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, debt deflation, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, disinformation, do-ocracy, Edward Glaeser, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, loose coupling, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, Nash equilibrium, night-watchman state, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, prediction markets, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, school choice, sealed-bid auction, search costs, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Myth of the Rational Market, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, working poor

Yet beyond ripping tales of an epic clash of Rajan and Lawrence Summers at the Fed conference at Jackson Hole in 2005, almost no one had bothered to actually read his academic papers. Perhaps Cassidy would have been better prepared if he had first perused a paper Rajan had written back in 1994 suggesting that the Glass-Steagall Act had constituted unnecessary regulation back in the 1930s, because commingling of investment and commercial banking had not ratcheted up the riskiness of the entire system, and in any event, “We find no evidence that commercial banks systematically fooled the public securities markets.”40 Rajan was True Blue Chicago, so of course he defended the home team to Cassidy: “Forget the public utterances: the research done at this place was, essentially, right on the ball.”

Krawiec, Kimberly. “Show Me the Money: Making Markets in Forbidden Exchange,” Law and Contemporary Problems 72 (2009): i–xiv. Krishnamurthy, Arvind. “How Debt Markets Malfunctioned in the Crisis,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 24 (2010): 3–28. Kroszner, Randall, and Raghuram Rajan. “Is the Glass Steagall Act Justified? A Study of US Experience with Universal Banking,” American Economic Review 84 (1994): 810–32. Krugman, Paul. “Economics in the Crisis,” lecture delivered to University of Lisbon, February 27, 2012. Krugman, Paul. End This Depression Now! (New York: Norton, 2012). Krugman, Paul.

Chapter 5 reveals that, in this instance, another economist’s prediction has since bitten the dust. 37 Ibanez, The Current State of Macroeconomics, p. 180. 38 Blanchard, “The State of Macro.” 39 They are available online at www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/chicago-interviews. One wishes more business journalists would emulate this practice of providing full transcripts. 40 Kroszner and Rajan, “Is the Glass Steagall Act Justified?” p. 811. 41 Although this chapter deals with economists, and not the theories, I want to insist here that none of these components is plausible on its own terms. The “savings glut” appeals to a discredited theory of ‘“loanable funds,” the mortgage story is dismissed in chapter 5, and the financial-innovation trope is discussed in chapter 6.


Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics by Robert Skidelsky

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Alan Greenspan, anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, constrained optimization, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kondratiev cycle, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land bank, law of one price, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, long and variable lags, low interest rates, market clearing, market friction, Martin Wolf, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge theory, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, placebo effect, post-war consensus, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, short selling, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, too big to fail, trade liberalization, value at risk, Washington Consensus, yield curve, zero-sum game

Heeding the IMF’s commandments, many countries experienced financial crises accompanied by severe downturns, most notably in East Asia and Latin America. 24 Recently, the IMF’s research arm has issued a sort of a mea culpa, recognizing that while the ‘growth benefits [of capital account liberalization] are uncertain, costs in terms of increased economic volatility and crisis frequency seem more evident’25 and that ‘full capital flow liberalization is not always an appropriate end-goal’.26 But this came too late, and long after economists working outside the orthodox position had come to the same conclusion. 2. Controls on types of bank lending within countries were stripped away. After the Great Depression, the US Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act in 1933, 27 which separated commercial and investment banking in order to protect key banking services (taking deposits, making everyday loans) from the risks of ‘casino banking’. The Clinton Administration overturned this in 1999 with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, allowing both sets of activities to be done by the same bank.

In short, the financial sector as a whole is a luxury we cannot afford.12 One could add that a corrupted capitalism is also a political luxury too far, because it is certain to provoke a popular backlash. Because of the damage they inflict on the economy, banking collapses generally lead to the demand for banking reform. Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, the US Congress passed the Banking Act of 1933, popularly known as the Glass–Steagall Act, which separated deposit-taking from investment banking, and introduced deposit 361 A N e w M ac roe c onom ic s insurance for the former. The 2008–9 banking crisis also led to a reform agenda, aimed at limiting bank failures and hence recourse to the taxpayer for bank bail-outs. The difference between the two reform agendas is that the earlier one was embedded in a much more extensive programme of economic reform, whereas today the consensus view is that, provided only that the banking system can be made more ‘resilient to shocks’, everything else can continue exactly the same as before.

., 179 Erie Canal, 90 Eshag, Eprime, 71 European Central Bank, 139, 188, 198, 217, 242–3, 253, 254, 361 institutional constraints on, 50, 234, 242, 249, 274–5 misreading of Eurozone crisis, 275 quantitative easing (QE) by, 273–4 on ‘stress testing’, 364 taxing of ‘excess’ reserves, 266 use of LTROs, 257 European Commission, 139, 3612, 365 European Exchange Rate Mechanism, 188 European Investment Bank, 354 European Union (EU, formerly EEC), 153, 318, 379, 383 Financial Stability Board (FSB), 363 ‘Four Freedoms’, 375 lack of state, 376 Single Resolution Board, 365 Eurozone current account imbalances, 333, 334, 335, 336–7, 341–2 Juncker investment programme, 274 proposed European Monetary Fund, 376, 382 structural flaw in, 341, 375–7 two original sins of, 274, 376–5 Eurozone debt crisis (2010–12), 50, 223, 377, 382 and double-dip recession, 241, 242–3, 274 ECB’s misreading of, 275 and financial crowding-out theory, 234 and Greece, 32, 224, 224–5, 226, 233, 235, 242–3, 243, 365 and ‘troika’, 32, 139, 243 469 i n de x exchange-rate policy, 127–8, 139 and Congdon’s ‘real balance effect’, 285 and domestic interest rates, 251 fixed rates under Bretton Woods, 16, 159, 161, 162, 168 floating rates from 1970s, 16–17, 184 and Friedman, 182 IMF ‘scarce currency’ clause, 380–81 Nixon’s dollar devaluation (1971), 153, 154, 165 and quantitative easing, 267, 267 sterling crisis (1951), 145 sterling devaluation (November 1967), 152 sterling-dollar peg (from 1949), 148, 150, 152 sterling/franc/deutschmark devaluations (1949), 152 ‘Triffin paradox’, 161, 165 ‘expansionary fiscal consolidation’, 192, 225, 231 Fabian socialism, 96 Fama, Eugene, 208, 311–12, 313 Fanny Mae, 217, 256, 309, 320 fascism, 13, 98, 131, 175 Federal Reserve, US and 2008 crash, 50, 217, 254, 256 AIG bail-out (2008), 325 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), 185–6 and Great Depression, 104–6 inflation targeting, 188 and monetarism, 185–6, 188 monetary policy in 1950s, 146 ‘Operation Twist’, 268 quantitative easing (QE) by, 256–7, 273–4 ‘Reserve Position Doctrine’ (1920s), 103–4 and under-consumption theory, 298 Ferguson, Niall, 73, 79, 80, 91 financial collapse (2007–8) acute phase, 218–20, 223 ‘Austrian’ explanation, 104, 303 banks as proximate cause, 343, 361, 365 Bear Stearns rescue, 217 British analogies with Greece, 235 British debate after, 225–8 causes of, 3–4, 343–4, 365, 366, 368 central bank responses, 3, 217, 219, 234–5, 253–4, 254, 256–8, 359 comparative recovery patterns, 241–4, 242, 273, 273–4 compared to 1929 crash, 218 Conservative narrative, 226–8, 229–31, 233, 234–5, 237–9 and crisis of conservative economics, 17 and embedded leverage, 318, 322, 325 five distinct stages of crisis, 216–19 ‘global imbalances’ explanation, 11, 331, 333, 336–43, 337 government responses, 3, 217–18, 219–20, 221–36, 237–47 Hayekian view of cause, 303 hysteresis after, 239–41, 240, 241, 370 inequality as deeper cause of, 299–306, 368 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, 3, 50, 217, 365 leverage (debt to equity) ratios on eve of, 317–18 liquidity-solvency confusion, 317 outbreaks of populism following, 13, 371–3, 376, 383 post-crash deficit, 226–33, 229, 237–8 private debt as proximate cause, 3–4 470 i n de x stagnation of real earnings as deep cause, 4, 303, 367 standard account of origins of, 3–4 as test of two theories, 2–3, 76 theoretical and policy responses, 10, 129, 219–20, 223–36, 237–47 see also austerity policy and under-consumption theory, 303–6 US sub-prime mortgage market, 3, 216, 304–5, 309, 323, 328, 341 see also Great Recession (2008–9) Financial Services Authority, U K, 321–2, 330 financial system and causes of 2008 collapse, 3, 4–5, 253, 307–9, 361 and crisis of conservative economics, 17 deregulation, 307–9, 310–16, 318–22, 328, 332–3, 384 East Asian financial crisis (1997–8), 202, 339, 371, 382 ‘Efficient Market Hypothesis’ (EMH), 311–13, 321–2, 328, 388 ‘financialization’ of the economy, 5, 305, 307–9, 366–7 fraud and criminality, 3, 4, 5, 7, 328, 350, 365–6, 367 and free-market orthodoxy, 5, 308–16 loosening of moral restraints, 319 mark-to-market (M2M) framework, 314 offshore euro-dollar market, 308, 332 privatised gain and socialised loss, 319–20 released from national regulation (1980s/90s), 131, 318–22 structural power of finance, 6–7, 14, 309 systemic under-estimation of risk, 314–16, 316*, 320–22, 323, 329–30 Thatcher’s Big Bang (1980s), 319 tradable public debt instruments, 43, 80–81 Turner’s ‘financial intensity’ concept, 366 unrealism of assumptions, 310–16 value at risk (VaR) framework, 314–15, 315, 330 ‘Washington consensus’ deregulation, 198, 200 see also banks FinTech, 356 First World War, 86, 95, 106–7, 374, 375 ‘fiscal consolidation’, 10–11, 129, 225 Darling’s plan (2009), 225–6 ‘expansionary’, 192, 225, 231 and Osborne, 227–8, 229–30, 231, 233, 237–9, 243–4, 244, 245 fiscal policy and 2008 collapse, 10, 217–18, 219–20, 223–36, 265–6, 273–4, 286 ‘Barber boom’, 167, 168 during Blair-Brown years, 221–4, 223, 225–6, 227 British experience (1692–2012), 77 Congdon’s total rejection of, 280, 285–6 ‘crowding out’ argument, 83–4, 109–11, 226, 233–5 current and capital spending, 107–8, 114, 142, 155–6, 193, 221–3, 237–8, 355–7 directing flow of new spending, 286–7 fiscal multiplier, 110–11, 125–6, 133–6, 138, 230–31, 233, 235, 244–5 471 i n de x fiscal policy – (cont.) in inter-war Britain, 106–17 and Keynesian economics, 2–3, 109, 111, 114–17, 125–7, 129–31, 133–4, 137–8, 173, 278 Keynesian full employment phase (1945–60), 141–8 Krugman’s ‘confidence fairy’, 117 Lawson counterrevolution, 185, 192–3, 222, 358 legacy of monetarism, 190–93 May Committee (1931), 112 national income accounts, 138 New Classical view of, 200 in new macroeconomic constitution, 351–2, 355–7, 360–61 nineteenth-century theory of, 9, 29 post-Keynesian disablement of, 193, 221, 258, 304, 328 pre-crash orthodoxy, 221–2, 223–4, 230–31 Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR), 155–6 see also balanced budget theory; public investment; taxation Fisher, Irving, 9, 52, 61, 99, 280 ‘compensated dollar’ scheme, 66 equation of exchange, 62–4, 71–2, 258, 278–9, 283, 284, 287 QTM formulation, 62–7, 71–2 and quantitative easing, 258, 278–9 Santa Claus money, 62–4, 258, 278–9 Fitch (CR A), 329 France assignats in 1790s, 64–5 and gold standard, 50, 102, 104, 127 ‘indicative planning’ system, 150 ‘physiocrats’in, 81 protectionism in late nineteenthcentury, 59 state holding companies, 356 statism in, 140, 144 university campus revolts (1968), 164 Freddie Mac, 217, 256, 309, 320 free trade, xviii, 9, 58–9, 76, 79, 81–2 abandoned in Britain (1932), 113 general presumption in favour of, 377 and Hume’s ‘price-specie-flow’ mechanism, 37–8, 53, 54, 104, 332 and Irish potato famine, 15 List’s ‘infant industry’ argument, 88–9, 90, 378–7 and nationalist–globalist split, 371–3 and post-war liberalization, 16, 374 and presumption of peace, 379 repeal of Corn Laws (1846), 15, 85 Ricardo’s doctrine of comparative advantage, 88, 378, 379, 379 US conversion to (1940s), 90 Freiburg School, 140 Friedman, Milton adaptive expectations theory, 180–81, 183, 194, 206–11 and Cartesian distinction, 22 as Fisher’s heir, 278 The Great Contraction (with Schwartz; 1865), 105 idea of ‘helicopter money’, 63 and monetary base, 185, 280 and Mont Pelerin Society, 176–7 and ‘natural’ rate of unemployment, 163, 177, 181, 195, 206, 208 onslaught on Keynesianism, 170, 174, 177–83, 261 ‘permanent income hypothesis’ (1957), 178, 183 and Phillips Curve, 38, 180–81, 194, 206–8, 207 472 i n de x policy implications of work of, 182–3 political motives of, 177, 183–4 and quantity theory, 61, 70, 177–9, 182, 183, 194 ‘stable demand function for money’, 179 view of Great Depression, 104–6, 179, 183, 256, 276, 278 weaknesses in arguments of, 183 Frydman, Roman, 389 Fullarton, John, 49 Funding for Lending programme, 265–6 G20 Financial Stability Board, 363 summits (2009/10), 219–20, 223, 225 G7 finance ministers meeting (February 2010), 224–5 Galbraith, James, 303, 361 game theorists, 389 Gasperin, Simone, 357* Geddes, Sir Eric, 108 German Historical School, 88–9 Germany and 2008 crash, 217, 218, 243 current account surplus, 333, 334, 341, 342, 380, 381 employer–union bargains, 147, 167 and Eurozone crisis, 341, 365, 376, 377 and Great Depression, 97, 111, 129–30 growth Keynesianism (1960–70), 153–4 high growth rates in 1950/60s, 149, 156 Hitler’s reduction in unemployment, 111, 112, 129–30 hyperinflation of early 1920s, 275 as Keynesian in 1960s, 140 nineteenth-century expansion and unification, 89, 91 ‘ordo-liberalism’ in, 140 post-war modernization/catch-up, 156–7 protectionism in late nineteenthcentury, 59 return to gold standard (1924), 102 ‘Rhenish capitalism’ model, 154 Giffen, Robert, 51 Giles, Chris, 219, 302 Gini coefficient, 299, 300 Gladstone, William, 42–3, 86 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 319, 361, 362 global imbalances basic theory of, 335–6 and capital account liberalization, 318–19 capital flight, 59, 334, 337, 341, 343 Eurozone see Eurozone: current account imbalances as explanation for 2007–8 crash, 11, 331, 333, 336–43, 337 and financial deregulation, 318–19, 332–3 and First World War, 95 increases in pre-crash years, 333, 333–4, 334, 335 problematic nature of, 333–4 reserve accumulation, 336, 337–41 ‘saving glut’ vs ‘money’ glut, 338–41, 342 structural causes still in place, 344 US dollar as main reserve currency, 338 global warming, 383 globalization, 17, 300, 334–5 absence of the state, 350, 373, 375–6 anti-globalist movements, 371–2, 373 first age of, 51, 55, 57, 59, 374, 375 473 i n de x globalization – (cont.) future of, 382–4 Geneva and Seattle protests (1998/99), 371 and inflation rate, 252–3 and lower wages in developed world, 252–3, 300, 379 nationalist-globalist split, 371–3 ‘neo-liberal’ agenda of IMF, 139, 181, 318–19 popular protest against, 351, 371–2 resurgence of after Cold War, 374 Rodrik’s ‘impossible trinity’, 375 gold, 23, 24, 25, 28, 35, 37 new gold production, 51, 52, 55, 62 gold standard, xviii, 1, 9, 27, 29, 338 and Britain, 9, 42, 43, 44, 45–50, 53, 57–9, 80, 101, 102, 113 collapse of US exchange standard (1971), 160, 165 commitment to convertibility, 55–6 and Cunliffe model, 54–5, 102 depressions in later nineteenthcentury, 51–2 dysfunctional after First World War, 95, 97 final suspension in Britain (1931), 113, 125 Fisher’s ‘compensated dollar’ scheme, 66 Hume’s ‘price-specie-flow’ mechanism, 37–8, 53, 54, 104, 285, 332 and international bond markets, 92 as international by 1880s, 50–52 Keynes on, 58, 101, 127 Kindleberger thesis, 58–9 move to ‘managed’ system, 71, 99–100 replaces silver standard (1690s), 42, 43 restored (1821), 48 return to in 1920s, 102, 104, 107 suspension during Napoleonic wars, 43, 45–7 suspension of convertibility (1919), 101–2 triumph of by mid-nineteenthcentury, 44, 50 working and design of, 52–9 as working in tandem with empire, 57, 58 Goldberg, Michael D., 389 Goldman Sachs, 315 Goodhart, Charles, 168, 187 Graeber, David, 28 Great Depression (1929–32), 9, 13, 96, 97–8, 110–13, 127 compared to 2008 crash, 218 Friedman-Schwartz view, 104–6, 179, 183, 256, 276, 278 impact on US policy-makers in 2008 period, 256, 275, 278 left-wing explanations of, 298 rise in inequality in lead-up to, 289 and second wave of collectivism, 15–16 Great Moderation (early 1990s–2007), 4, 53, 202, 278 economic problems during, 348 financial deregulation during, 318–22, 328 financial innovation during, 322–8 and independent central banks, 215 inflation during, 106, 215, 216, 252–3, 253, 348, 359, 360 international financial network, 309, 318–28 output growth during, 215, 253, 348 Great Recession (2008–9), xviii Congdon’s view of, 281–2, 287 co-ordinated global response, 219–20, 383 decline in productivity after, 305–6 474 i n de x initial signs of recovery (2009), 218–19, 225, 226 monetary interpretation of, 105, 106 ‘premature withdrawal’ of fiscal stimulus, 219–20, 223–36, 245, 352 reform agenda after, 361–8 rise in inequality in lead-up to, 289–90, 299–300 see also financial collapse (2007–8) Greece and Eurozone debt crisis, 32, 224, 224–5, 226, 233, 235, 242–3, 243, 337, 341, 365 in gold standard era, 59 Greenspan, Alan, 188, 313 Hamilton, Alexander, 88, 90, 92 Hammond, Philip, 236, 352 Hannover Re scandal, 329 Harrison, George, 105 Harrod, Roy, 123 Harvey, John, 333, 387 Hawtrey, Ralph, 109–10, 280 Hayek, Friedrich, 33, 46, 177, 195, 350, 367 founds Mont Pelerin Society, 176 ‘over-consumption’ theory, 296 The Road to Serfdom (1944), 16, 175–6 on Wall Street Crash, 104 Heath, Edward, 167–8 Heckscher, Eli, 37 Help to Buy programme, 265, 266 Henderson, Hubert, 109 Henderson, W.


pages: 279 words: 76,796

The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives by Lisa Servon

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, basic income, behavioural economics, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, do well by doing good, employer provided health coverage, financial exclusion, financial independence, financial innovation, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Schumpeter, late fees, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, Occupy movement, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, precariat, Ralph Nader, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, transaction costs, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, We are the 99%, white flight, working poor, Zipcar

Thus, free trading means they steal around $200 a year from us through front-running and fraudulent clearing of trades. I’ve priced it out and it’s cheaper than using a discount broker (most of them steal too). Welcome to modern banking. Banks got big for two main reasons. First, they were allowed to do more than just maintain depository accounts. After the Great Crash of 1929, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented banks from engaging in both investment banking (what Wall Street does) and commercial banking (what smaller, more local banks that take deposits typically do). Risky investment had led to the crash, and the law was designed to minimize banks’ ability to take such risks. Seventy years later, in 1999, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, permitting banks once again to engage in both commercial and investment activities.

See also financial health attainability of, xvi, 165–66 banks leading to, xvii cost of credit and, 91 middle class and, xviii–xix, 47–52, 165–66 short term vs. long term, 18–19 fintech, 112–15, 152–54 food stamps, 3, 11–12, 18 Frank, Barney, 39 fraud, 26, 69–70, 129 free market, 34–35, 170 Frey, Bill, 7–8 FTC. See Federal Trade Commission Fuentes, Jake, 115 G gender, 43–44, 65–66, 106 gift cards, 4–5 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 26, 38 GoBank, 113–14 government, 35–38, 50, 170–76, 226n176. See also regulation; welfare Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), 26–27 grassroots movements, 176–77 Great Crash (1929), 26, 37–38 The Great Risk Shift (Hacker), xviii, 50 Griesel, Adam, 32 Guerrero, Gigi, 9 H Haberfeld Associates, 29–30, 32 Hacker, Jacob, xviii, 50 Hackett, Rick, 90, 95 Hackett, Walter, 34 Halpern, Jake, 100–101 health care, xiv, 50, 55–56, 59, 115–16, 167–68 Hispanics.


pages: 268 words: 74,724

Who Needs the Fed?: What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America's Central Bank by John Tamny

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Apollo 13, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bretton Woods, business logic, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Fairchild Semiconductor, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Michael Milken, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, NetJets, offshore financial centre, oil shock, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, War on Poverty, yield curve

But as John Allison, former CEO of BB&T Bank, pointed out in his 2013 book, The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure, “Financial services is a very highly regulated industry, probably the most regulated industry in the world.”14 In the 2000s alone, banking saw even more regulation, including Sarbanes-Oxley and the Patriot Act. Others on both the Left and the Right pointed to the gradual erosion and near-total abolishment of the Glass-Steagall Act from the 1930s, which separated banking services from normal retail banking. If we ignore that it was the hybrid bank/investment banks that were the healthiest in 2008—and were in a position to acquire the failed Bear Stearns (J. P. Morgan), the failed Merrill Lynch (Bank of America), and the failed Wachovia (Wells Fargo)—we still can’t ignore what is obvious.

., 25–26 Drexel Burnham investment bank, 38–40 Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt), 22, 64, 74, 113, 163, 176 economy Austrian School of economics, 79, 87, 88–89, 90, 91–95, 113–14, 141 as collection of individuals, 25, 128 economic growth as Cheap Revolution, 160–61 governmental barriers to economic growth and prosperity, 3, 155–56 Keynesian economics, 78–82, 88, 93–96, 140–41 market forces, 1–2, 59–60 production and money supply, 136–37 and quantitative easing (QE) program, 149–54 the real economy and government spending, 4 resource expansion resulting from surprise, 30 robots and job creation, 177–80 supply-side economics, 48–55, 79–80, 92–94, 141, 144 The Economy in Mind (Brookes), 49 Edison, Thomas, 29–30 electricity, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 61 The Elephant and the Dragon (Meredith), 96 Ellison, Larry, 60 entrepreneurs and failure, 28 and innovation, 66 and price cutting, 73 ESPN, 109 Eton Park Capital, 45 Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), 61 Facebook, 28–29, 143 FailCon, 27 failure as credit in Silicon Valley, 27–32 as feature of capitalism, 58, 89, 100, 125 and innovation, 57–58 Fairchild Semiconductor, 31 Fannie Mae, 119, 120, 173 federal budget deficits, 50 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 101–2 federal government excessive spending of, 51, 53–55, 59–63, 173–74 involvement with Wall Street, 129–31 and Keynesian economics, 78–82, 93–96, 147 money supply and value of the dollar, 144 size of, 50–51 the Fed (Federal Reserve Bank) and access to credit, 13–14, 31–32 as barrier to economic growth and prosperity, 5 and Ben Bernanke, 41–47 creation of, 105–6 and easy credit, 2–5, 36–37, 80, 146–48 and excessive power of central banks, 45–46 and high-yield “junk bonds,” 37, 39–40 housing boom and “easy credit,” 113–16, 121–22 inability to create credit, 1–5, 141 on inflation as source of economic growth, 156–61, 165–66 interbank lending rates, 114–16, 156–58 and the money supply myth, 138–45, 158 necessity of, 163–66 quantitative easing (QE) program, 149–54, 172 and the Roaring Twenties, 94–95 Troubled Asset Relief Program (tarp), 172–73 and 2008 financial crisis, 106, 110 Fergusson, Adam, 90–91, 121 film industry and credit extended to filmmakers, 22–26, 27–28 The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure (Allison), 119 Flamson, Dick, 35, 101 football players and coaches, 15–21, 78–79 Forbes, Steve, 69, 72 The Forgotten Man (Shlaes), 167–69 The Frackers (Zuckerman), 71 fracking boom, 66–67, 73–75 “fractional lending,” 87–90 Freddie Mac, 119, 120, 173 free markets, 2–3, 11–14 free trade and division of labor, 65–66 Friedman, Milton, 54, 135–36, 137, 138 Frum, David, 117–18 Garrett, Mike, 19 Gates, Bill, 30–31, 59 Geithner, Tim, 171 General Electric, 30 Get on Up (film), 25 Gilder, George, 30, 56, 57, 59, 68, 94, 118, 121, 135–36 Giuliani, Rudolph, 38 Glass-Steagall Act, 102–3, 119–20 Globe.com, 59, 60 gold and devaluation of the dollar, 142, 167–68 and the price of oil, 68–72 Gold (Lewis), 141, 171 Goldman Sachs, 41, 44, 45, 46, 127 Google, 143 Gorman, James, 123, 130 government. See federal government Gray, Freddie, 135 Grazer, Brian, 22–23, 24–25, 26 Great Depression, 106, 141–43, 147, 168 The Greatest Trade Ever (Zuckerman), 45, 120 Greenspan, Alan, 119, 120, 164 Greider, William, 121 Griffin, Ken, 41 Guest, Christopher, 22 Guillies, Wendy, 175 Hamm, Harold, 73 Hanks, Tom, 22 Hannah, Daryl, 23 Harbaugh, Jim, 16–18, 20, 21, 79, 103, 127 hard assets, 118 Harford, Tim, 32, 64–65 Hartnett, Josh, 24 Hastert, Dennis, 52 Hawaiian Airlines, 34–35 Hawn, Goldie, 24 Hayward, Steven, 49, 50 Hazlitt, Henry, 22, 64, 74, 113, 163, 176 Heaven Can Wait (film), 23 hedge-fund managers, 48 Heller, Walter, 54 Hemingway, Ernest, 91 Hendrickson, Mark, 80 high-yield “junk bonds,” 37–40, 126 Hilsenrath, Jon, 147, 148 Hoffman, Dustin, 23 Hoke, Brady, 16, 20–21, 78–79, 103, 115, 127, 128, 148 Hollywood Shuffle (film), 109 Hoover, Herbert, 142, 168 Hoover Institution, 102 housing booms and “easy credit,” 113–22 and value of the dollar, 116–22 housing market and mortgage-backed securities, 150–52 Howard, Ron, 22–23 How We Got Here (Frum), 118 Human Action (von Mises), 20 Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, 165 hyperinflation in post-WWII Germany, 90–91 IBM, 53 Imagine Entertainment, 22–23 inflation Friedman’s view of, 136 inability of Fed to control, 159–61, 165 and value of the dollar, 43 inherited wealth, 29–30 initial public offering (IPO), 29, 124 innovation and definitions of success or failure, 29–30 and entrepreneurs, 66 and failure, 57–58 The Innovators (Isaacson), 31 insider trading, 38 Inside the Nixon Administration (Burns), 170 Intel, 143 intellectual property rights, 9–10 interest rates and the cost of credit, 1–3, 13–14, 47–48, 147 and the Fed on inflation as source of economic growth, 156–61, 165–66 housing boom and “easy credit,” 113–16, 120–22 and quantitative easing (QE) program, 149–51 Internet banking, 108, 111 Internet “bubble,” 57–58 Internet job creation, 178–79 investment banking, 123 Iron Man (films), 25 Ishtar (film), 23 Jagger, Mick, 25 James, LeBron, 137–38 Japan after World War II, 128 Bank of Japan and Nikkei index, 152, 159 job creation and robots, 176–80 Jobs, Steve, 30–31 Johnson, Lyndon B., 49, 53 Johnson, Mark, 153 Jones, Jesse, 167 “junk bonds,” 37–40, 126 Kalanick, Travis, 12, 13 Karlgaard, Rich, 160 Kashgar, 138 Kauffman Foundation, 175 Keaton, Diane, 24 Kelly, Jason, 126 Kennedy, John F., 49–50, 169 Kennedy, Robert F., 34 Keynesian economics, 78–82, 88, 93–96, 140–41 Keynes, John Maynard, 78, 147 Kickstarter, 110 Kiffin, Lane, 20 Kinski, Nastassja, 24 Knowledge and Power (Gilder), 57 Kohli, Shweta, 107 Kohn, Donald, 156 Kornbluth, Walter, 22 labor as credit, 15–21 Laffer, Arthur, 55, 137, 157, 158 Laffer curves, 50, 54–55 Lawrence, Jennifer, 37–38 Lee, Spike, 109, 110 Lending Club, 107–8 Leubsdorf, Ben, 156 Levy, Eugene, 22 Lewis, Nathan, 72, 137, 141–42, 144 LewRockwell.com website, 94 Lisa computer, 30 Lombard Street (Bagehot), 46 Luck, Andrew, 16–17 McAdams, Hall, 89–90, 104 McConnell, Mitch, 51 Mack, John J., 123, 130 Madoff, Bernard, 163 Mann, Windsor, 78 Margolis, Eric, 94, 96 market “bubbles,” 56–63 market forces and government spending, 59–60 price of goods versus price of dollars, 1–2 von Mises on, 20, 152 market intervention and the Fed, 159–61 Mazursky, Paul, 24 Medicare, 53, 78, 174 Merrill Lynch, 120 Metro public transit, 10–11 Meyer, Urban, 17–18 Microsoft, 30–31, 125, 143, 155 Milken, Michael, 38–40, 114, 126 Mill, John Stuart, 76 Mindich, Eric, 45–46 Mission Asset Fund, 107 mobile phones, 53–54 monetarism, 135–36, 138 money and Chinese economy, 135–36, 137 and economic activity, 3, 136–37, 140, 143 and gold standard, 68 and the Great Depression, 141–43, 147, 168 market monetarism, 138–39 as measure of wealth, 67–68 monetarism, 135–36, 138 “money multipliers” and “fractional lending,” 87–90 private money supplies, 144–45 and stable currency, 137, 144 Money and Foreign Exchange After 1914 (Cassel), 119 Moore, Gordon, 31 Moore, Stephen, 50–51 Morgan, J.


pages: 333 words: 76,990

The Long Good Buy: Analysing Cycles in Markets by Peter Oppenheimer

Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collective bargaining, computer age, credit crunch, data science, debt deflation, decarbonisation, diversification, dividend-yielding stocks, equity premium, equity risk premium, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, foreign exchange controls, forward guidance, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, gentrification, geopolitical risk, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, household responsibility system, housing crisis, index fund, invention of the printing press, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kondratiev cycle, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, Live Aid, low interest rates, market bubble, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shock, open economy, Phillips curve, price stability, private sector deleveraging, Productivity paradox, quantitative easing, railway mania, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, Shenzhen special economic zone , Simon Kuznets, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, stocks for the long run, tail risk, Tax Reform Act of 1986, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, tulip mania, yield curve

In the US, the Economic Recovery Act of 1981 brought in significant tax reform, which resulted in top rate income taxes falling from 70% in 1980 to 28% in 1986. Nondefence spending also fell dramatically and several industries were deregulated, including in the air transport and financial sectors, as the partial repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 removed barriers in the financial markets industry that had prevented institutions from combining across banking, securities and insurance businesses. Similar reforms were instituted in the UK, alongside a comprehensive programme of privatisation of a wide array of assets, including utilities.

Index 100 year bond 34 1920s, United States 148, 154, 157, 160 1945-1968, post-war boom 129–131 1960s ‘Nifty Fifty’ 114, 130–131, 233, 235 structural bear market 130 1970s Dow Jones 131 equity cycle 56 oil crisis 108 1980s bull markets 131–133 Dow Jones 15–16, 131–132 equity cycle 56–57 Japan 114, 148–149, 155–156, 158, 160–161, 162, 164 technology 12–15 1990s 16–17 Asia crisis 108, 133 equity cycle 57 S&P concentration 114 technology bubble 33, 93–94, 149–150, 156–157, 158–159, 161, 164 2000-2007 equity cycle 57 2007-2009 financial crisis 169–174 emerging markets 171–173 forecasting 19–21 growth vs. value company effects 94–96 impact 169–170 phases 171–174 quantitative easing 173–174, 178–179 sovereign debt 170, 171–173 structural bear market 110, 118–119 A accounting, bubbles 163–165 adjustment speed 74, 89–90 Akerflof, G.A. 23 American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) 154, 225, 235–236, 238 Asia crisis, 1998 108, 133 ASPF see Association of Superannuation and Pension Funds asset classes across phases 66–68 contractions and expansions 63–65 cyclical 83–89 defensive 83–89 diversification 42, 45–47, 178–179 growth 83–84, 90–96 and inflation 65–66, 70 levels of yield 74–76 relationship through cycle 68–76 returns across cycle 63–79 speed of adjustment 74 structural shifts 76–79 value 83–84, 90–96 see also bonds; commodities; equities Association of Superannuation and Pension Funds (ASPF) 77 AT&T see American Telephone and Telegraph austerity 239 Austria, 100 year bond 34 B bank margins 214–215 bear markets 49, 99–125 1960s 130 characteristics 100–106, 117–118 cyclical 105, 106–107 deflation 109, 113 duration 100–101, 106–111, 117 employment 121–124 event-driven 105, 107–109 false negatives 119–120 financial crisis 118–119 growth momentum 122–123 indicators 106, 108, 109–110, 119–125 inflation 101–103, 109, 121–122 interest rates 106, 111–113 prior conditions 121–124 private sector financial balance 124 profitability 115–117 recovery 101 risk indicator vs MSCI index 124–125 S&P 500 103–105 structural 105 triggers 101–105, 106, 108, 111 valuations 123 yield curve 122 behavioural factors 5, 22–25 Berlin Wall, fall of 133 Bernanke, B. 133 betas 65, 85 ‘Big Bang’ deregulation 12 Bing 237 Black Monday 16, 102, 148 Black Wednesday 16–17 ‘bond-like’ equities 96 bonds, 100 year 34 bond yields across phases 66–68, 72–76 current cycle 95–96, 191–193, 201–220 cyclical vs. defensive companies 87–88 and demographics 215–217 and equity valuations 72–76, 206–208 and growth companies 92–94 historical 43, 202 and implied growth 210–215 and inflation 65, 70 quantitative easing 173–174, 202–205 and risk asset demand 217–220 S&P 500 correlation 72–73 speed of adjustment 74, 89–90 ultra-low 201–220 and value companies 92–94 vs. dividends 78–79 vs. equities 43–45, 68–76, 78–79 Bretton Woods monetary system 102, 130–131 broadcast radio 154, 225 Bubble Act 147, 157 bubbles 143–165 1920s US 148, 154, 157, 160 1980s Japan 114, 148–149, 155–156, 158, 160–161, 162, 164 accounting 163–165 canal mania 152 characteristics 145–146 deregulation 157–159 easy credit 160–161 famous 145 financial innovation 158–159 government-debt-for-equity swaps 151–152 Mississippi Company 147, 151 ‘new eras’ 150–157 personal computers 155 psychology 144–145 radio manufacturing 154 railways 148, 152–154, 157, 160, 163 Shanghai composite stock price index 156 South Sea Company 147, 151, 153 structural bear markets 113 sub-prime mortgages 70, 102, 118, 133, 145, 159 technology, 1990s 33, 93–94, 149–150, 156–157, 158–159, 161, 164 tulip mania 146–147 valuations 161–162 bull markets 49, 127–142 characteristics 127–141 composition 138 cyclical 134–136 disinflation 131–133 duration 136–138, 139–141 equity performance 135–136 Great Moderation 133–134, 187–189 non-trending 138–141 post-war boom 129–131 quantitative easing 134 secular 127–134 United States 136 C canal mania 152 CAPE see cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio capital investment, Juglar cycle 3 CDO see collateralised debt obligations characteristics bear markets 100–109, 111, 117–118 bubbles 145–146 bull markets 127–141 cyclical bear markets 106–107 event-driven bear markets 108–109 structural bear markets 111 China 15, 156 Cold War 14–15, 133 collateralised debt obligations (CDO) 159 commodities across phases 66–68 Kitchin cycle 3 composition of bull markets 138 concentration structural bear markets 115 and technology 238–240 contractions asset performance 63–65 mini cycles 60 see also recessions Cooper, M. 162 corporate debt 65, 110, 114, 160–161 corporate profitability bear markets 107, 115–117 current equity cycle 185–186 monetary policy 239 credit crunch 78–79, 170, 171 crowds, psychology of 21–22, 144–145 cult of the equity 77–78 current equity cycle 57–58, 167–240 bank profitability 214–215 bond yields 191–193 demographic shifts 215–217 drivers 179–180 earnings per share 195–196 employment and unemployment 183–185 equity valuations 206–208 ‘first mile problem’ 226–227 future expectations 246–247 global relative performance 193–196 growth momentum 174–178, 182–183, 227–231 growth and value companies 190–196, 239–240 implied growth 210–215 inflation 180–182, 203–205 interest rates 180–182, 239–240 Japan, lessons from 196–200 lessons from 244–245 market and economy incongruence 174–178 monetary policy 178–179, 201–205 opportunities 230–231 profitability 185–186 quantitative easing 202–205 returns 174–179 risk asset demand 217–220 structural changes 76–79, 93–96, 169–200 technology 189–190, 221–241 term premium collapse 204–205 ultra-low bond yields 201–220 valuations 233–235 volatility 187–189 cycles 1970s 56 asset returns 63–79 cyclical vs. defensive companies 85–89 equities 49–62 growth vs. value companies 90–96 investment styles 81–96 long-term returns 29–47 riding 11–27 sectors 83–85 valuations 53 cyclical bear markets 105, 106–107, 117, 118 vs. event-driven 109 cyclical bull markets 134–136 cyclical companies bond yields 193 inflation 88 sectors 83–84 vs. defensive 85–89 cyclical growth 83–84 cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio (CAPE) 37–38, 44–45 cyclical value 83–84 D DDM see discounted dividend model debt levels bubbles 160–161 structural bear markets 110, 114 decarbonization 13 defensive companies 63–65 bond yields 193 inflation 88 Japan 198 sectors 83–84 vs. cyclical 85–89 defensive growth 83–84 defensive value 83–84 deflation bear markets 109, 113 Volker 102, 131 delivery solutions 226–227 demographics and zero bond yields 215–217 deregulation 12, 132–133, 157–159 derivative markets 158–159 design of policy 25–26 despair phase 50–52, 53, 55–56, 60, 66–68 cyclical vs. defensive companies 86, 88 growth vs. value companies 92 Dice, C. 161 Dimitrov, O. 162 discounted dividend model (DDM) 36, 69 discount rate 68 disinflation 131–133 disruption 1980s 12–15 current equity cycle 189–190, 221–241 electricity 226 historical parallels 222–227 printing press 223–224 railway infrastructure 224–227 telecoms 225–226 divergence, and technology 238–240 diversification 42, 45–47, 178–179 dividends asset yields 38–41, 69 reinvestment 38–40 value of future streams 209 vs. bonds 78–79 Dodd, D. 163, 164 domain registrations 12–13 dominance of technology 231–233 dotcoms 12–13, 33, 93–94, 102, 161, 237 Dow Jones 1970s 131 1980s 15–16, 131 Black Monday 16, 102, 148 Draghi, M. 17, 173 drivers of bull markets 138 current equity cycle 179–180 duration bear markets 100–101, 106–111, 117 bull markets 135–138, 139–141 cyclical bear markets 106–107, 117, 118 cyclical bull markets 135–136 dominance of technology 231–233 event-driven bear markets 108–109, 117–118 non-trending bull markets 139–141 structural bear markets 109–111, 117 term premia 204–205 DVDs 227 E earnings per share (EPS) bear markets 115–117 historical 189 since pre-financial crisis peak 195–196, 209–210 easy credit, and bubbles 160–161 ECB see European Central Bank Economic Recovery Act, 1981 132 efficient market hypothesis 4 electricity 226 email 13 employment 121–124, 183–185 Enron 164 environmental issues 13 EPS see earnings per share equities across phases 66–68 ‘bond-like’ 96 and bond yields 72–73, 74–76, 206–208 bull market performance 135–136 CAPE 37–38, 44–45 dividends 38–41, 69, 78–79, 209 and inflation 65–66, 70 mini/high-frequency cycles 58–61 narrowing and structural bear markets 114–115 overextension 36–37 phases of investment 50–58 quantitative easing 173–174, 178–179 S&P 500 historical performance 42 valuations and future returns 43–45 vs. bonds 43–45, 68–76, 78–79 equity cycle 49–62 1970s 56 1980s 56–57 1990s 57 2000-2007 57 current 57–58, 76–79 historical periods 56–58 length 49 mini/high-frequency 58–61 phases 50–56 structural shifts 76–79 equity risk premium (ERP) 35–38, 69–72, 210 ERM see exchange rate mechanism ERP see equ ity risk premium ESM see European stability mechanism Europe dividends 39–40 exchange rate mechanism 16–17, 111 Maastricht Treaty 17 market narrowing in 1990s 115 privatisation 132 quantitative easing 17, 204–205 sovereign debt crisis 170, 171–173 European Central Bank (ECB) 17, 171, 173 European Recovery Plan 129–131 European stability mechanism (ESM) 173 event-driven bear markets 105, 107–109, 117–118 vs. cyclical 109 excess see bubbles exchange rate mechanism (ERM) 16–17, 111 exogenous shocks 108 expansions, asset performance 63–65 F false negatives, bear markets 119–120 fat and flat markets 128, 139 features see characteristics Federal Reserve 16, 102, 131, 134, 150–151, 157, 203 financial crisis, 2007–2009 169–174 forecasting 19–21 growth vs. value company effects 94–96 impact 169–170 structural bear market 110, 118–119 financial innovation 158–159 ‘first mile problem’ 226–227 Fish, M. 19 fixed costs 84–85, 173–174 fixed income assets 35, 65, 69–70, 205 flat markets 138–141 see also non-trending bull markets forecasting 2008 financial crisis 19–21 bear markets 106, 108, 109–110, 119–125 behavioural aspects 22–25 difficulties of 18–22 future growth 211–212 neuroeconomics 24–25 and policy setting 25–26 recessions 20–21 and sentiment 21–25 short-term 17–18 weather 18–19 France Mississippi Company 147, 151 privatisation 132 Fukuyama, F. 15 future expectations 246–247 G Galbraith, J.K. 160 GATT see General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 129 Germany Bund yield 207 fall of Berlin Wall 133 wage inflation 185 Glasnost 14 Glass-Steagall Act, 1933 132 global growth 182–183 globalisation 14–16 global relative performance 193–196 global sales growth 212 global technology bubble 33, 93–94, 149–150, 156–157, 158–159, 161, 164 Goetzmann, F. 151 ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’ 129–131 Gold Standard 130 see also Bretton Woods monetary system Goobey, G.R. 77 Google 237 Gorbachev, M. 14 Gordon Growth model 209 government-debt-for-equity swaps 151–152 Graham, B. 161, 163, 164 Great Britain South Sea Company 147, 151, 153 see also United Kingdom Great Depression 4 Great Moderation 133–134, 187–189 Greenspan, A. 16, 113, 150–151 gross domestic product (GDP) cyclical vs. defensive companies 87 labour share of 185, 238–239 phases of cycle 52–53 profit share of, US. 186 growth bear markets 122–123 current equity cycle 174–178, 182–183, 227–231 technology impacts 227–231 and zero bond yields 208–210, 210–215 growth companies bond yields 92–94, 191–193 current cycle 190–196 definition 90–91 since financial crisis 94–96 interest rates 92–94 outperformance 239–240 sectors 83–84 vs. value 90–96 growth phase 50–52, 54–56, 67–68 cyclical vs. defensive companies 86 growth vs. value companies 92 Gulf war 102 H herding 21–22, 144–145 high-frequency cycles 58–61 historical performance 10 year bonds, US 43 bonds 43, 202 equities cycles 49, 56–58 S&P 500 38–39, 42 trends 29–31 holding periods 31–34 Holland, tulip mania 146–147 hope phase 50–52, 53–54, 55–56, 66–67 cyclical vs. defensive companies 86 growth vs. value companies 92 housing bubble, US 70, 102, 118, 133, 145, 159 Hudson, G. 163 I IBM 13, 155, 236 IMAP see Internet Message Access Protocol IMF see International Monetary Fund impacts of diversification 42, 45–47 financial crisis, 2007-2009 169–170 technology on current cycle 221–241 ultra-low bond yields 201–220 Imperial Tobacco pension fund 77 implied growth 210–215 income, Kuznets cycle 3 indicators bear markets 106, 108, 109–110, 119–125 cyclical bear markets 106 event-driven bear markets 108 structural bear markets 109–110 industrial revolution 224–226 industry leadership, S&P 500 232–233, 237–238 inflation asset performance 65–66, 70 bear markets 101–103, 109, 121–122 current equity cycle 180–182, 203–205 cyclicals 88 Volker 102, 131 Institute of Supply Management index (ISM) 59–61 bear markets 123 cyclical vs. defensive companies 86–87 interest rates bear markets 106, 111–113 current equity cycle 180–182, 239–240 growth vs. value companies 92–94 structural bear markets 111–113 and yield 69, 74–76 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 129 internet 12–13, 225–227 search 237 see also dotcoms Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) 13 inventories 84–85 Kitchin cycle 3 investment, Juglar cycle 3 investment cycle bear markets 122–123 current 57–58, 76–79 historical periods 56–58 lengths 49 mini/high-frequency 58–61 phases 50–56 structural shifts 76–79 see also cycles ISM see Institute of Supply Management index J Japan bubbles 114, 148–149, 155–156, 158, 160–161, 162, 164 defensive companies 198 dividends 39–40 lessons from 196–200 John Crooke and Company 160 Juglar cycle 3 K Kahneman, D. 22–23 Kennedy Slide bear market 102 Keynes, J.M. 22 Kindleberger, C.P. 22 Kitchin cycle 3 Kondratiev cycle 3 Kuznets cycle 3 L labour share of GDP 185, 238–239 land and property bubble, Japan 114, 148–149, 155–156, 158, 160–161, 162, 164 laptop computers 13 largest companies S&P 500 237–238 technology 234–237 light touch regulation 157–159 see also deregulation Live Aid 13–14 Loewenstein, G. 21–22 long-term returns 29–47 M Maastricht Treaty 17 Mackay, C. 21 market forecasts short-term 17–18 see also forecasting market narrowing structural bear markets 114–115 and technology 238–240 markets current equity cycle 174–178 psychology of 21–25, 144–145 see also bear markets; bubbles; bull markets market timing 41–43 market value of technology companies 234, 235–238 Marks, H. 6–7 Marshall Plan 129–131 MBS see mortgage-backed securities Microsoft 12, 236–237 mini cycles 58–61 Mississippi Company 147, 151 monetary policy 157–159, 178–179, 201–205, 239 austerity 239 European Central Bank 17, 171, 173 Federal Reserve 16, 102, 131, 134, 150–151, 157, 203 quantitative easing 17, 70–71, 119, 133–134, 173–174, 178–179, 202–205 Montreal Protocol 13 mortgage-backed securities (MBS) 159 MSCI indices 91 N narrow equity markets 114–115, 238–240 NASDAQ 149–150, 161 negative bond yields 201–220 demographics 215–217 and equity valuations 206–208 and growth 208–210 implied growth 210–215 monetary policy 201–205 quantitative easing 202–205 risk asset demand 217–220 neuroeconomics 24–25 ‘new eras’ 113–114, 150–157 ‘Nifty Fifty’ 114, 233 non-trending bull markets 138–141 nudges 26 O oil 108, 226 opportunities, technology 230–231 optimism phase 50–52, 54–56, 67–68 cyclical vs. defensive companies 86 growth vs. value companies 91–92 output gaps 4 Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) 171, 173 overextension 36–37 ozone layer 13 P pension funds 77, 218–219 Perestroika 14 Perez, C. 159 performance bull markets 134–136 current equity cycle 174–179 and cycles 53–56 diversification impacts 42, 45–47 dividends 38–41 equities vs. bonds 43–45 factors 41–45 historical trends 29–31 holding periods 31–34 interest rates 69, 74–76 long-term 29–47 market timing 41–43 risks and rewards 35–38 valuations 43–45 volatility 30–31 personal computing introduction 12–13, 155 phases 2007-2009 financial crisis 171–174 asset classes 66–68 bear markets 123 cyclical vs. defensive companies 86 of equities cycle 50–56 growth vs. value companies 91–92 Phillips curve 182 Plaza Accord, 1985 148–149, 158 PMI see purchasing managers’ index policy, design of 25–26 population decline 216 post-financial crisis see current equity cycle post-war boom 129–131 prediction see forecasting price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) 53–56 printing press 223–224 prior conditions to bear markets 121–124 private sector debt 65, 110, 114, 160–161 private sector financial balance 124 privatisation 132 productivity growth 227–230 profit labour share of 185, 238–239 share of GDP, US. 186 profitability banks 214–215 bear markets 107, 115–117 current equity cycle 185–186 property and land bubble, Japan 114, 148–149, 155–156, 158, 160–161, 162, 164 psychology bubbles 144–145 of markets 21–25 policy setting 25–26 public ownership 132 purchasing managers' index (PMI) 59–61, 86–87, 89–90 Q QE see quantitative easing Qualcom 149–150 quality companies 193 quantitative easing (QE) asset returns 70–71, 119, 178–179 bond yields 173–174, 202–205 start of 17, 133–134, 171 United Kingdom 17, 204–205 United States 134, 171, 202–204 R radio, expansion of 154, 225 Radio Corporation of America (RCA) 154 railways bubbles UK 148, 152–153, 157, 163 US 153–154, 160 infrastructure development 224–227 Rau, P. 162 RCA see Radio Corporation of America Reagan, R. 14, 131–132 real assets 68 real estate bubble, US 70, 102, 118, 133, 145, 159 recessions bear markets 101–103 current equity cycle 174–178 forecasting 20–21 recovery bear markets 101 current equity cycle 174–178 reinvestment of dividends 38–40 return on equity (ROE) 43–45 returns bull markets 134–136 current equity cycle 174–179 cycles 53–56 diversification impacts 42, 45–47 dividends 38–41 equities vs. bonds 43–45 factors 41–45 historical trends 29–31 holding periods 31–34 interest rates 69, 74–76 long-term 29–47 market timing 41–43 risks and rewards 35–38 valuations 43–45 volatility 30–31 reverse yield gap 77 risk assets, demand for 217–220 risk-free interest rate 68 risk indicators bear markets 119–125 event-driven bear markets 108 structural bear markets 110–111, 113–114 risk premia equity 35–38, 69 neuroeconomics 25 term premia 204–205 ROE see return on equity Rouwenhorst, G. 151 Russian debt default, 1997 108 S S&P 500 bear markets 103–105 and bond yields 72–73 concentration in 1990s 115 dividends 38–39 historical performance 38–39, 42 industry leadership 232–233, 237–238 and ISM 60 largest companies 237–238 US Treasury yields 206 sales growth 212 savings, current equity cycle 182 Schumpeter, J. 150 search companies 237 ‘search for yield’ 217–220 secondary-market prices 229–230 sectors across the cycle 83–85 dominance 231–233 secular bull market 127–134 disinflation 131–133 Great Moderation 133–134, 187–189 post-war boom 129–131 secular stagnation hypothesis 181 sentiment 5, 21–25 see also bubbles Shanghai composite stock price index 156 Shiller, R.J. 4–5, 23 short-term market forecasts 17–18 skinny and flat markets 139–140 smartphones 226, 229–230 Solow, R. 229 South Sea Company 147, 151, 153 sovereign debt crisis 170, 171–173 Soviet Union 14–15, 133 speed of adjustment 74, 89–90, 122–123 Standard Oil 235 structural bear markets 105, 109–115 1960s 130 bubbles 113 debt levels 110, 114 deflation 113 duration 109–111, 117 financial crisis, 2007 118–119 interest rates 111–113 narrow equity markets 114–115 ‘new eras’ 113–114 risk indicators 110–111, 113–114 triggers 111 volatility 105, 115 structural changes 6 1980s 12–15 current equity cycle 76–79, 93–96, 169–200 sub-prime mortgage bubble 70, 102, 118, 133, 145, 159 Summers, L. 181 Sunstein, C.R. 26 ‘super cycle’ secular bull market 127–134 see also secular bull market T technology 1920s America 154 bubble in 1990s 33, 93–94, 149–150, 156–157, 158–159, 161, 164 current equity cycle 189–190, 221–241 and disruption in 1980s 12–15 dominance 231–233 and growth 227–231 historical parallels 222–227 industrial revolution 224–226 Kondratiev cycle 3 largest companies 234–237 market value 234, 235–238 opportunities 230–231 personal computers 12–13, 155 printing press 223–224 railway bubbles 148, 152–154, 157, 160, 163 railway infrastructure 224–227 and widening gaps 238–240 telecommunications 13, 154, 225, 235–236, 238 telegrams 225 term premium collapse 204–205 TFP see total factor productivity growth Thaler, R.H. 26 Thatcher, M. 14, 132 Tokkin accounts 158 ‘too-big-to-fail’ 133 total factor productivity (TFP) growth 238–240 triggers bear markets 101–105, 106, 108, 111 cyclical bear markets 106 event-driven bear markets 108 structural bear markets 111 tulip mania 146–147 Tversky, A. 22–23 U ultra-low bond yields 201–220 demographics 215–217 and equity valuations 206–208 and growth 208–210 implied growth 210–215 monetary policy 201–205 quantitative easing 202–205 risk asset demand 217–220 UNCTAD see United Nations Conference on Trade and Development unemployment 121–124, 183–185 unexpected shocks 108 United Kingdom (UK) Black Wednesday 16–17 bond yields, historical 202 canal mania 152 deregulation 132 exchange rate mechanism 16–17, 111 privatisation 132 quantitative easing 204–205 railway bubble 148, 152–153, 157, 163 South Sea Company 147, 151, 153 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 129 United States (US) 10 year bond returns 43 Black Monday 16, 102, 148 bull markets 136 credit crunch 78–79, 170, 171 disinflation 132 dividends 38–39 Dow Jones 15–16, 131 equities in current cycle 207–208 housing bubble 70, 102, 118, 133, 145, 159 labour share of GDP 185, 238–239 market narrowing 114 NASDAQ 149–150, 161 ‘Nifty Fifty’ 114, 130–131, 233, 235 post-war boom 129–131 profit share of GDP 186 quantitative easing 133–134, 171, 202–204 radio manufacturing 154, 225 railway bubble 153–154, 160 stock market boom, 1920s 148, 154, 157, 160 vs.


pages: 600 words: 72,502

When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession With Economic Efficiency by Roger L. Martin

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, autism spectrum disorder, banking crisis, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, butterfly effect, call centre, cloud computing, complexity theory, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, do what you love, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Glass-Steagall Act, High speed trading, income inequality, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, Internet of things, invisible hand, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, open economy, Phillips curve, Pluto: dwarf planet, power law, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The future is already here, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, two-sided market, uber lyft, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto, zero-sum game

To reduce the risk of losing commercial timber to fire, forest managers introduce gaps across which the fires cannot easily pass, whether that is an existing road or a stream or a path that is bulldozed to impede a forest fire already underway. It creates productive separation in a system that is too tightly coupled to exhibit the requisite resilience. Productive separation has long been a tool in financial regulation. The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, which was part of the New Deal legislative agenda, was designed to create a firebreak between the banking and securities industries after the crash of 1929. To be sure, some historians do not believe that the crash of 1929 was driven by commercial banks inappropriately participating excessively in the securities business, but that was certainly the assumption of the framers of Glass–Steagall, which prevented commercial and investment banking institutions from venturing into each other’s businesses.

See business executives executive tenure, 155 expectations management, 87–88 experimentation, 119 Facebook, 54, 129, 134, 153, 191, 192 Fair Districts, Fair Elections, 204 Fair Districts Florida, 204 fame game, 64–65 Fannie Mae, 80–81, 137 fascism, 15 federal budget, 91 Federal Reserve Board, 31, 80, 103, 137 Fernandez, Brian, 188 Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Rule 2711, 112–113 Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Rule 5310, 64 financial institutions, 137–142 financial regulation, 107–108, 112, 139–141, 143 financial stress, 1–3 firebreaks, 107–109 First Call, 86, 112 fiscal cliff, 78–79, 100 Florange Act (France), 157 Florida, Richard, 67–68 foreign banks, 151 foreign competition, 63 Forrester, Jay, 176–177 forward-looking statements, 87 Founding Fathers, 40, 199 Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, 122–123 France, 157, 158 Freddie Mac, 80–81, 137 free markets, 40 free trade, 41–42, 56, 63, 66, 150–152 Freidin, Ellen, 204 French’s, 188–189 friction, 101–103, 113, 123–125, 142, 149–152 Friedman, Milton, 24 Fukushima nuclear facility, 100 Fung, Josie, 171 gaming the system, 84–94, 104, 143 Gates, Bill, 129 Gaussian distribution, 33–38, 44, 57, 59, 62–63, 76, 100, 106 GDP per capita growth, 8 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 41–42, 63, 150 General Electric (GE), 87 Gerry, Elbridge, 201 gerrymandering, 201–205, 207 Gibson, William, 16 Gingrich, Newt, 198, 199 Glass-Steagall Act, 107–108, 109 global financial crisis, 55, 77, 78, 80, 81, 85, 108–110, 137–138 globalization, 65–66 golden mean, 183 Gomez, Selena, 65 Good Jobs Institute, 126 Good Jobs Strategy, The (Ton), 124–125 Google, 54, 134, 153, 154 Google Android, 131 government digital services (GDS), 147–149, 163 government policies, 14–15 See also public policy GOV.UK website, 147–149, 163 Graham, John, 155 Great Depression, 4–7, 12, 15, 31, 41, 76, 159 Groh, Kevin, 188 Grosso, Beth, 165–169, 171, 172, 181 growth.


pages: 419 words: 130,627

Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase by Duff McDonald

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, bank run, Bear Stearns, Blythe Masters, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, business logic, centralized clearinghouse, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Exxon Valdez, financial innovation, fixed income, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, housing crisis, interest rate swap, Jeff Bezos, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market bubble, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, profit motive, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, risk/return, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Saturday Night Live, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, technology bubble, The Chicago School, too big to fail, Vanguard fund, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

A disciple of the objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand—author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead—Greenspan was a vocal, if often convoluted, proponent of free-market ideology and laissez-faire capitalism. Famous for his intentionally incomprehensible testimony in front of Congress—he was legendary for saying nothing in a complicated way—he was nevertheless widely trusted for his market acumen. Bankers particularly adored him. By relaxing the Glass-Steagall Act, he opened the door for banks to become major deal makers and create new financial empires. Passed in 1933 in response to the crash of 1929, Glass-Steagall was intended to prevent deposit-taking banks from incurring too much risk. Specifically, they could no longer speculate in the stock market.

Meanwhile, the honeymoon between Weill and Reed came to a swift end. By July 1999, the two men admitted that they were not getting along, and decided to split duties atop Citigroup. Reed took the “soft” ones—technology, legal, and personnel—and Weill maintained control of the company’s financial and business operations. On October 22, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. Reaching perhaps the height of his megalomania, Weill thought it prudent to issue a statement “congratulating” Congress and President Clinton for having done so. A mere three days later, Secretary of the Treasury Bob Rubin resigned his position and joined Citigroup as an adviser to the co-CEOs.

., 41 “fortress balance sheets,” 44–45, 160, 196, 227, 320 Fortress Investment Group, 227 Fortune, 29, 31, 76, 89–90, 103, 114, 124, 128, 140, 151, 165, 179, 187, 193, 195, 199, 204, 207, 228, 239, 257, 278, 283 Fortune 500, 55, 123 Foster & Marshall, 20 Fowler, John, 37, 43, 46, 201 Frank, Barney, 311, 318 Freddie Mac, 277, 280, 289, 292, 322–23 Freund, Peter, 139, 150 Friedman, Jon, 21, 134 Friedman, Milton, 6, 310 Friedman, Paul, 262 Fuld, Dick, 244, 279, 280, 281, 283, 285–88, 304, 323 Gasparino, Charlie, 244 Gates, Bill, 323 Geithner, Tim, 53, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 250, 255–56, 257, 259, 273, 282, 288, 293, 300, 315, 317, 318, 327 General Electric, 9, 12, 57, 90, 135, 213 General Motors, 200 Getty, J. Paul, 2 Glass-Steagall Act, 86–89, 103, 107, 140, 204 Glucksman, Lewis, 50, 77 GMAC, 305 Goldman Sachs, 15, 16, 19, 29, 31, 73, 97, 98, 115, 138, 142, 163, 190, 204, 208, 216, 217–18, 224–25, 227, 237, 240, 245, 250, 251, 267–75, 278, 282–92, 305, 306, 310, 315, 322 Golub, Harvey, 59–60, 100 Gore, Al, 139 Goyette, Richard Leon, 299 Grant, Jim, 305 Grant, Ulysses S., 136 Gray, William, 252 Great Depression, x, 20, 249 Greenberg, Alan “Ace,” 223, 265, 270 Greenhill, Robert, 66–75, 92, 94, 95, 124, 127 Greenhill & Co., 74 Greenspan, Alan, 86–89, 90, 103, 107, 162, 205 Griffin, Ken, 244, 286 Gross, Daniel, 205 Grubman, Jack, 163–64, 196 guaranteed investment contracts (GICs), 57–58 Guggenheimer, Joan, 79–80, 186, 219 Gutfreund, John, 91 Hall, John, 145 Hambrecht & Quist, 171–72 Hamilton, Alexander, 202 Hanley, Thomas, 125, 161 Harrison, William B., Jr., 171–201, 204, 219, 277 Harte, Jeff, 298 Harvard Business School, 8–14, 15, 16, 22, 30, 37–38, 81, 149, 326 Hayden Stone, 6, 8, 18, 48 Hayman Capital, 268 hedge funds, 9, 95, 107–14, 116, 194, 205, 217–18, 227, 228, 251, 272, 276, 287 Hellman, Warren, 27–28, 52 Helyar, John, 28 Hendler, David, 226 Herlihy, Ed, 261 Herman, Marvin, 152 Hernandez, Carlos, 189 H.


pages: 589 words: 128,484

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve by Roger Lowenstein

bank run, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Lindbergh, corporate governance, fiat currency, financial independence, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Ida Tarbell, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Michael Milken, Money creation, moral hazard, off-the-grid, old-boy network, quantitative easing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Upton Sinclair, walking around money

Bankers opposed it as an invitation to reckless banking. Although the idea of insurance did have support in the House, Glass thought the Senate’s version was poorly structured. At 1:30 a.m. on Monday, the deposit guarantee was stricken. (Deposit insurance would finally be established when Glass was in the Senate, in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933—too late to avert the Depression-era bank runs.) Only the makeup of the board remained unsettled. The Senate bill called for six appointees in addition to the Treasury secretary. The House fancied a board that was little more than an appendage of the White House, including three sitting members of the administration.

Carter Glass, who as a junior representative had studied banking in his hotel room at nights, became a Senate authority on finance. He sponsored an amendment to create the Securities and Exchange Commission as a stand-alone agency rather than, as had been proposed, part of the Federal Trade Commission. Thus, he played a pivotal role in the three major financial reforms—the Fed, the SEC, and the Glass-Steagall Act—of the twentieth century. Within the upper chamber, he oversaw the Banking Act of 1935, which strengthened the Reserve Board—the little “capstone” that had once appalled him. The 1935 act divorced the board from the executive branch, removing the Treasury secretary and the comptroller of the currency from the directors’ table, and lengthened terms to fourteen years (all as Vanderlip had proposed in 1913).

., 116, 295 Ford, Henry, 198 Forgan, James, 55, 121, 129, 184, 187, 216, 297, 323, 324 Aldrich’s negotiations with, 130–31 Glass-Owen opposed by, 219, 228–29, 231 Fowler, Charles, 33, 78 France, 35, 85, 86, 87, 93, 265 America’s financing of, 262 England’s war with, 83 free trade, 37 French Revolution, 84 Frick, Henry Clay, 196 Friedman, Milton, 25n, 269 Gage, Lyman, 25–28, 47 Georgia, 106, 190 Germany, 29, 55, 84–85, 86, 112, 264 financial system of, 30 Gilded Age, 42, 197 bankers in, 6 economics in, 83 Gladstone, William, 166 Glass, Carter, 11, 19, 34, 118, 179, 196, 199, 255–56, 259, 304, 311, 312, 314, 315, 317, 318, 319, 321, 327, 331 ABA bankers and, 184–85, 216–17, 219–22, 228–29 background of, 17, 153, 204 banking bill framed by, 171–73, 188–89, 191, 192, 195, 196, 201–3, 205–9, 212–14 bank reform and, 128 centralization resisted by, 177, 187–88, 252 as chair of Banking Committee legislative panel, 151–56, 160, 164–65, 199, 224, 310 and congressional debates on Glass-Owen, 228–30, 233, 240n, 241–42, 245–49, 251–53 at Democratic convention of 1896, 21–22 Federal Reserve Banks and, 181n money systems in early life of, 11, 13, 15 as newspaper proprietor, 18, 20, 22, 153 Owen’s feud with, 266–67, 268 SEC legislation by, 266 as Senate authority on finance, 266 subcommittee hearings by, 184–86 Trenton plan of, 188–89, 313 Untermyer and, 155–56, 204–5, 268 Warburg and, 247, 261 Wilson’s meeting with, 178, 179–84 Glass bill, 188–89, 191, 193, 195, 196, 206–9, 214, 216 Warburg’s analysis of, 202–3 Glass-Owen bill, 217–22, 224–37, 240–53, 265, 329 Aldrich Plan and, 225 Democratic caucus and, 322 in House Banking Committee, 209, 214, 219, 221–22, 224–25 in House of Representatives, 221, 229–31, 241, 329 O’Gorman and Reed’s shift on, 328 in Senate, 231–51, 329 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 249, 266 gold, 11–12, 15n, 209, 237, 270 Bank of England and, 56–57, 83, 85 decentralization of reserves of, 31–32 Federal Reserve System and, 334 international movements of, 264 intrinsic value of, 13 in Klondike, 26 money backed by, 128 Panic of 1907 and, 59 in Reserve Banks, 181, 213, 227, 246 reserves of, 113, 189 San Francisco earthquake and movement of, 51–54 in United States, 85 World War I and, 260, 262 gold certificates, 15n gold coins, 15n, 249 Goldman Sachs, 121–22 gold standard, 16, 20, 41, 230, 244, 258, 277 abandonment of, 259 Bryan’s opposition to, 23–24 Glass’s opposition to, 18 McKinley’s support of, 37 Republican Party and, 21 silver and, 16, 19–20, 230, 277 González, Henry, 258 Goodwin, Doris Kearns, 163n government: Aldrich Plan and safeguards against, 113, 140 progressives and, 44 small, 2 government bonds, 14, 24, 217, 220 government securities, 79n, 261–62 Grant, James, 80 Gray, Andrew L., 291 Great Britain, 36, 48, 70, 84, 93, 197, 328 America’s financing of, 262 commercial banking in, 85 gold standard in, 16, 22 interest rates in, 48 Lombard Street financiers in, 17 greenbacks, 15–16, 19, 249 Gresham’s Law, 19 Greystone, 203, 205 Griffin, G.


pages: 545 words: 137,789

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy

Abraham Wald, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, asset-backed security, availability heuristic, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centralized clearinghouse, collateralized debt obligation, Columbine, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, different worldview, diversification, Elliott wave, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Gunnar Myrdal, Haight Ashbury, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income per capita, incomplete markets, index fund, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Landlord’s Game, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, mental accounting, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, negative equity, Network effects, Nick Leeson, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, price discrimination, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rent control, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, Tax Reform Act of 1986, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Two Sigma, unorthodox policies, value at risk, Vanguard fund, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, zero-sum game

“After all, I would take an oath of office that would commit me to uphold the Constitution of the United States and those laws whose enforcement falls under the purview of the Federal Reserve. I planned to be largely passive in such matters and allow other Federal Reserve governors to take the lead.” As the years went on, Greenspan honored this pledge mainly in the breach. During the 1990s, he played a key role in the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era legislation that prevented depository institutions, such as Citigroup and Wells Fargo, from taking part in investment banking activities, such as peddling stocks, bonds, and mortgage securities. In 1990, the Fed allowed J.P. Morgan to become the first commercial bank to underwrite securities.

Under the proposed reforms, the administration would oblige banks to keep some of the mortgage securities they distribute on their own books, but just 5 percent. Unlike in the 1930s, no thought has been given to splitting up the essential utility aspects of the financial system—customer deposits, check clearing, and other payment systems—and the casino aspects, such as investment banking and proprietary trading. There will be no return to the Glass-Steagall Act, which means “too big to fail” financial supermarkets, such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, will continue to dominate the financial system. The administration has said new mandatory capital requirements will be extended to any financial firm “whose combination of size, leverage and interconnectedness could pose a threat to financial stability if it failed,” but none of these terms has been defined, and it isn’t clear how far the new rules will be applied to big hedge funds, private equity firms, and the finance arms of industrial companies.

Germain Depository Institutions Act (1982) Garzarelli, Elaine Gates, Bill GE Capital Geithner, Timothy General Electric general equilibrium theory generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) General Motors General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The (Keynes) GeoCities George Mason University Gerard, Harold Germany Nazi Glasgow University Glass-Steagall Act (1933) Gleason, Jeffrey Global Crossing global warming, see climate change Gödel, Kurt Goldman Sachs and AIG bailout government safety net for compensation of CEO of credit default swaps of reduction in assets of subprime mortgage securities issued by VAR models used by Google Goolsbee, Austan Gorbachev, Mikhail Gore, Al Gorton, Gary Goskomsten Gosplan Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) Gramlich, Edward Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), see Financial Services Modernization Act (1999) Grateful Dead Great Crunch Great Depression Federal Reserve policies and financial statutes created during laissez-faire and unemployment during “Greater Fool” theory of investing Great Moderation Greeks, ancient Greenberg, Alan “Ace” Greenberg, Maurice “Hank” Greenberger, Michael Greenspan, Alan bubbles and Congressional testimony of deregulation advocated by development of new financial products encouraged by funds rate set by laissez-faire policy of political career of as Rand’s disciple retirement of Smith’s influence on on virtues of subprime mortgages Greenwald, Bruce gross domestic product (GDP) of Chile under Pinochet decline in health care spending as percentage of indebtedness relative to productivity and TARP as percentage of technical progress and Grossman, Sanford GSAMP TRUST 2006-NC2 Gulf Oil Guttentag, Jack Haldane, Andrew Hamilton, Alexander Hansen, Alvin Harberger, Arnold Hardin, Garrett harmony, illusion of Harrod, Roy Harvard University behavioral economics at Galbraith at John F.


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Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, bank run, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Big Tech, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, centralized clearinghouse, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, David Graeber, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, diversification, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, electricity market, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, High speed trading, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", John Bogle, John Markoff, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, Ponzi scheme, principal–agent problem, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, TED Talk, The Chicago School, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Tobin tax, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, zero-sum game

He continued to work on Wall Street after his public shaming, even though he left National City in disgrace just days after taking the stand and paid government officials (with whom he’d done many cozy deals) $1.1 million in back taxes.35 The crisis had one big upside, though. Senator Glass, along with Congressman Henry Steagall, crafted the Glass-Steagall Act to separate commercial and investment banking in the United States. For more than six decades afterward, the law helped to ring-fence commercial lending from risky proprietary trading. Glass-Steagall also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured bank depositors up to $5,000 each, reducing the risk of bank runs and assuring the general public that it would be safe in case of a financial crisis.

They are the markets. They trade the products in the markets, and, as this story shows, they can also own the things that are being traded in those markets. If that’s not an oligopoly, I’m not sure what is. It’s also one of the best arguments I’ve heard for reinstating a modern version of the Glass-Steagall Act and for closing the loopholes that allow banks to engage in commerce. American industries simply shouldn’t have to compete in their core businesses with their own bankers. And what of the world’s poorest people, the one billion who still don’t have enough to eat each day, in part because of Wall Street speculation?

As we’ve seen, even the smartest global risk managers at the most reputable institutions don’t know everything that’s going on inside their firms because, as former CFTC chair Gary Gensler pointed out, “it’s not possible to know.”1 How could anyone fully police the millions of transactions happening daily in a US financial system worth $81.7 trillion?2 In that sense, there is reason to worry about how much the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 will actually do to make our financial system safer, because the law itself is incredibly complicated. Dodd-Frank is 2,319 pages long, as compared to the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated investment banking from commercial banking in just 37 pages. The length of Dodd-Frank reflects the efforts of lobbyists outlined in chapter 10. It also creates ample new loopholes for clever lawyers to jump through. Critics who argue that reinstating Glass-Steagall wouldn’t be a silver bullet to avoiding financial crises are correct.


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The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy by Mervyn King

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, classic study, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, distributed generation, Doha Development Round, Edmond Halley, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, large denomination, lateral thinking, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, no-fly zone, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Satoshi Nakamoto, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, stem cell, Steve Jobs, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, yield curve, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

The gross market value of derivatives has fallen since the crisis, but at just over $20 trillion at the end of 2014 it was still around one-half of the assets of the largest twenty banks in the world (and of the same order of magnitude as total lending to households and businesses).16 Second, the focus of much of banking changed from making loans, which requires a careful local assessment of potential borrowers, to trading securities, which involves a centralised operation to make and monitor transactions. The rise of US investment banks played a large part in that development. Commercial and investment banking, separated after the Glass-Steagall Act, were merged in large conglomerate banks after the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Standalone investment banks that were previously organised as partnerships turned themselves into limited liability companies – Morgan Stanley in 1975, Lehmans in 1982 and Goldman Sachs in 1999.

As the father of English commercial law, Lord Mansfield, put it in 1761 as the Industrial Revolution was gathering pace: ‘The daily negotiations and property of merchants ought not to depend upon subtleties and niceties; but upon rules easily learned and easily retained, because they are the dictates of common sense, drawn from the truth of the case.’9 Not many people can easily absorb and retain the totality of current financial regulation, and those who try are not left with the impression that it is common sense. The Dodd-Frank Act passed in the US in 2010 contained 2300 pages, with many thousands of pages more expected to cover the detailed rules that will follow, whereas the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated commercial and investment banking, covered a mere thirty-seven pages.10 In Britain, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority have combined rulebooks exceeding ten thousand pages.11 Such complexity feeds on itself and brings the system into disrepute.

., 308 resolution mechanisms, 256, 279 Richardson, Gordon, 176 risk, 84, 121–2, 123, 124, 126–9, 143, 254; implicit taxpayer subsidy for, 191–2, 207, 254–5; maturity and risk transformation, 104–15, 117–19, 250–1, 254–5; ‘optimising’ model, 129–31, 132, 134, 138, 309, 311; risk premium, 32–3, 115, 183; risk weights, 138–9, 258–9, 277 Robinson, Joan, 12, 292–3 Rodrik, Dani, 348 Rogoff, Kenneth, 44, 308 Rome, ancient, 59, 164, 216 Roosevelt, President Franklin, 91, 316 Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), 37, 89, 118, 206, 243 Russia, 121, 159 saving, 101–2, 155, 308–17, 362–3; in emerging economies, 22–3, 27–8, 29, 30; ‘paradox of thrift’, 297, 326; ‘savings glut’, 28, 29, 30, 46, 319, 325; as source of future demand, 11, 46, 84–5, 185, 325–6, 356 Schacht, Hjalmar, 341–2, 343 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 211 Scholes, Myron, 120–1 Schumpeter, Joseph, 152 Schwartz, Anna, 192, 328 Scotland, 218, 243–7, 248 Second World War, 20, 21, 219, 242, 317, 342 secular stagnation theory, 44, 291–2, 355 Seneca, 123–4 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, 124 ‘shadow’ banking system, 107, 112–14, 256, 262, 274 Shiller, Robert, 151 Silber, William, 206 Simons, Henry, 262 Sims, Christopher, 79 Slovakia, 216 Smith, Adam, 17–18, 54–5, 79–80, 163 Smith, Ed, 124 sovereign debt (government bonds), 32, 65, 92, 138, 182–4, 196–7, 203, 258, 259, 338–40; bond yields, 29, 183–4, 224, 227, 228, 231, 299, 336; in euro area, 162, 190, 224, 226–31, 258, 338, 339–40, 342–4; framework for restructuring, 346–7; need for export surplus before payment, 339–40, 341–3; WW1 reparations, 340–2, 343, 345–6 Soviet Union, 27, 68, 216 Spain, 47, 93, 159, 216, 221, 222, 227–8, 229, 257–8, 355, 363–4 special purpose vehicles, 113–14 stock markets, 102, 125–6, 133, 151–4, 194, 195, 200, 347 Stresemann, Gustav, 219 Summers, Larry, 44 Sweden, 159, 166, 173, 179, 216–17, 279, 335 Swift, Jonathan, ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’ (1703), 250, 290 Switzerland, 33, 70, 100, 118, 184, 216, 335 Syed, Matthew, 124 Taylor, John, 168 technological change, 83–4, 127, 129, 153–4, 281, 291, 354, 355, 365 Tequila crisis (1994), 367 Thaler, Richard, 132 Thornton, Henry, 188 Tobin, James, 262 trade surpluses and deficits, 33, 34, 46, 319, 321–2, 329, 352, 356, 364; in emerging economies, 27–8, 30, 329; in EMU, 222, 232–3, 236, 363–4; and exchange rates, 22–3; and interest rates, 23, 30, 46, 319–20; likely re-emergence of, 48–9 trading, financial, 3, 24, 64, 99–100, 257; bonuses, 99, 101, 117, 144, 147; erosion of ethical standards, 100–1, 288; ‘front-running’, 153–4, 284 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 361 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 361 Trichet, Jean-Claude, 225 trust, 10, 81–3, 106; and monetary unions, 220, 232, 237; and money, 8, 55, 57, 66–71, 82–3, 155 Tsipras, Alexis, 230, 231 Tuckett, Professor David, 133–4 Turner, Adair, 324 Tversky, Amos, 132 unemployment, 38, 292, 293, 294, 297–9, 302, 326–7, 329, 330; in euro area, 45, 226, 228, 229–30, 232, 234, 345; and inflation targeting, 168, 169; and interest rates, 169, 298–300; ‘stagflation’ (1970s), 5, 302–3, 318 United Kingdom: Acts of Union (1707), 215; alternative strategies for pre-crisis period, 328–32; Banking Act (2009), 40; Banking and Joint Stock Companies Act (1879), 109; Banking Reform Act (2013), 40; ‘Big Bang’ (1986), 23; City of Glasgow Bank failure (1878), 108–9; commercial property market, 47, 118; Currency and Bank Notes Act (1914), 198; Labour government (1964-70), 20; as monetary union, 215; need for export sector support, 357, 364; return to gold standard (1920s), 76; Scottish independence referendum (2014), 218, 243–5, 248; trade deficits, 30, 321, 322, 329, 364; tradition of national branch banking, 116; see also Bank of England United Nations, 214–15 United States: 1914 financial crisis, 192–201, 206; Aldrich-Vreeland Act (1908), 196, 206; Bureau of War Risk Insurance (1914), 200; Constitution, 286; Dodd-Frank Reform (2010), 40, 260; dollar and gold link, 73, 195, 200–1; dollar as world’s reserve currency, 25, 28, 34; ‘double liability’ (1865-1934), 107–8; ‘free banking’ era, 60–2, 77, 161; Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 23, 98, 260; gold reserves, 74, 77; Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), 23, 98; history of money in, 57–8, 67, 68, 160–1, 187, 188, 212, 215; as monetary union, 212, 215, 234; need for export sector support, 357, 364; New York becomes world money centre, 194–5, 200–1; notes and coins in, 281; Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, 137, 206; trade deficits, 30, 34, 46, 49, 319, 321, 329, 364 Van Court’s Counterfeit Detector and Bank Note List, 61 Vietnam War, 5, 20, 73, 306 Viniar, David, 123 Volcker, Paul, 176, 288 Voltaire, 126 Wall Street Crash (1929), 347 Walpole, Horace, 369 Walras, Léon, 79 Washington, George, 286 Weatherstone, Sir Dennis, 136–7, 278 weights and measures, 212, 286, 287 Wheeler, Judge Thomas C., 162 wholesale funding, 97 Willetts, David, 83 Wilson, Brigadier-General Henry, 89 Wimbledon tennis championships, 142, 187–8 Wolf, Martin, 96, 262 World Bank, 21, 350 World Trade Organisation, 361 Yellen, Janet, 176, 287 Yugoslavia, break-up of, 216 Zimbabwe, 68, 69–70 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mervyn King was Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013, and is currently Professor of Economics and Law at New York University and School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.


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Stocks for the Long Run 5/E: the Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long-Term Investment Strategies by Jeremy Siegel

Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, backtesting, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, book value, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, carried interest, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, compound rate of return, computer age, computerized trading, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Deng Xiaoping, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, dogs of the Dow, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, fundamental attribution error, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John Bogle, joint-stock company, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, machine readable, market bubble, mental accounting, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, Northern Rock, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uptick rule, Vanguard fund

It is quite likely that bondholders will suffer a similar fate as the liquidity created by the world’s central banks turns into stronger economic growth and higher inflation. Legislative Fallout from the Financial Crisis Just as the Great Depression generated a host of legislation such as the Securities and Exchange Act, which created the SEC, the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banks, and establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the financial crisis of 2008 spurred legislators to design laws to prevent a repeat of the financial collapse. The result was embodied in a massive 849-page piece of legislation crafted by Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) and Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass), called the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in July 2010.

However, this proposal was later modified to allow up to 3 percent of the capital of banks to go into proprietary trading and exempts hedging operations as well as trading in U.S. Treasury debt. The Volker rule was designed to restore the separation between investment banks and commercial banks that was first mandated by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 but was effectively repealed by Congress in 1999 in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. But would the Volcker amendment, had it been law in 2007, have prevented the 2008 financial crisis? The financial crisis was caused by the overleveraging of real estate-related securities in Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, which were investment banks and would not have fallen under the purview of the Volcker amendment.

See also Outperforming the market capitalization-weighted indexes in, 368–371 costs vs. returns in, 366–367 of equity mutual funds, 358–363 fundamentally weighted indexes in, 369–372 informed trading and, 366 insufficient information in, 364–365 introduction to, 357 money managers for, 363–364 passive investing in, 367–368 underperformance of managed money in, 363–365 Fundamental analysts, 311 “Fundamental Indexation,” 371 Fundamentally weighted indexes, 369–372, 376 Fundamentals of economics, defined, 159 Future of stock market valuation, 169–172 Futures contracts, defined, 276 Futures, defined, 276 Futures market, 294–296 GAAP (Generally accepted accounting principles), 150–156 Gaps, 295 Gas producers, 129 GDP (gross domestic product) in 1980–2035, 67 after 2008 financial crisis, 39–42 future of, 64–65 globally, 197 in stock market valuation, 166 General Electric, 106, 115–116, 205 General Food, 129 General Motors (GM), 54–55, 125–126, 182 The General Theory , 309, 377 Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), 150–156 GICS (Global Industrial Classification Standard), 120, 203–205 Given before-tax returns, 139 Glass-Steagall Act, 52–53 Glassman, James, 16, 181 Global Industrial Classification Standard (GICS), 120, 203–205 Global investing conclusions about, 206 countries in, 202–203 diversification in, 198–205 economic growth and, 196–198 foreign exchange risk and, 201–202 GDP and, 40–42 international incorporations in, 203 international stock returns in, 199 introduction to, 195–196 as investment strategy, 375–376 market bubbles and, 199–200 private vs. public capital in, 206 sector allocation in, 202–205 September effect and, 330–333 stock risks in, 201–206 Global Wealth Allocation, 371 Globex, 279–280 GM (General Motors), 54–55, 125–126, 182 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 105 Goetzmann, Bill, 76 Gold after 2008 financial crisis, 48, 51–52 backing by.


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Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Henri Poincaré, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, junk bonds, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, meme stock, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, short squeeze, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, working-age population, yield curve

It became clear that the country would suspend convertibility as its gold supply failed to keep up with the country’s needs. Glass tried to forestall that. A first Glass–Steagall Act, passed in February 1932, gave the Fed the ability to issue notes against government securities. It also gave Fed banks a temporary authority to loan to member banks against “satisfactory” collateral, at high interest rates, when the borrowing bank had used up its typically eligible assets. “The decline of the real bills doctrine brought by the Glass–Steagall Act of 1932 opened the door for further legislation that expanded the Fed’s powers,” Parinitha Sastry would write in a carefully researched history of the Fed’s authority.[44] Charles Sumner Hamlin, the Fed governor, saw the open door and walked right through it.

., 50–1; state banks, 47–8, 336n16; weaknesses in, 6, 9, 157 financial panic of 1873, 49, 50 Financial Stability Board, 168–9, 173–4, 265–6, 268–9, 293, 347n20 Financial Stability Oversight Council, 103, 116, 169 Fink, Laurence “Larry,” 189, 209–10 First Name Club (Jekyll Island meeting), 54–6, 54n, 60–1, 200 First Security Corporation (FSC), 64–6, 64n Florida, Main Street program in, 245–9 Floyd, George, 220–3 food pantries and soup kitchens, 288–9, 352n10 fractional banking system, 44–5, 335n9 France, 63, 266, 338n85 free-market economics/capitalism, 83, 120–1, 214–16, 264–5 Friedman, Milton, 79–80, 242, 338n85 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act, 80, 81 G Gamble, Monroe, 229–31, 233 GameStop, 52n, 291–2 Geithner, Tim, 14–15, 91–2, 342n37 George, Esther, 285 Gill, Keith, 291 Gillespie, Sean, 24n Gini index, 348n19 Glass, Carter, 55–8, 62, 68, 159–60, 180, 337n52 Glass–Steagall Act, 159–60 gold and the gold standard: Bretton Woods system and linking dollars to gold, 75–6; fractional banking system, 44–5, 335n9; gold standard and currency backed by gold, 49–50, 57, 60, 62, 63, 63n, 75–6, 159, 236, 275; gold standard policy and the Depression, 63, 63n, 75, 159–60, 338n85; greenbacks and the gold standard, 48–50; Nixon shock and end of tying dollar’s value to gold, 78; presidential power to set price of, 75; sealed and unsealed deposits, 335n9; state banks and gold-backed money, 47 Goldman Sachs, 37, 55, 156, 157, 169, 178, 193, 342n37 Gonzalez, Henry, 85–8, 86n Gorman, James, 155–6, 156n, 157 Grant, Ulysses S., 118, 287 Great Inflation, 79, 93, 115 Great Moderation, 81 greenback currency, 48–50 Greenback Party and movement, 50, 226 Greenspan, Alan: appearance of, 85; background and expertise of, 23, 83; Bernanke as successor to, 89; chairmanship of, 23, 24, 82–9, 90–2, 96–7; congressional testimony of, 85–8; economy during chairmanship of, 23, 82–3; regulation under, 90–2; secretive Fed under, 23, 23n, 83–9, 88n; on transparency of Fed, 201 H Hamilton, Alexander, 45–6, 338n85 Hamlin, Charles Sumner, 60, 160 hedge funds, 31, 35, 103, 147, 149, 169, 171–2, 171n, 193, 194, 216, 292, 345n12 Heinze, F.


pages: 296 words: 78,112

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green

4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bernie Sanders, Biosphere 2, Black Lives Matter, business climate, Cambridge Analytica, Carl Icahn, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, coherent worldview, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate raider, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, data science, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, guest worker program, hype cycle, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Jim Simons, junk bonds, liberation theology, low skilled workers, machine translation, Michael Milken, Nate Silver, Nelson Mandela, nuclear winter, obamacare, open immigration, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, quantitative hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, urban planning, vertical integration

— Two big things were going on at Goldman Sachs in the late 1980s. The globalization of world capital markets meant that size suddenly mattered. Everyone realized that the firm, a private partnership, would eventually have to go public to keep pace with its competitors. Bankers also could see that the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial and investment banking was going to fall, setting off a flurry of acquisitions. Young bankers like Bannon were trained to be generalists. In the world to come, specialists would command a premium. After spending a year in Goldman’s London office, Bannon shipped out to Los Angeles to learn the media and entertainment businesses.

., III, 43 Conway, Kellyanne, xii, 1–2, 7, 11, 18–19, 43, 114–16, 131, 200–202, 209 Cosby, Bill, 150, 218, 221 Coulter, Ann, 30, 43, 166 Crédit Lyonnais, 75–79 Cruz, Ted, 45, 117, 123, 131, 181, 185–88, 191, 196, 200 Cuban, Mark, 95, 218 Cuomo, Andrew, 112–15 Daily Beast, 168 DeBerry, Marshall, 53 DeFazio, Peter, 121, 122 Democratic Party, Democrats, 115, 141, 157, 211, 226, 235, 236 Bannon and, 49, 58 Hillary Clinton and, 158, 159 immigration and, 108, 109 Trump and, 93, 113, 220, 225, 240–41 DiPietro, David, 112 Dole, Bob, 25, 193 Doral Resort and Spa, 105n Drexel Burnham Lambert, 68–69, 72 Drudge, Matt, 12, 13, 43, 85, 91, 143 Drudge Report, 11, 85, 86, 108, 132, 153, 164 Duck Dynasty, 137–39 Dugin, Alexander, 207–8 Eisenhower, Dwight, 103 Election Day, 226, 233, 235 Election Night, 1–3, 7–8, 11–20, 94n European Union (EU), 206, 207 Evola, Julius, 205–7 Fahrenkopf, Frank, 218 Fahrenthold, David, 214 Fallon, Brian, 135, 226, 232 Farage, Nigel, xii, 6, 138, 207 FBI, 76, 149, 165, 238 Hillary Clinton and, 8–10, 228–29, 235 Federalist Society, 123 Fields, Michelle, 149 Fieler, Sean, 121 financial crisis of 2008, 71, 87–88 Firm, The, 80–81 Flynn, Michael, 238 Ford, Gerald, 193 Foster, Vincent, 25, 104 Fox & Friends, 167, 174 Fox News, 4, 39, 90, 91, 100, 104, 108–9, 137, 146, 149 Ailes sexual harassment charges and, 194–96 debates hosted by, 167–72, 180–82, 192 Trump’s problems with, 167–74, 179, 180 Francis, Pope, 206 Freedom Summit, 111 Gaffney, Frank, 125 Gang of Eight, 107–10, 167 Gaspin, Jeff, 95 Gates, Rick, 201 Geller, Pamela, 125 General Electric (GE), 73, 160 Generation Zero, 87, 88 Georgetown University, 60 Gibson, Mel, 134 Giles, Hannah, 89 Gingrich, Newt, xii, 25, 26, 28, 29, 105 Giuliani, Judith, 18 Giuliani, Rudy, xii, 199, 201, 215, 218 Giustra, Frank, 152 Glass-Steagall Act, 72 Glittering Steel, 133–34 Goldman Sachs, 9, 69–73, 87, 158 Bannon and, x, 2, 52, 63–65, 67, 69–74, 82, 84, 87, 140–42, 155 Trump and, 241 Goldwater, Barry, 99, 215 Gore, Al, 97 Government Accountability Institute (GAI), 132–33, 141–42, 151–52, 155–57, 159, 209 Graham, Lindsey, 109 Green, Andrew, 57 Greenblatt, Jonathan, 9 Guénon, René, x, 204–7, 223 Haberman, Maggie, 162 Hahn, Julia, 149–50, 187 Hall, Fawn, 33 Hall, Wynton, 156, 157, 159 Hanna, Jack, 123 Hannity, Sean, 137–38, 168, 174 Harris, Peter, 60 Harvard Business School, 60–65, 67, 68 Heritage Foundation, 123, 188 Hicks, Hope, 11 Hillary: The Movie, 30–31 Hispanics, 13, 96–101, 103, 105, 106, 162, 165, 191 Hissom, Andrea, 32 Hopkins, Anthony, x, 79 Houff, Cathleen “Susie,” 61 House Freedom Caucus, 175–76 House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, 25–27 Hubbell, Webster, 27–28 Huckabee, Mike, 199 Huffington, Arianna, 85 Huffington Post, 85, 86 IBM, 127, 128 Icahn, Carl, 68, 239 immigration, 105–11, 117, 143, 167, 183–84, 186, 213, 226 Bannon and, 6, 46, 108, 111, 140, 208 Gang of Eight bill on, 107–10, 167 Republicans and, 102, 106–9, 162 Trump and, 6, 102, 105–6, 109–11, 116, 161–63, 165–66, 186, 190, 223, 238 see also Mexican immigrants Indian Runner, The, 74 Ingraham, Laura, 43 Internet, 81, 83, 86, 89, 100, 145–46, 212, 213 Deep Web, 155 Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), 81–83, 142, 145 In the Face of Evil, 85 Iran, 59 Iran-Contra scandal, 33 Iran hostage crisis, 56–58, 84 Isaacs, Daniel W., 113 Isikoff, Michael, 104 Islam, Muslims, 124–25, 213, 223, 238 Bannon and, x, 51, 58, 84–85, 140, 207 Jackson, Arthur, 120 Jesmer, Rob, 194 John Paul II, Pope, 50, 75 Johnson, Gary, 231 Johnson, Peter, Jr., 174 Johnson, Woody, 197 Jones, Paula, 43, 153, 217 Jordan, Jim, 175–76 junk bonds, 67–68 Kali Yuga, 205, 223 Kaplan, Rob, 65 Kasich, John, 170, 182, 187 Kelly, Megyn, 168–74, 180, 192, 194, 195 Kelly, Michael, 33 Kelly File, The, 168, 173 Kennedy, John F., 50, 196 Kennedy, Kevin, 64 Kennedy, Ted, 90 Kerkorian, Kirk, 75–76 Khan, Khizr and Ghazala, 196, 219 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 56 King, Larry, 38 Koch, Charles and David, 123, 135 Kramer, Jane, 122n Krauthammer, Charles, 189 Krugman, Paul, 148 Kushner, Jared, 3, 12, 17, 193, 200, 201, 203, 215, 218, 219 Kwatinetz, Jeff, 80, 81 Lehane, Chris, 159 Leininger, Eric, 96 Lemon, Don, 171, 228 Le Pen, Marine, 207, 208, 222–23 Lessig, Lawrence, 152 Levin, Mark, 109, 172 Lewandowski, Corey, 3, 162–63, 166, 183, 192–94, 202 Lewinsky, Monica, 43 Lewis, Michael, 70, 88 Liberty Film Festival, 85 Liman, Doug, 80 Limbaugh, Rush, 85 Lindbergh, Charles, 190 Lovett, Jon, 34 Lynch, Loretta, 148 Maddow, Rachel, x Mallaby, Sebastian, 129 Manafort, Paul, 3–4, 193–94, 196, 199–203, 210 Manigault-Stallworth, Omarosa, 97 Maréchal-Le Pen, Marion, 208 Marlow, Alex, 143, 172, 173 McCain, John, ix, 39–40, 99–100 McCain-Feingold Act, 30 McDonald’s, 95, 96 Meadows, Mark, 176 Medallion Fund, 129, 130 Meet the Press, 27–28 Mercer, Rebekah, 122n, 123, 130, 133–35, 197, 199–200, 216 Mercer, Robert, 119–36, 141, 200, 216 Bannon and, 119, 124, 125, 130–31, 134–36, 148 Republican Party and, 120, 121, 134–35 Mercer Family Foundation, 133 Merkel, Angela, 206 Mexican immigrants: border agents and, 6, 108, 110, 163, 164 Breitbart and, 6, 108–10, 164 Trump’s attack on, 6, 161–63, 165–66 and Trump’s visit to border crossing, 6, 164–67 Trump’s wall plan and, 111, 163, 165, 169, 170, 190, 234 Meyers, Seth, 32, 35–36, 42 MGM, 24, 75–78 Mider, Zachary, 122n Milken, Michael, 67–72, 80, 141 Miller, Jason, 18 Miller, Stephen, xii, 14, 17, 183–84 minorities, 226 Republican Party and, 99–100, 102 Trump and, 96–103, 191 see also African Americans; Hispanics Mirage Resorts, Inc., 23–24 Mobile Press-Register, 182 Mook, Robby, 18–19 More Money Than God (Mallaby), 129 Morning Joe, 173 Morris, Dick, 30 Mount, Thom, 74 Murdoch, Rupert, 75, 108–9, 167, 179–80, 184, 194, 195 Muslims, see Islam, Muslims Mussolini, Benito, 205 NAACP, 90 NAFTA, 37, 41 nationalism, 207, 240 Bannon and, xiii, 6, 21, 46, 93, 150, 204, 207, 208, 222, 241 Trump and, xiii, 6, 46, 93, 204, 208, 230, 241, 242 Nazarbayev, Nursultan, 152 Nazi Germany, 205 NBC, 73, 93–95, 97, 101 Nelson, Monique, 96, 97, 103 Nevin, Darrell, 54 New Hampshire Freedom Summit, 117 New Hampshire primary, 182 New Republic, 41 Newsmax, 104–5 New York, 28n, 172, 194, 196, 215 New York Post, 38, 104, 153, 242 New York Times, 26, 40, 69–70, 148, 152–54, 156, 157, 162, 199, 201, 202, 220, 229 Nightline, 27 Nimitz, USS, 56, 57 9/11 terrorist attacks, 84, 85 Nixon, Richard, 41, 99 Nojay, Bill, 112–13 North, Oliver, 33 Nugent, Ted, 233 Nunberg, Sam, 44–46, 105–6, 109, 111–14, 117, 166, 192, 193 Obama, Barack, 15–16, 31–32, 38, 42, 87, 106, 107, 125, 148, 155, 176, 226, 237 birth certificate of, 31–35, 39–40, 42, 45–46, 100–101, 103, 125 college records of, 45 racial issues and, 39–40, 98 at White House Correspondents’ dinner, 33–35, 41 Obama, Michelle, 220 Obamacare, 114, 115, 176, 238, 240 Oczkowski, Matt, 226, 232 O’Donnell, Rosie, 169 O’Keefe, James, 89–90 Orion Pictures, 78 Ornstein, Norman, 28 Overlock, Mike, 70 Ovitz, Michael, 44, 80 Paladino, Carl, 112 Palin, Bristol, 89 Palin, Sarah, ix–xi, xiii, 21, 88–89, 145, 207 Palmieri, Jennifer, 211 Parretti, Giancarlo, 75–77 Passion of the Christ, The, 134 Patriot, 137 Patterson, Nick, 132 Paul, Rand, 45, 116, 117, 170 Paul F.


pages: 294 words: 82,438

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Apollo 13, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, barriers to entry, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Checklist Manifesto, complexity theory, Craig Reynolds: boids flock, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, democratizing finance, diversification, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Glass-Steagall Act, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, machine translation, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, Network effects, obamacare, Paul Graham, performance metric, price anchoring, RAND corporation, risk/return, Saturday Night Live, seminal paper, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Startup school, statistical model, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, transportation-network company, two-sided market, Wall-E, web application, Y Combinator, Zipcar

In 1988 bankers from around the world met in Basel, Switzerland, to agree on international banking regulations, and published a 30-page agreement (known as Basel I). Sixteen years later, the Basel II accord was an order of magnitude larger, at 347 pages, and Basel III was twice as long as its predecessor. When it comes to the sheer volume of regulations generated, the U.S. Congress makes the central bankers look like amateurs. The Glass-Steagall Act, a law passed during the Great Depression, which guided U.S. banking regulation for seven decades, totaled 37 pages. Its successor, Dodd-Frank, is expected to weigh in at over 30,000 pages when all supporting legislation is complete. Meeting complexity with complexity can create more confusion than it resolves.

See dieting/eating economic value creation/simple rules, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>] n definition, [>] Eisenhardt, Kathleen background, [>] edge-of-chaos phenomenon and, [>], [>] improving simple rules lab study, [>]–[>] internationalization decisions of entrepreneurs and, [>] rule improvement pattern/strengthening, [>]–[>], [>]–[>] Start-Up Chile, [>] ESPN, [>] eToro description, [>]–[>] Popular Investors and, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>] simple rules program/YPO and, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>] Everest, Mount/climbing, [>], [>]–[>] execution of strategy challenge of executing strategy, [>]–[>] crafting rules to guide strategy execution, [>]–[>] identifying a bottleneck impeding execution, [>]–[>] process to develop simple rules for strategy execution (summary), [>]–[>] simple rules to execute strategy, [>] simplifying strategy for execution, [>]–[>] Executive Education (London Business School), [>]–[>] experience and simple rules, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>] Exxon Valdez oil spill, [>] “fast thinking,” [>] Federal Reserve Board, [>] Fey, Tina, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>] Filigran Trägersysteme, [>] Financial Times, [>], [>] Fincher, David, [>], [>], [>] fires (wildfires), [>]–[>] Fischer, Scott, [>], [>]–[>] “fixed-threshold strategy/with last chance option,” [>] Fleener, Coby, [>] Forest Service (US) rules on wildfires, [>]–[>] Francis, Pope, [>] Freiman, Nate, [>] Friz, Martin, [>], [>] Frontier Dental Laboratories, [>]–[>] Furr, Nathan, [>] Gebbia, Joe, [>], [>], [>]–[>] Gigerenzer, Gerd, [>] Glass-Steagall Act, [>] Glasser, Debbie, [>] go (Chinese game), [>]–[>] Google, [>], [>] Graham, Paul, [>] Great Depression, [>] Grupo Multimedia, [>] Guardian, [>] Haldane, Andy, [>] Harbaugh, Jim, [>] Harvard Business Review, [>], [>] Hastings, Reed, [>]–[>] Hawthorne, Nathaniel, [>] Hayek, Friedrich, [>] heuristics, [>], [>], [>] See also simple rules Hillary, Sir Edmund, [>] historical data and predictions, [>]–[>] H.


pages: 290 words: 83,248

The Greed Merchants: How the Investment Banks Exploited the System by Philip Augar

Alan Greenspan, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate raider, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, deal flow, equity risk premium, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, information retrieval, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, new economy, Nick Leeson, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, risk free rate, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, systematic bias, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, The Predators' Ball, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, tulip mania, value at risk, yield curve

This is at the heart of the integrated securities and investment banking model. It is an American invention and its evolution helps to explain the shape of today’s investment banking leader board. Evolution of the Industry There have been two phases in modern investment banking history: 1934–75 and 1975–2005. The Glass Steagall Act of 1934 determined the shape of the first period and influenced the second. In the clean-up after the Great Crash of 1929, financial organizations had to choose between commercial and investment banking. At first the industry was led by firms that dropped lending and focused on investment banking, notably Kuhn Loeb, Dillon Read and Lehman Brothers.

Jack Welch, chief executive of GE, sounded relieved to be out of it: ‘Anyone who knows GE’s history in the brokerage business knows we weren’t so good at the game.’15 The failure of new entrants to break into the top group is not for want of trying. A whole host of American and European financial institutions tried and failed. Many of the leading American commercial banks thought they saw their chance with the relaxation of the Glass Steagall Act, which they were successful in getting progressively dismantled in the 1990s through powerful lobbying. There was a wave of buying and selling as the banks jostled for position – there were fifty-four merger and acquisition deals in the US investment banking and broking industry between 1997 and 2001 with a total value of $232 billion.16 The difficulties of breaking in to the leading group were illustrated by the progress of Chase Manhattan and J.


pages: 297 words: 84,009

Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero by Tyler Cowen

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, employer provided health coverage, experimental economics, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, financial intermediation, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Google Glasses, income inequality, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, late fees, Mark Zuckerberg, mobile money, money market fund, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, offshore financial centre, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, The Nature of the Firm, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, ultimatum game, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, Y Combinator

It’s remarkable how many intellectuals, internet forum contributors, and even working-class Americans profess a strong dislike for the banks, or at least for what they think the banks stand for. And it’s not just the left wing anymore. Even the Republican 2016 presidential platform endorsed a new version of the Glass-Steagall Act as a way of breaking up the big banks. Neel Kashkari, who ran the TARP bailout program for President Bush during the financial crisis, has called for bank breakups more directly. Some other conservative and libertarian voices, including Thomas Koenig and Arnold Kling, have wondered whether America shouldn’t apply antitrust law radically and move to a greater number of much smaller banks.

class Clinton, Hillary Coase, Ronald cognition cognitive dissonance cognitive efficiency cognitive strengths Collison, Patrick and John compensating differential conspiracy theories control firms co-ops copyright corporations attempts to sway public opinion downside of personalization public dislike of Countrywide “creative destruction” credit cards credit card information credit card system privacy and crony capitalism business influence on government class and multinational corporations overview privilege and state monopoly status quo bias See also capitalism cryptocurrencies See also Bitcoin Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Curry, Stephen CVS cybersecurity “daily effective experiences” See also Kahneman, Daniel; Krueger, Alan Daley, William Damaske, Sarah Damore, James daycare defense spending DejaNews Democratic Party Desan, Mathieu Deutsche Bank discrimination Dollar General Dow Scrubbing Bubbles Dream of the Red Chamber DuckDuckGo Dying for a Paycheck (Pfeffer) eBay education email employment/unemployment European Union ex post Exxon eyeglass companies Facebook advertising and AI and “anti-diversity memo” censorship and China and competition and complaints about employees “filter bubble” income inequality and information and innovation and monopoly and News Feed politics and privacy and Russian-manipulated content venture capital and See also Zuckerberg, Mark facial recognition technology “fake news” See also media Fama, Eugene fast-food Fehr, Ernst Ferguson, Niall financial crisis financial sector America as tax and banking haven American stock performance banks “too big” global importance of US growth information technology and intermediation overview venture capital and American innovation Financial Times fintech flow Ford Motor Company Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Foroohar, Rana fraud, businesses and CEOs in laboratory games comparative perspective cross-cultural game theory nonprofits vs. for-profits overview research on corporate behavior spread of information and tax gap trust and free trade French, Kenneth Friedman, Milton Friendster Fritzon, Katarina fundraising Gabaix, Xavier Gates, Bill GDP General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade General Electric General Motors Gilens, Martin Glass-Steagall Act Gmail Goetzmann, William N. Goldacre, Ben Goldman Sachs Google access to information and advertising and Alphabet China and competition and freedom of speech and Google Docs Google Home Google Maps impact on society income inequality and innovation media and monopoly and politics and privacy and retail and searches as superstar firm venture capital and See also Alphabet Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier Graeber, David Great Recession Guthrie, Stewart Harford, Tim Harvard University Hauser, Christine Hausmann, Ricardo Hayek, Friedrich A.


pages: 207 words: 86,639

The New Economics: A Bigger Picture by David Boyle, Andrew Simms

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, congestion charging, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Crossrail, delayed gratification, deskilling, digital divide, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, financial deregulation, financial exclusion, financial innovation, full employment, garden city movement, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, John Elkington, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, light touch regulation, loss aversion, mega-rich, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, mortgage debt, neoliberal agenda, new economy, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, peak oil, pension time bomb, pensions crisis, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, systems thinking, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working-age population

Policy makers prefer large multinationals to a multiplicity of enterprising companies, and believe somehow that their market power can be used to the advantage of the state: the evidence suggests otherwise. We need to break down the big corporations, starting with the banks – splitting their merchant bank functions from their high street bank functions (a repeat of the American Glass-Steagall Act after the Wall Street crash) and then breaking those down into far smaller units to guarantee genuine competition at local level for the basic task of looking after people’s money and giving loans to individuals and small businesses. No company, either nationally or locally, should have more than 8 per cent of their market: that is the point where the Office of Fair Trading says that companies can abuse their power along the supply chain, distorting markets.

A rich, diverse ecology of different economic systems is needed, not a banking monoculture of giant actors which, when they topple, threaten us all. 2 Segregate financial markets – by separating activities such as trading and retail banking A central plank of the process of financial de-regulation has been the removal of restrictions on what activities different institutions can undertake. It took more than 50 years for policy makers to forget the lessons of the Wall Street crash of 1929, which led to the Glass-Steagal Act in the USA to prevent financial institutions exploiting their market position and power and profiting from conflicts of interest. Segregation was seen as ‘inefficient’ and was swept away by liberalization. As institutions ceased to specialize and became financial ‘conglomerates’, they converged on the most profitable activities.


pages: 261 words: 86,905

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means by John Lanchester

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, asset allocation, Basel III, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Swan, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, disintermediation, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, estate planning, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, forward guidance, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, High speed trading, hindsight bias, hype cycle, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kodak vs Instagram, Kondratiev cycle, Large Hadron Collider, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, loss aversion, low interest rates, margin call, McJob, means of production, microcredit, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, Nikolai Kondratiev, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, survivorship bias, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working poor, yield curve

Five years after the start of the crisis, the UK economy was still 3.3 percent smaller than it was before the trouble began. I think Great Recession about covers it. deregulation The process of ripping up rules, and the main demand of the financial world in the Anglo-American world for about thirty years. The financiers got what they wanted, culminating in measures such as the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act separating retail and investment banking in the United States, and the “Big Bang” deregulating the City of London in October 1986. The momentum behind deregulation grew to such an extent that in the case of newly invented financial derivatives, the industry was able successfully to lobby Congress to pass a law, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which prohibited the making of any laws to regulate the new inventions.

It’s curious how readily we forget that bank panics and crashes have been a regular feature of American life: the lesson that banks can’t be trusted to regulate their own affairs and stay solvent in the process is one that, you’d have thought, would have been very thoroughly learned by now. Morgan’s financial concerns were so all-encompassing that when his bank was broken up by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, it turned into three different institutions, all of them very big: the bank J. P. Morgan and Co., the investment house Morgan Stanley, and the overseas investment bank Morgan Grenfell in London. jubilee A word with a number of meanings, but in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, the anthropologist David Graeber advocates a global jubilee in the specific sense of a cancellation of all outstanding debt in the developing world.


pages: 304 words: 80,965

What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us, and How to Fix It by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, David Pitt-Watson

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Admiral Zheng, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, centralized clearinghouse, clean water, compensation consultant, computerized trading, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, John Bogle, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Northern Rock, passive investing, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payment for order flow, performance metric, Ponzi scheme, post-work, principal–agent problem, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Steve Jobs, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, WikiLeaks

See www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/researchProgrammes/paulWoolleyCentre/home.aspx. 5 The New Geometry of Regulation 1. P. Harle, E. Luders, T. Pepanides, S. Pfetsch, T. Poppensiekr, and U. Stegemann, “Basel III and European Banking,” McKinsey Working Papers on Risk no. 26 (McKinsey, 2010). Economist Andy Haldane notes that the Glass-Steagall Act, which was the response to the 1929 Depression, had thirty-seven pages. Other comparators include Basel I with thirty pages in 1988 and Basel III in 2010 with 616. Basel I had five different risk weights and could be calculated using pad and pen. It was there “to support, not supplant” management decisions.

See also Index funds; Mutual funds; Pension funds Fund managers, 19, 21, 22, 264n5 agency capitalism and, 75–78 effect on market as a whole, 50 focus on alpha, 49–50 Funston Advisory Services, 105 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 165, 260n23 Garicano, Luis, 156, 163 Garratt, Bob, 104 Gates, Bill, 182 Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 157, 173, 259n6, 260n17 risk modeling and, 161–63 Gaussian distribution, 161–63, 260n18 real world phenomena and, 172–73 GDP, 27, 133, 237n2 Generation Investment Management, 112–13 Ghoshal, Sumantra, 191 Gilmartin, Raymond, 71 Gilson, Ronald, 78 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 254n1 Global financial crisis (2008), 7–8, 25 causes of, 155–56, 174, 214–15 diversification and, 45, 46–48 executive pay and, 72 financial regulation in aftermath of, 124–25 prudence and, 148 risk models and, 163–64 Globalization, 186–87 Goals, of investors, 48 Goobey, Alastair Ross, 235n24 Goods, private vs. public, 170, 261n31 Gordon, Jeffrey, 78 Governance: bank, 216–17 corporate pension fund, 104–6 finance industry and, 18–19 focus on, 188 governance dashboards, 98–99 government role in regulation of fund, 107–9 investing institutions and, 224–25 investment performance and, 100–104 legislation on, 9–10 national code of, 205, 265n13, 267n3 ownership and, 22 People’s Pension and, 202–3, 205–6 transparency and, 97–100, 224 Government: fund governance regulation and, 107–9 transparency rules regarding fees and, 59–60 trust in, 141 Government Accountability Office (US), 107 Grassroots campaigns, social media and, 114–19 Grinstein, Yaniv, 72–73 Growth, of banks, 73–74 Haldane, Andy, 66, 124–25, 134, 152, 172–73, 254n1, 261n38 Harris, Richard, 51 Harvard Law School, Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, 116 Hayek, Friedrich, 243n2 HBOS, 245n31 Hedge funds: derivatives and, 81 strategies, 37–38 Hellwig, Martin, 215 Hermes, 77–78 Hermes Equity Ownership Service, 89 Hermes Investment Management, 140 Hewitt Packard, merger with Compaq, 81–82, 247n48 Hewitt, Walter, 82 Hicks, John, 178 High-frequency trading, 29–30, 51–53, 64–65 ending favoritism for, 88, 223 ownership and, 4 regulation of, 89 History, effect on economic performance, 167 Hodgson, Geoffrey, 262n51 Human motivation, behavior and, 182–83, 185–86 Hyundai Merchant Marine, 82 Icahn, Carl, 115 ICGN.


pages: 1,242 words: 317,903

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby

airline deregulation, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, balance sheet recession, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency peg, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, equity premium, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, Future Shock, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, inventory management, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, laissez-faire capitalism, Lewis Mumford, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paper trading, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, short selling, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tipper Gore, too big to fail, trade liberalization, unorthodox policies, upwardly mobile, We are all Keynesians now, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y2K, yield curve, zero-sum game

On the big question of inflation, the giant had emerged strong, but on the regulatory front, he was at odds with both the banking industry and the Reagan administration. In December 1984, around the time that Alan and Andrea met for their first date, J.P. Morgan had launched a fateful deregulatory push against the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which restricted banks from underwriting and dealing in securities. From Morgan’s perspective, breaking out of this silo was a matter of survival. With the computerization of Wall Street, tradable debt securities had powerful advantages over old-fashioned commercial loans. Trading allowed creditors to sell out of an exposure whenever they pleased, and this privilege induced them to provide capital at lower interest rates, reducing the cost of borrowing to companies and households.

Gary Hector, “Morgan Guaranty’s Identity Crisis,” Fortune, April 28, 1986. 18. J.P. Morgan’s paper, “Rethinking Glass-Steagall,” appeared in the Morgan Economic Quarterly in December 1984. 19. Morgan’s research was vindicated by academic authors. See, for example, Eugene Nelson White, “Before the Glass-Steagall Act: An Analysis of the Investment Banking Activities of National Banks,” Explorations in Economic History 23, no. 1 (January 1986): 33–55. 20. Hector, “Morgan Guaranty’s Identity Crisis.” In 1986, J.P. Morgan underwrote more Eurobond issues for American companies than any U.S. investment bank.

., 288 Banc One, 525–26 Bank of America, 526, 627–28, 661 Bank of England, 382–83, 615–16, 631, 649 Bank of Japan, 594 Bank of New England, 397 bank regulation, 294–95, 468, 681 and 2008 crisis, 670 and the Fed, 283–85, 543–44, 558–61, 620, 624–25, 627–28, 630–33, 670 Fed and Treasury battle over, 403–11 Geithner’s plans for, 630–33 Greenspan’s speech on, 345–46 Greenspan’s views of, 287, 302–4, 558–60, 627–29, 656–58, 663, 665, 678, 684 lack of, 663–64 and securities, 311, 313, 315, 403 and U.S. Congress, 522–23, 525 under Volcker, 283–85, 298–99 See also deregulation; Glass-Steagall Act; Regulation Q caps BankAmerica, 526 Bankers Club, 43–44, 81 Bankers Trust, 313, 442, 466–70, 619–20 banking “free,” 90–91 reform, 9, 403–10, 522–23, 525, 558–60, 678–79 system, 90–92, 285, 302, 397–98, 407, 558 Banking Act of 1933, 312 bankruptcy, 195–200, 233, 282–85, 300, 343, 377, 383–85, 397, 465–68, 476, 501, 515, 531, 598, 601, 654, 660–61, 676 bankruptcy code, 205 banks, 48, 264, 442 and 1987 crash, 351, 354–57, 359–60, 520 and 1990–91 recession, 413–14 assets of, 92, 362, 413, 539 attract savings to, 136, 148, 303 and bond trading, 442 capital cushions of, 301–4, 628, 663, 670 commercial, 312–13, 315, 631–32 community, 408–9, 582–83, 636 and customer disclosure, 205 failure of, 239, 304, 343, 383, 385, 397, 403, 406, 536–44, 558, 628, 631, 654–60 first electronic run of, 297, 662 foreign, 313, 517–18, 587, 594 global, 314, 342 and Greenspan, 211, 304, 407–9, 467, 662 issue private money, 90–91 lending of, 47–48, 92, 136, 297, 312–13, 351, 381, 394, 403–4, 406, 414, 450, 469, 522 mergers of, 313, 320, 323, 368, 522–26, 530, 535, 541–42, 558–60 and money supply, 232 and mortgages, 218, 294–96 private, 90–91, 328 public shaming of, 467–68 reckless lending of, 472, 541–43, 663–64, 667 regional, 149, 282–83, 328, 330 and securities, 311–14, 321, 403, 522, 525, 559, 628 and Sept. 11, 2001, 584, 586–87 shadow, 151, 631–32, 662–64, 675, 678 and South Korean crisis, 515, 518–21 state, 406 “too big to fail”, 301, 313–14, 320, 362, 408–9, 470, 472, 558–59, 628, 670 trading of, 465, 468 universal, 312, 314, 523, 525 Barron’s, 74, 130 Basel, Switzerland, 4, 583, 631 Beame, Abraham, 196, 199 Bear Stearns, 631, 654, 656–60, 662, 664 behavioral economics, 56, 360–61 Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 228–31, 381 Benchley, Peter, 223 Bentsen, Lloyd, 424–26, 429, 440, 458 Berkeley business school, 537, 540 Bernanke, Ben, 339, 363–64, 413–14, 442 appointed to Fed board, 611–12 on falling house prices, 675–76 on FOMC communications, 612–13, 643 as Greenspan’s successor, 553, 632, 648, 652, 670 Jackson speech of, 552–56, 558, 611 on “savings glut,” 641 on targeting inflation, 553–55, 611–13 Berry, John, 388 Biden, Joe, 158–60, 176 big business, 74–75, 78, 86, 314, 361, 408–9, 442, 526, 674 big government, 575, 674 big labor, 78, 86 black capitalism, 116–17 Black Monday, 345–63, 366, 371–73, 378, 380, 386, 388, 393, 414, 439, 448, 473, 586, 590 Blair House, 279–80 Blinder, Alan, 423–24, 426, 446–51, 456–58, 461–63, 484, 506, 555, 611, 646–47, 680 Boehne, Ed, 377–78 The Bogey of Economic Maturity (Terborgh), 33 bond market, 47, 300, 420, 430–33, 436, 440–42 booms, 496 bubbles, 433–35, 443–45, 642 crash, 444–45, 448, 450, 461, 497, 642, 683 and the Fed, 612, 654 Greenspan on, 640, 683 and interest rates, 495, 551 rise in, 546, 561 and Sept. 11, 2001, 587 bonds, 148, 214, 219, 312, 362, 466, 472, 536, 539 decline in, 342, 393 dollar-dominated, 149, 151, 268 federal, 40, 42, 92, 264, 300, 441–42, 524, 633, 641 gold, 267–69 high-yielding, 129, 385 inflation-proof, 269 and interest rates, 219, 257, 502 junk, 385–88, 394 and NYC bailout, 196, 198–200 rates of, 420–21, 426–27, 430–34, 440, 443, 495, 634 trading in, 420, 423, 441–42 See also hedge funds Born, Brooksley, 531–36, 538, 542, 544–45, 559, 660, 663, 666 borrowing, 196, 218, 524, 616, 633, 643, 660 and 1990–91 recession, 413–14 of banks, 559, 634, 636 by conglomerates, 135–36 cost of, 41, 77, 264, 311, 379, 393, 420, 423, 427, 435, 437, 441, 444, 450, 554, 597, 601, 634 and credit checks, 617–19, 622 decline in, 400, 432–33 and the Fed, 328 of foreign countries, 282–85, 287, 514 government, 171, 233, 264, 421, 432–33, 441–42 imprudent, 621–25 increase in, 47–48, 53, 129, 208–10, 496–97, 606, 614 by low-income people, 619, 622 lowest rates of, 416 risky, 604–5 and stock market crash, 347–48, 356, 363 Boskin, Michael, 383, 411–12 Boston Federal Reserve, 372, 385, 395, 431, 495, 500, 550, 563, 633 Bosworth, Barry P., 451 Bradfield, Michael, 348, 353–54, 360 Brady, Nicholas, 375, 377, 384, 400–406, 408, 410–12, 415, 429, 572 Branden, Barbara, 65, 69 Branden, Nathaniel, 65–66, 69, 79, 82, 85–86, 89–90, 112 Brash, Donald, 455–57 Brazil, 234, 540 Bretton Woods conference, 145, 183–84, 191 Brinkley, David, 337–39, 342 British Embassy, 179, 410 Broaddus, Al, 540 Brookings Institute, 203, 214, 221, 451, 632, 670 Brown Brothers Harriman, 34–35, 210 Brown, Edmund, 96 Brown, Gordon, 645, 648–49, 651 Brown, Jerry, 203, 224 Bryan, William Jennings, 111–12, 503 Buchanan, Pat, 102–3, 107–8, 110–12, 117–22, 677 Buckley, William F.


pages: 92

The Liberal Moment by Nick Clegg, Demos (organization : London, England)

banking crisis, credit crunch, failed state, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, income inequality, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Right to Buy, smart grid, too big to fail, Winter of Discontent

Existing publicly owned institutions – RBS and Lloyds – should be broken up before they are returned to private ownership, with the Lloyds-HBOS merger unscrambled as part of this process and RBS split from its investment banking operations. In the longer term, we must ensure that the institutions consumers and small businesses depend on for savings and loans should not be put at risk by the casino culture of investment banking. To make this possible we need to invoke the spirit of the US Glass-Steagall Act, introduced to separate retail and investment banking in the 1930s in response to the financial crisis that led to the Great Depression. We do not need to replicate Glass-Steagall exactly, however. As Lord Turner of the FSA has warned, some forms of investment-style banking are low-risk, and offer benefits to consumers in the shape of increased flexibility and lower costs.


pages: 519 words: 155,332

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--And Those Fighting to Reverse It by Steven Brill

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset allocation, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, carried interest, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, electricity market, ending welfare as we know it, failed state, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, future of work, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, immigration reform, income inequality, invention of radio, job automation, junk bonds, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paper trading, Paris climate accords, performance metric, post-work, Potemkin village, Powell Memorandum, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, Ralph Nader, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stock buybacks, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, telemarketer, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor

Six years later, in 2000, another lobbying triumph resulted in the complete elimination of the federal government’s already weak regulation of derivatives trading. In keeping with the prevailing spirit of innovation, it was called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. A year earlier, President Clinton had signed a law repealing the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited chartered banks, which are backstopped by the government, from engaging in risky investment-banking-like activities such as trading in derivatives. The theory of Glass-Steagall had been that if government-protected banks engaged in these risky activities, the government would be responsible for cleaning up after those risks if the banks needed to be bailed out.

From the beginning, the lobbyists succeeded in blocking the obvious solution: No banks were broken into smaller entities. In fact, by 2016 the share of all banking assets (in essence their market share) held by the top five banks was slightly higher than it was the day Dodd-Frank passed. Each had grown bigger in revenue, profit, and their grip on the economy. Another idea was to restore the New Deal’s Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall had prohibited government-backstopped chartered banks from engaging in the riskier activities, such as making markets in and trading derivatives, that had enriched the investment banks, which did not have government guarantees behind them. It was the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 that allowed chartered banks like JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Bank of America to join Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and other investment banks in the mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps markets.

When the crash came in 2008, the absence of Glass-Steagall allowed investment banks like Goldman and Morgan Stanley to become chartered banks themselves, overnight, so that they could receive Treasury bailouts after Lehman collapsed. However, instead of breaking up the dominant banks or forcing a new Glass-Steagall Act on them, Dodd-Frank imposed several narrower rules intended to limit the risks the banks could take. The most controversial, dubbed the Volcker Rule, was proposed by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve Board chairman. Under the Volcker Rule, chartered banks would not be allowed to engage in trading derivatives for their own accounts at their own risk.


pages: 351 words: 93,982

Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies by Otto Scharmer, Katrin Kaufer

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Branko Milanovic, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, do what you love, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Fractional reserve banking, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, market bubble, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, new economy, offshore financial centre, Paradox of Choice, peak oil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, technology bubble, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, working poor, Zipcar

In the 1980s the neoliberal Reagan-Thatcher revolution began to move the country backward from 3.0 to 2.5, so to speak, by reshaping the institutional design in favor of deregulation, privatization, and tax reduction, particularly for the rich and super-rich. The deregulation of the financial system continued through several Republican and Democratic administrations. The disastrous end of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 happened on the watch of Democrats (under President Clinton), not Republicans, permitting commercial banks to engage in securities activities and effectively setting the stage for the near-total collapse of the global financial system less than a decade later. President Obama’s health care reform legislation (the Affordable Care Act) completes the 3.0-related innovations that started in the early twentieth century.

While at first this injects much more money into the economy and thereby fuels growth and development, sooner or later the financial and the real economy begin gradually to decouple. Act 3.0: regulated commodity. As a commodity, money turns into a vehicle for creating financial bubbles. The moment the bubble bursts, the real economy falters and everyone pays the price. The response to these crises are regulations such as the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which followed the stock market crash of 1929, and Basel III, which followed the market crash of 2007–08. The market deals with money as a regulated commodity. Regulations aim to ensure that the mistakes of the past don’t repeat themselves. In that regard, they are effective. The shortcoming of most regulations is that they only look one way: into the past.


pages: 369 words: 94,588

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, call centre, capital controls, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, failed state, financial innovation, Frank Gehry, full employment, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, interest rate swap, invention of the steam engine, Jane Jacobs, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, land reform, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, means of production, megacity, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, place-making, Ponzi scheme, precariat, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, special economic zone, statistical arbitrage, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, technological determinism, the built environment, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, white flight, women in the workforce

This did not mean that there were no barriers to international capital flows, but technical and logistical barriers to global capital flow were certainly much diminished. Liquid money capital could more easily roam the world looking for locations where the rate of return was highest. The suspension in 1999 of the distinction between investment and deposit banking in the United States that had been in place since the Glass–Steagall act of 1933 further integrated the banking system into one giant network of financial power. But as the financial system went global, so competition between financial centres – chiefly London and New york – took its coercive toll. The branches of international banks such as Goldman Sachs, deutsches Bank, UBS, rBS and HSBC internalised competition.

.: The World is Flat 132 futures, energy 24 futures markets 21 Certificates of Deposit 262 currency 24 Eurodollars 262 Treasury instruments 262 G G7/G8/G20 51, 200 Galileo Galilei 89 Gates, Bill 98, 173, 221 Gates foundation 44 gays, and colonisation of urban neighbourhoods 247, 248 GDP growth (1950–2030) 27 Gehry, Frank 203 Geithner, Tim 11 gender issues 104, 151 General Motors 5 General Motors Acceptance Corporation 23 genetic engineering 84, 98 genetic modification 186 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) 186 gentrification 131, 256, 257 geographical determinism 210 geopolitics 209, 210, 213, 256 Germany acceptance of state interventions 199–200 cross-border leasing 142–3 an export-dominated economy 6 falling exports 141 invasion of US auto market 15 Nazi expansionism 209 neoliberal orthodoxies 141 Turkish immigrants 14 Weimar inflation 141 Glass-Steagall act (1933) 20 Global Crossing 100 global warming 73, 77, 121, 122, 187 globalisation 157 Glyn, Andrew et al: ‘British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze’ 65 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 156 gold reserves 108, 112, 116 Goldman Sachs 5, 11, 20, 163, 173, 219 Google Earth 156 Gould, Stephen Jay 98, 130 governance 151, 197, 198, 199, 201, 208, 220 governmentality 134 GPS systems 156 Gramsci, Antonio 257 Grandin, Greg: Fordlandia 188, 189 grassroots organisations (GROS) 254 Great Depression (1920s) 46, 170 ‘Great Leap Forward’ 137, 138, 250 ‘Great Society’ anti-poverty programmes 32 Greater London Council 197 Greece sovereign debt 222 student unrest in 38 ‘green communes’ 130 Green Party (Germany) 256 ‘green revolution’ 185–6 Greenspan, Alan 44 Greider, William: Secrets of the Temple 54 growth balanced 71 compound 27, 28, 48, 50, 54, 70, 75, 78, 86 economic 70–71, 83, 138 negative 6 stop in 45 Guggenheim Museu, Bilbao 203 Gulf States collapse of oil-revenue based building boom 38 oil production 6 surplus petrodollars 19, 28 Gulf wars 210 gun trade 44 H habitat loss 74, 251 Haiti, and remittances 38 Hanseatic League 163 Harrison, John 91 Harrod, Roy 70–71 Harvey, David: A Brief History of Neoliberalism 130 Harvey, William vii Haushofer, Karl 209 Haussmann, Baron 49, 167–8, 169, 171, 176 Hawken, Paul: Blessed Unrest 133 Hayek, Friedrich 233 health care 28–9, 59, 63, 220, 221, 224 reneging on obligations 49 Health Care Bill 220 hedge funds 8, 21, 49, 261 managers 44 hedging 24, 36 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 133 hegemony 35–6, 212, 213, 216 Heidegger, Martin 234 Helú, Carlos Slim 29 heterogeneity 214 Hitler, Adolf 141 HIV/AIDS pandemic 1 Holloway, John: Change the World without Taking Power 133 homogeneity 214 Hong Kong excessive urban development 8 rise of (1970s) 35 sweatshops 16 horizontal networking 254 household debt 17 housing 146–7, 149, 150, 221, 224 asset value crisis 1, 174 foreclosure crises 1–2, 166 mortgage finance 170 values 1–2 HSBC 20, 163 Hubbert, M.


pages: 1,073 words: 302,361

Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World by William D. Cohan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bob Litterman, book value, business cycle, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, deal flow, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, fear of failure, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford paid five dollars a day, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, hiring and firing, hive mind, Hyman Minsky, interest rate swap, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, margin call, market bubble, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, paper trading, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, short squeeze, South Sea Bubble, tail risk, time value of money, too big to fail, traveling salesman, two and twenty, value at risk, work culture , yield curve, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

In September 1928, Sidney Weinberg told Nathan Jonas, the president of Manufacturers Trust and the brother of Ralph Jonas, that Goldman would “like to take an interest” in the bank—this being in the years before Congress prevented the intermingling of commercial and investment banks through the Glass-Steagall Act. Nathan referred Weinberg to his brother Ralph, who in turn suggested that Goldman consider instead taking a stake in Financial and Industrial, which owned a 32 percent stake in the bank “sufficient to constitute working control” of it according to the report. But Weinberg decided not to pursue the Jonas brothers’ suggestion that Goldman take a stake in Financial and Industrial “on the ground that it preferred to form its own investment company.”

As to the fact that executives at the corporations issuing the securities would be able to decide, at their sole discretion, which banks to hire and fire and when, the complaint alleged that to “preserve and enhance their control over the business of merchandising securities,” the banks kept “control over the financial and business affairs of the issuers, by giving free financial advice to issuers, by infiltrating the boards of directors of issuers, by selecting officers of issuers who were friendly to them [and] by utilizing their influence with commercial banks with whom issuers do business.” Regarding the last point, it is essential to keep in mind that the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 required the separation of commercial banking from investment banking by June 16, 1934. On that date, most investment banking firms, such as Goldman Sachs, chose to remain in the investment banking business. They either had very little in the way of consumer deposits—which they quickly got rid of—or had no interest in that kind of business.

At first, the Federal Reserve did not like the deal, which resulted in a lot of “soul searching,” according to the Times. “At issue to many Fed officials is whether a foreign banking institution’s purchase of a 12.5% nonvoting ownership stake in an American securities firm sets a bad precedent and is, in fact, legal considering the separation of banking and underwriting set forth in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933,” the Times reported. “Fed officials seem to worry that control is a subtle influence and that, despite the nonvoting agreement, Sumitomo might end up exerting some influence over Goldman’s activities and decisions.” The Fed decided to hold a public hearing on October 10. “We want people to discuss not only the specific terms of the Sumitomo-Goldman deal but the broader issues,” a Fed official explained.


pages: 580 words: 168,476

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, declining real wages, deskilling, electricity market, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Flash crash, framing effect, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, jobless men, John Bogle, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, London Interbank Offered Rate, lone genius, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, obamacare, offshore financial centre, paper trading, Pareto efficiency, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payday loans, Phillips curve, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, very high income, We are the 99%, wealth creators, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

They think not of the broad, and often long-term, social and economic consequences, but of their narrower, short-term self-interest, the profits that they might garner now.13 In the aftermath of the Great Depression, an event preceded by similar excesses, the country enacted strong financial regulations, including the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933. These laws, effectively enforced, served the country well: in the decades following passage, the economy was spared the kind of financial crisis that had repeatedly plagued this country (and others). With the dismantling of these regulations in 1999, the excesses returned with even greater force: bankers quickly put to use advances in technology, finance, and economics.

See FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Failed Bank List, available at http://www2.fdic.gov/qbp/2011sep/qbp.pdf (accessed February 24, 2012). 21. Probably the most important deregulatory measure was the repeal in 1999, under President Clinton, of part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which separated investment banks (responsible for managing wealthy individuals’ and corporations’ money) and commercial banks. The repeal is also known as the Citigroup Relief Act because it legalized a merger of Citibank with securities and insurance services that had occurred in 1998.

., 101 framing, cognitive, 149–50, 160, 163, 186, 360 France, 18, 22, 97, 183, 214, 351, 385 Freddie Mac, 158, 284, 363 Friedman, Milton, 44, 157, 257, 258, 317, 391 Friedman, Stephen, 388 FUD, 45 G-8, 143 G-20, 143, 185 Galbraith, Jamie, 81 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 128 game theory, 44, 68 Gates, Bill, 42, 315 GE, 222, 330, 331 Geithner, Tim, 48 George, Henry, 212 Georgia, 191–92, 368 Germany, 18, 23, 214, 230, 259, 280, 351, 385 gerrymandering, 132, 135, 286 Gettysburg Address, 137 GI Bill, 5, 55 Gini coefficient, 23–24, 303, 309, 310 Glass-Steagall Act, 90, 387 globalization, 58–64, 79, 80, 156, 184, 259, 260 competition in, 60, 141, 142 democracy and, 138–45 drawbacks of, 60, 62, 63, 142, 324 financial, 59–61, 139–40, 141–42, 181–82, 277, 280, 324, 325 inequality and, 60, 63–64, 79, 80, 140, 142, 144, 145 labor and, 56, 59–60, 61, 63, 64, 80, 233, 277, 278, 280, 281, 324, 325 management of, xiii, 61, 64, 80, 137, 142, 144, 145, 277–78 taxes and, 62, 63, 142, 278 Globalization and Its Discontents (Stiglitz), 61, 181 global warming, xii, xiii, 144, 160, 341 see also environment Golden Rule (Ferguson), xxiv Goldman Sachs, 61, 124, 205, 253, 353, 388 Google, 174, 203 government, U.S.: bank bailouts by, xiv–xv, 37, 60, 74, 101, 155, 166–69, 171, 172, 175, 180, 193, 198, 213, 233, 234, 245–46, 252–53, 258, 269, 324, 361, 362 budget cuts in, 207, 216, 221, 226–28, 229, 230–36 budget of, 207–37 collective action through, 82, 93, 107, 117, 121, 125, 281–82 ideological perceptions of, 93–94, 154–55, 156–57, 158, 172–79, 186, 257, 258, 261, 356 inequality-supporting policies of, 6, 28, 31, 32, 52, 57–58, 74, 75–76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 153 investment by, 23, 40, 80, 84, 88, 92–94, 102, 114, 115, 155, 174, 216, 217, 218, 230, 232–33, 263, 267, 273, 279, 281, 282–83, 381 litigation by, 203, 204 macroeconomic policies of, 38, 62, 64, 80, 82, 85, 86, 102, 133, 225, 230, 231, 236, 237, 238–64, 279, 379, 392 market regulation by, xiii, xx, xxi–xxii, 5, 28, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38–39, 44, 47–48, 49, 60, 80, 81, 87, 89–92, 102, 119, 136–37, 141–42, 152, 170, 173, 175–76, 177–79, 192–93, 246–48, 250, 258, 269–70, 324, 369, 387, 388 media’s relationship with, 128, 135, 136, 252 military spending by, 40, 101, 176, 209, 210, 211, 216, 218, 224, 340 munificence of, 32, 40, 42, 48–51, 97, 99, 101, 136, 173, 176, 179–80, 189, 191, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 222, 224, 228, 271–73 research funded by, 78, 92, 93, 102, 174, 216, 283, 337 size of, 93–94, 155, 156–57, 216, 221, 236–37, 251, 256, 257 social spending by, 2, 5, 14, 15, 16–17, 26, 63, 74, 77, 79, 84, 85, 86, 108, 173, 208, 210, 211, 215–16, 226–28, 231–32, 237, 276–77, 299, 365, 380 see also politics, U.S.


pages: 391 words: 102,301

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sinatra Doctrine, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

Greenspan himself referred approvingly to hedge funds as “a vibrant trillion-dollar industry dominated by US firms.”9 But for the financial industry to deliver, it needed to be let off the leash. Greenspan became a crucial voice arguing for deregulation. In 1999 he pushed for the changes that finally abolished the last vestiges of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law passed during the Great Depression that erected walls between commercial and investment banking. Glass-Steagall was intended to limit the risks that banks could take, but its opponents feared that it stifled innovation and opportunity and drove financial business out of the United States to less regulated markets like London.

., 46, 183, 190, 194, 200, 201, 223, 225, 247, 264, 265, 290 Dominican Republic, 72 domino theory, 72–73 dot-com bubble, 108, 116, 120 Draghi, Mario, 112, 219 drugs, 210–11, 258–59 Earth Summit (1992), 125 East Asia, 73, 80, 81, 82, 84, 138, 185, 186, 187, 247 Eastern Europe, 7, 17, 18, 27, 36, 43, 61, 100, 148, 167, 281 foreign debt of, 66 East India Company, British, 17 economics, self-confidence as profession of, 116–17 Economist, 117, 125–26, 155, 169, 281, 284 Ecuador, 72, 242 education, 27, 80–82, 122, 216 Egypt, 206, 256, 257, 270, 272 ElBaradei, Mohamed, 211–12 Emmott, Bill, 84 end of economic history, 94, 127 end of history, 94, 99–105, 127, 213, 301n End of Influence, The (Cohen and DeLong), 183 energy, 199, 201, 202–3, 207, 263, 274, 280 see also gas; oil Engels, Friedrich, 27 environmental movement, 263 Environmental Protection Agency, 126 environmental scares, 125–26 Ethiopia, 205, 208, 256, 257 euro, 4, 5, 8, 46, 51, 52, 116, 147, 150, 189, 216, 228, 280, 281, 290 Europe, 63–70, 73–74, 85, 90, 94, 120, 140, 142, 143, 145–53, 200, 219, 287, 290 Age of Optimism and, 145–53 protectionism in, 263 unity of, 128, 146, 151–52, 216 zero-sum future and, 262, 264, 265, 269, 280–81 see also Central Europe; Eastern European; Western Europe European Central Bank, 116 European Commission, 49, 51, 145, 219, 220 European Council, 219 European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 231 European Court of Justice, 216 European Economic Community (EEC), 4, 16, 47, 49, 50, 51 European Union (EU), 4–8, 16, 35, 45–52, 102, 112, 116, 143, 145–53, 205, 219, 245, 255, 257, 284, 290 antiglobalization and, 156 constitution of, 151, 158, 215–16 enlargement of, 6–7, 8, 69, 95, 146–50, 158, 231, 260, 262, 270, 279, 280, 290 financial crisis and, 150, 174, 188–89, 196 global government and, 175, 213, 215–17, 221, 222, 224, 228–29, 270 Lisbon Treaty and, 158, 311n win-win world and, 129–30 zero-sum world and, 269–71, 281, 282 Euroskeptics, 160–61 Evans, Gareth, 131, 132 exchange controls, 32, 47, 83 failed states, 9, 10, 132, 168, 174, 175, 176, 181, 188, 199, 209–11, 220, 227, 230, 248, 280, 281 rise in number of, 254–56 zero-sum future and, 262, 272, 273 Falklands War, 34, 43, 73, 75, 76 famine, 125, 206, 208, 263 Federal Reserve, 39, 94, 107–12, 122 Ferguson, Niall, 74, 168, 274, 296n financial crisis (2008–2009), 1–9, 11, 24, 44, 52, 105, 121, 142, 173–74, 179–96, 255, 280, 281, 285–86 global government and, 217–20, 228 as global problem, 200–201 Greenspan and, 107, 113–14 investment banks and, 112, 114 zero-sum future and, 264, 268, 270, 276 financial derivatives, 111, 112–13, 123 financial services industry, 17, 40, 111–14, 122–23 Financial Services Modernization Act (1999), 111 Financial Stability Forum, 112 Financial Times, 123, 162, 209, 242, 263, 281 fish stocks, 228–29 food, 9, 64, 66, 175, 195, 204–7, 274, 280 shortages of, 125, 199, 206, 208, 263 Forbes, Steve, 7 Ford, Gerald, 109 Foreign Affairs, 164, 187 foreign reserves, 142, 183, 203, 236, 247 Fox, Justin, 110 fractured world, 249, 251–60 France, 22, 45–51, 115, 148, 151, 165, 269, 270 EU constitution and, 158, 215 financial crisis and, 191, 194 global government and, 219, 226 Freedman, Lawrence, 88 freedom, 134, 148–49, 161, 173, 237, 239 economic-political link and, 118, 128, 130, 134, 176 “freedom agenda,” 148–49, 166, 233 Freedom House, 102, 235 Freedom in the World (report), 235 free markets, 52, 93–96, 102, 105, 114, 118, 133, 166, 169, 174, 231, 261, 265, 281, 282, 290, 291 China and, 2, 115 financial crisis and, 179, 188, 190, 191, 196 Greenspan and, 42, 109, 110, 114 in Latin America, 16, 72, 74, 75, 77, 241 9/11 and, 96 Reagan and, 16, 42 Thatcher and, 16, 35 free trade, 17, 50–51, 72, 74, 117, 191, 220, 264, 266, 267, 281–82 Buchanan’s views on, 157–58 peace and, 128 Friedberg, Aaron, 187 Friedman, Milton, 17, 31, 35, 42, 75, 118 Friedman, Thomas, 84, 122, 127–28, 261, 304n Fukuyama, Francis, 56–57, 94, 163, 167–68, 182, 282–83 end-of-history thesis and, 94, 99–105, 213 G2, 223–25, 227 G8, 156, 218, 219, 220, 285 G20, 112, 175, 217–22, 227, 259, 274, 276, 286 G77, 246 Gaddafi, Muammar, 197, 221, 226 Gandhi, Rajiv, 79, 81 Garton Ash, Timothy, 68, 299n gas, 37, 39, 66, 205 Gates, Bill, 120–21 Gates, Melinda, 120 Gates Foundation, 121 Geithner, Timothy, 183, 264 General Electric, 151 Genoa G8 meeting (2001), 156 genocide, 9, 131, 132, 198, 230 Georgia, 174, 233–36, 238, 240, 249, 287 Gerasimov, Gennady, 64–65 Germany, 4, 8, 115, 165, 189, 226, 244, 270, 271, 274 financial crisis and, 189, 191, 194, 194–95, 228 Verheugen in, 147, 148 Germany, East, 63–64, 65, 68, 100, 298n Germany, Nazi, 8 Germany, West, 49, 63–64, 110 Getz, Stan, 108 Gingrich, Newt, 103 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 151 glasnost (openness), 54, 55, 58, 60, 61 Glass-Steagall Act, 111 global economic imbalances, 174, 200, 220, 224, 244, 262, 272, 274, 276 globalization, 1–7, 11, 17, 52, 93, 94, 173, 175, 208, 220, 241, 246, 248, 249, 253, 255, 259, 261–62, 280, 281–82, 289, 291 as Americanization, 261 backlash against, see antiglobalization movement Bush Jr. and, 124, 168, 169 Bush Sr. and, 87, 88, 157 China and, 27, 129–30, 202, 236 Clinton and, 129–33, 156, 158, 165, 218 of democracy, 103–4, 105, 130 European Union and, 46, 69, 150, 152, 153 financial crisis and, 193, 194, 196 global finance and, 118 Greenspan and, 114 history of, 271 India and, 17, 80, 84, 85, 90, 169, 290 information technology and, 122 investment banks and, 111 Japan and, 141 Latin America and, 76–77 peace and, 5–6, 10, 127–28, 140 technology and, 124, 126, 271 T.


pages: 329 words: 99,504

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie, Jacob Silverman

algorithmic trading, asset allocation, bank run, barriers to entry, Ben McKenzie, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", blockchain, capital controls, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, data science, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, housing crisis, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Jacob Silverman, Jane Street, low interest rates, Lyft, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, offshore financial centre, operational security, payday loans, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, prediction markets, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, QR code, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, ransomware, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Bankman-Fried, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, Steve Bannon, systems thinking, TikTok, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, uber lyft, underbanked, vertical integration, zero-sum game

As paralysis turned to market panic, the financial contraction that started in America morphed into an economic contagion that spread to cover most of the globe. The narrative that worse times lay ahead became the reality. Eventually the powers that be in the United States realized their mistake. In 1932, Congress belatedly passed the Glass-Steagall Act, injecting $1 billion of cash into the banks by designating government securities as assets eligible to back the US dollar in addition to gold. But by then it was too late; credit kept shrinking at a rate of 20 percent a year. As Ahamed notes, “A similar measure in late 1930 or in 1931 might have changed the course of history.

See specific topics fraud triangle Fried, Barbara Friedberg, Daniel FTX. See also Bankman-Fried, Sam futures contracts Galaxy Investment Partners gambling Garcia, Mario Garlinghouse, Brad The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes) Gensler, Gary Gerard, David Giancarlo, Christopher Gillibrand, Kirsten Glass-Steagall Act Goldman, William gold standard Goldstein, Jacob Goldstein, Nuke Gomez, Mario Gong, Aaron Gottheimer, Josh Great Depression greater fool theory Griffin, John M. Haber, Stuart Harris, Chad Harris, Jim Harrison, Brett Haspel, Gina Hays, Mark Henson, David (Reverend) Henson, Harold “Hal” Hoegner, Stuart Hogeg, Moshe Howey Test Imas, Alex Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (film) inelastic supply Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Irrational Exuberance (Shiller) “Is Bitcoin Really Untethered?”


pages: 350 words: 109,220

In FED We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic by David Wessel

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, break the buck, business cycle, central bank independence, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, debt deflation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, housing crisis, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Northern Rock, price stability, quantitative easing, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Socratic dialogue, too big to fail

So they are required to set aside some money for emergencies, maintain substantial capital cushions to absorb losses, submit to government regulation to restrain them from taking imprudent risks, and are offered the privilege of borrowing from the Fed in a crisis. After the Depression, the government tried to give savers confidence that their money was safe by offering them government-backed insurance on their deposits. It created the Securities and Exchange Commission to assure stock market investors that the game wasn’t rigged. And, with the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (pushed by the same Carter Glass who had played such a big role in creating the Fed), it built a wall between traditional banking (lending money) and what was seen as the riskier business of investment banking (helping companies raise money by selling securities and trading those securities).

And, with the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (pushed by the same Carter Glass who had played such a big role in creating the Fed), it built a wall between traditional banking (lending money) and what was seen as the riskier business of investment banking (helping companies raise money by selling securities and trading those securities). These rules could be a nuisance to the banks and could limit their profits. So institutions outside the core banks — sometimes owned by the same parent companies — grew and evolved to dominate the financial system. Encouraged by Greenspan, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Big financial firms grew into banking-insurance-brokerage-trading behemoths like Citigroup. Investment banks, supposedly just outside the Fed’s safety net, became a bigger, more vital part of the system. As loans were made by one outfit, packaged into securities by another and sold to investors, and then other outfits bought and sold insurance (called “credit default swaps”) on those loans, the “shadow banking system” outside the brand-name, Fed-protected commercial banks exploded with a bewildering array of securities, each with its own acronym.


pages: 364 words: 104,697

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, business logic, collective bargaining, corporate governance, cross-subsidies, dark matter, David Brooks, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disinformation, Easter island, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, income inequality, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, McJob, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, pensions crisis, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, purchasing power parity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, union organizing, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce

Well, some of them were girls. And as I got sicker that winter, I felt all the worse because Summers was up on stage with the world business leaders at Davos not just as a Democrat but as the Democrat setting the economic policies of—well, the party of the left, or really the center left. By helping junk the Glass-Steagall Act and blessing all sorts of deregulation, Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and Summers made London and New York the places where all the big go-go global finance was happening, while over in Frankfurt, cut out of the action, the Europeans could pound sand. In the U.S. and the UK, we were coming up with new financial products, while the poor Germans were still making things like widgets; it seemed shameful to defend a country where people still made things with their hands.

Army occupation and reading works councils German model of social democracy (jobs/employment) high-skill jobs and high-end precision goods manufacturing workforce percent of adults holding an associate degree percent of adults self-employed public-sector civil service jobs skilled-labor shortage subsidies for artists unemployment German model of social democracy (labor and industry) export sales “globalization” thesis high-skill jobs and high-end precision goods industry and social democracy labor costs labor markets market flexibility postwar economic recovery (the “German miracle”) public spending/consumer spending levels services and “virtuous growth” voices of the left on the labor crisis voices of the right on the labor crisis wage moderation and “wage costs” wage-setting by unions worker control German model of social democracy (unions and labor movement) decline of labor and organizing after the Krise foreign-born union membership and postwar U.S. Army strikes union resorts/ex-spas unionization rates in the manufacturing sector wage-setting and works councils youth membership The Germans (Craig) Gerschenkron, Alexander Ghilarducci, Teresa Gibbon, Edward Gibbons, James Gini coefficient Giscard d’Estaing, Valery Glass-Steagall Act globalization and German capitalism and labor market flexibility “Globalization and Income Inequality” (Harjes) “Glühwein Festival” (Hamburg) Goethe-Institute Goldman Sachs Gordon, Robert Gramm, Phil Grass, Günter Green Party and European social democracies German coalition government and Agenda 2010 German coalition government and wages/unemployment German coalition government and welfare German coalition government and works councils Germany green technology Greenspan, Alan Guardian (UK) gun ownership Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Diamond) Gutteres, António Habermas, Jürgen Halliburton Hamburg, Germany Harjes, Thomas health care spending Heine, Heinrich Heinz (retired German labor leader) Hemingway, Ernest Herodotus Hesbaugh, Ted Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Goldhagen) Hobsbawm, Eric Holocaust hours worked and GDP leisure time and standard-of-living How to Lie with Statistics (Huff) Huff, Darrell human capital Humboldt University (Berlin) IBZ Guest House (Berlin) IG Metall (German union) and CDU’s 2009 victory over SDP foreign-born members Frankfurt May Day parade (2001) works councils youth membership “Incentive for Working Hard” (Conference Board, May 2001) income equality/inequality An Inconvenient Truth (film) International Labor Organization (ILO) International Monetary Fund Iraq war Jesuits and papal social democracy jobs/employment artists big business employees cross-subsidies European social democracies and German unemployment Germany high-skill jobs and high-end precision goods manufacturing workforce and percent of adults holding an associate degree public employees (public-sector civil service jobs) self-employment skilled-labor shortage small business employees types of jobs available unemployment rates for college graduates U.S.


pages: 408 words: 108,985

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, deindustrialization, discovery of DNA, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, mini-job, moral hazard, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paris climate accords, patent troll, pension reform, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, zero-sum game

The Report of the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on Bank Structural Reform (usually referred to as the Liikanen Report of 2012 after its chairman, former governor of the Bank of Finland Erkki Liikanen) set out the official position for the Eurozone in detail: a structural separation of riskier activities from deposit-taking in order to protect European credit creation from volatile trading cycles. In fact, it resembled the separation between investment and commercial banking mandated under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, before its repeal in 1999. The Liikanen proposals went further than the new international rules, known as Basel III, and the Volcker rule in the United States,* in recognizing that to protect society from the reckless behavior of banks, both regulatory and structural reforms are needed.

See also trade liberalization Friedman, Milton, 21, 137 Fukuyama, Francis, 123 game theory, 262–63 GDP (Gross Domestic Product) balanced budget multiplier and, 52 chart comparisons, 3–6, 4, 5 as economic indicator, 3 EU economic framework and, 33 societal performance and, 214–15 taxation related to, 187 trade agreement impact on, 316–17 General Data Protection Regulation (2018), 133, 327 genetically modified organisms (GMOs), 299 Germany economic recovery of, 42–43 history misread in, 65 internal devaluation impact, 43–44 neglecting investment, 105 proposed policy adjustments for, 58–60 solidarity funds and, 54–55 Stability and Growth Pact, 38, 39 unemployment in, 34–35 wage restraint in, 44–45 Gini coefficients, 47 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 167 global cooperation, 290, 307–8 globalization. See also globalization, future of; globalization, mismanagement of; globalization, rewriting rules of contributing to inequality, 219, 220–21, 221–23 emergence of, 14 neoliberalism and, 16 trade globalization, 23–25 globalization, future of China challenge to, 297–300 downside of globalization, 288–89 Europe meeting challenge of, 289–90 Europe rewriting economic rules, 289 key points of, 290–92 problems and risks (see globalization, mismanagement of) redefinition of, 287–88 Trump presidency challenge to, 292–97 US and China challenges, responding to, 300–301 globalization, mismanagement of current political moment, 302–3 government policy counteracting, 305–6 negative consequences, 303–4 trade liberalization risks, 304–5 globalization, rewriting rules of climate change, 292, 307–8, 328–29 competition policy, 326–27 conclusion, 329–30 democratic governance and transparency, 312–15 global cooperation, 307–8 global macroeconomics and finance, 308–10 global rules-based system, 310–12 intellectual property rights, 324–26 investment agreements, 320–23 overview of, 306 taxation, 318–20 trade agreements, 315–18 globalization doctrine, 23 global minimum tax, 319–20 Goldman Sachs, 204 Google, 130, 131 government.


pages: 332 words: 106,197

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions by Jason Hickel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Cornelius Vanderbilt, David Attenborough, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, degrowth, dematerialisation, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, European colonialism, falling living standards, financial deregulation, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Howard Zinn, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, James Watt: steam engine, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, Mahatma Gandhi, Money creation, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration

A third component of Reagan’s economic plan was to deregulate the financial sector. Because Volcker considered this policy to be too extreme, Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan to take his place in 1987. Greenspan went about unravelling many of the banking regulations that had been established in the post-war era. He even managed to abolish the Glass–Steagall Act, which had been designed to prevent banks from engaging in the sort of reckless speculation that had triggered the Great Depression.55 Margaret Thatcher, who drew inspiration from Milton Friedman, implemented many of these same policies in Britain, at exactly the same time: high interest rates designed to clamp down on inflation, regressive taxation such as the ‘poll tax’ of 1989, and aggressive financial deregulation.

This didn’t hurt them a great deal so long as economic growth remained strong, since they were getting a still-large share of a fast-growing pie. But when growth stalled and inflation exploded in the 1970s, their wealth began to collapse in a much more serious way. 55 ‘He even managed to abolish …’ The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 abolished the Glass–Steagall Act. 56 ‘CEO salaries grew by …’ Executive Excess 2006, the 13th annual CEO compensation survey from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. 57 ‘According to US Census data …’ US Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables: Families. 58 ‘As it turns out, making …’ As Ha-Joon Chang has so aptly put it. 59 ‘In fact, quite the opposite …’ Robert Pollin, Contours of Descent (New York: Verso, 2005), p. 133. 60 ‘“We thought that an acceleration …”’ Prebisch, 1980, pp. 15, 18, cited in Kevan Harris and Ben Scully, ‘A hidden counter-movement?


pages: 453 words: 111,010

Licence to be Bad by Jonathan Aldred

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, framing effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, nudge unit, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, spectrum auction, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, zero-sum game

If all relevant information is already in the price, any short-term movements in stock prices are random, reflecting the many independent, individual acts of buying and selling, akin to repeated tosses of a coin. Given this fantasy about prices in financial markets, the bell curve is the obvious tool to describe the uncertainty – just as it can describe the outcome of repeated coin tosses. By 1999 deregulation of US banks (repealing the Glass–Steagall Act from the New Deal era) was explicitly justified by reference to the efficient-market hypothesis. The computer models were so trusted to ‘manage uncertainty’ that they controlled automated buying and selling of stocks. Human intervention was removed as far as possible in order to prevent error.

objection, 107, 119–20 Friedman, Milton, 4–5, 56, 69, 84, 88, 126, 189 awarded Nobel Prize, 132 and business responsibility, 2, 152 debate with Coase at Director’s house, 50, 132 as dominant Chicago thinker, 50, 132 on fairness and justice, 60 flawed arguments of, 132–3 influence on modern economics, 131–2 and monetarism, 87, 132, 232 at Mont Pèlerin, 5, 132 rejects need for realistic assumptions, 132–3 Sheraton Hall address (December 1967), 132 ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’ (essay, 1953), 132–3 ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits’ (article, 1970), 2, 152 Frost, Gerald, Antony Fisher: Champion of Liberty (2002), 7* Galbraith, John Kenneth, 242–3 game theory assumptions of ‘rational behaviour’, 18, 28, 29–32, 35–8, 41–3, 70, 124 Axelrod’s law of the instrument, 41 backward induction procedure, 36–7, 38 and Cold War nuclear strategy, 18, 20, 21–2, 24, 27, 33–4, 35, 70, 73, 198 focus on consequences alone, 43 as form of zombie science, 41 and human awareness, 21–3, 24–32 and interdependence, 23 limitations of, 32, 33–4, 37–40, 41–3 minimax solution, 22 multiplicity problem, 33–4, 35–7, 38 Nash equilibrium, 22–3, 24, 25, 27–8, 33–4, 41–2 the Nash program, 25 and nature of trust, 28–31, 41 the Prisoner’s Dilemma, 26–8, 29–32, 42–3 real world as problem for, 21–2, 24–5, 29, 31–2, 37–8, 39–40, 41–3 rise of in economics, 40–41 and Russell’s Chicken, 33–4 and Schelling, 138–9 and spectrum auctions, 39–40 theory of repeated games, 29–30, 35 tit-for-tat, 30–31 and trust, 29, 30–31, 32, 41 uses of, 23–4, 34, 38–9 view of humanity as non-cooperative/distrustful, 18, 21–2, 25–32, 36–8, 41–3 Von Neumann as father of, 18, 19, 20–22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 34, 41 zero-sum games, 21–2 Gates, Bill, 221–2 Geithner, Tim, 105 gender, 127–8, 130–31, 133, 156 General Electric, 159 General Motors (GM), 215–16 George, Prince of Cambridge, 98 Glass–Steagall Act, repeal of, 194 globalization, 215, 220 Goldman Sachs, 182, 184, 192 Google, 105 Gore, Al, 39 Great Reform Act (1832), 120 greed, 1–2, 196, 197, 204, 229, 238 Greenspan, Alan, 57, 203 Gruber, Jonathan, 245 Haifa, Israel, 158, 161 Harper, ‘Baldy’, 7 Harsanyi, John, 34–5, 40 Harvard Business Review, 153 Hayek, Friedrich and Arrow’s framework, 78–9 economics as all of life, 8 and Antony Fisher, 6–7 influence on Thatcher, 6, 7 and Keynesian economics, 5–6 and legal frameworks, 7* at LSE, 4 at Mont Pèlerin, 4, 5, 6, 15 and Olson’s analysis, 104 and public choice theory, 89 rejection of incentive schemes, 156 ‘spontaneous order’ idea, 30 The Road to Serfdom (1944), 4, 5, 6, 78–9, 94 healthcare, 91–2, 93, 178, 230, 236 hedge funds, 201, 219, 243–4 Heilbroner, Robert, The Worldly Philosophers, 252 Heller, Joseph, Catch-22, 98, 107, 243–4 Helmsley, Leona, 105 hero myths, 221–3, 224 Hewlett-Packard, 159 hippie countercultural, 100 Hoffman, Abbie, Steal This Book, 100 Holmström, Bengt, 229–30 homo economicus, 9, 10, 12, 140, 156–7 and Gary Becker, 126, 129, 133, 136 and behaviour of real people, 15, 136, 144–5, 171, 172, 173, 250–51 and behavioural economics, 170, 171, 172, 255 long shadow cast by, 248 and Nudge economists, 13, 172, 173, 174–5, 177 Hooke, Robert, 223 housing market, 128–9, 196, 240–41 separate doors for poor people, 243 Hume, David, 111 Huxley, Thomas, 114 IBM, 181, 222 identity, 32, 165–6, 168, 180 Illinois, state of, 46–7 immigration, 125, 146 Impossibility Theorem, 72, 73–4, 75, 89, 97 Arrow’s assumptions, 80, 81, 82 and Duncan Black, 77–8 and free marketeers, 78–9, 82 as misunderstood and misrepresented, 76–7, 79–82 ‘paradox of voting’, 75–7 as readily solved, 76–7, 79–80 Sen’s mathematical framework, 80–81 incentives adverse effect on autonomy, 164, 165–6, 168, 169–70, 180 authority figure–autonomy contradiction, 180 and behavioural economics, 171, 175, 176–7 cash and non-cash gifts, 161–2 context and culture, 175–6 contrast with rewards and punishments, 176–7 ‘crowding in’, 176 crowding out of prior motives, 160–61, 162–3, 164, 165–6, 171, 176 impact of economists’ ideas, 156–7, 178–80 and intrinsic motivations, 158–60, 161–3, 164, 165–6, 176 and moral disengagement, 162, 163, 164, 166 morally wrong/corrupting, 168–9 origins in behaviourism, 154 and orthodox theory of motivation, 157–8, 164, 166–7, 168–70, 178–9 payments to blood donors, 162–3, 164, 169, 176 as pervasive in modern era, 155–6 respectful use of, 175, 177–8 successful, 159–60 as tools of control/power, 155–7, 158–60, 161, 164, 167, 178 Indecent Proposal (film, 1993), 168 India, 123, 175 individualism, 82, 117 and Becker, 134, 135–8 see also freedom, individual Industrial Revolution, 223 inequality and access to lifeboats, 150–51 and climate change, 207–9 correlation with low social mobility, 227–8, 243 and demand for positional goods, 239–41 and economic imperialism, 145–7, 148, 151, 207 and efficiency wages, 237–8 entrenched self-deluding justifications for, 242–3 and executive pay, 215–16, 219, 224, 228–30, 234, 238 as falling in 1940–80 period, 215, 216 Great Gatsby Curve, 227–8, 243 hero myths, 221–3, 224 increases in as self-perpetuating, 227–8, 230–31, 243 as increasing since 1970s, 2–3, 215–16, 220–21 and lower growth levels, 239 mainstream political consensus on, 216, 217, 218, 219–21 marginal productivity theory, 223–4, 228 new doctrine on taxation since 1970s, 232–5 and Pareto, 217, 218–19, 220 poverty as waste of productive capacity, 238–9 public attitudes to, 221, 226–8 rises in as not inevitable, 220, 221, 242 role of luck downplayed, 222, 224–6, 243 scale-invariant nature of, 219, 220 ‘socialism for the rich’, 230 Thatcher’s praise of, 216 and top-rate tax cuts, 231, 233–5, 239 trickle-down economics, 232–3 US and European attitudes to, 226–7 ‘you deserve what you get’ belief, 223–6, 227–8, 236, 243 innovation, 222–3, 242 Inside Job (documentary, 2010), 88 Institute of Economic Affairs, 7–8, 15, 162–3 intellectual property law, 57, 68, 236 Ishiguro, Kazuo, Never Let Me Go, 148 Jensen, Michael, 229 Journal of Law and Economics, 49 justice, 1, 55, 57–62, 125, 137 Kahn, Herman, 18, 33 Kahneman, Daniel, 170–72, 173, 179, 202–3, 212, 226 Kennedy, President John, 139–40 Keynes, John Maynard, 11, 21, 162, 186, 204 and Buchanan’s ideology, 87 dentistry comparison, 258–9, 261 on economics as moral science, 252–3 Friedman’s challenge to orthodoxy of, 132 Hayek’s view of, 5–6 massive influence of, 3–4, 5–6 on power of economic ideas, 15 and probability, 185, 186–7, 188–9, 190, 210 vision of the ideal economist, 20 General Theory (1936), 15, 188–9 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 128 Khrushchev, Nikita, 139–40, 181 Kilburn Grammar School, 48 Kildall, Gary, 222 Kissinger, Henry, 184 Knight, Frank, 185–6, 212 Krugman, Paul, 248 Kubrick, Stanley, 35*, 139 labour child labour, 124, 146 and efficiency wages, 237–8 labour-intensive services, 90, 92–3 lumpenproletariat, 237 Olson’s hostility to unions, 104 Adam Smith’s ‘division of labour’ concept, 128 Laffer, Arthur, 232–3, 234 Lancet (medical journal), 257 Larkin, Philip, 67 law and economics movement, 40, 55, 56–63, 64–7 Lazear, Edward, ‘Economic Imperialism’, 246 legal system, 7* and blame for accidents, 55, 60–61 and Chicago School, 49, 50–52, 55 and Coase Theorem, 47, 49, 50–55, 63–6 criminal responsibility, 111, 137, 152 economic imperialist view of, 137 law and economics movement, 40, 55, 56–63, 64–7 ‘mimic the market’ approach, 61–3, 65 Posner’s wealth-maximization principle, 57–63, 64–7, 137 precautionary principle, 211–12, 214 transaction costs, 51–3, 54–5, 61, 62, 63–4, 68 Lehmann Brothers, 194 Lexecon, 58, 68 Linda Problem, 202–3 LineStanding.com, 123 Little Zheng, 123, 124 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 234–5, 236 lobbying, 7, 8, 88, 115, 123, 125, 146, 230, 231, 238 loft-insulation schemes, 172–3 logic, mathematical, 74–5 The Logic of Life (Tim Harford, 2008), 130 London School of Economics (LSE), 4, 48 Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), 201, 257 Machiavelli, Niccoló, 89, 94 Mafia, 30 malaria treatments, 125, 149 management science, 153–4, 155 Mandelbrot, Benoît, 195, 196, 201 Mankiw, Greg, 11 marginal productivity theory, 223–4 Markowitz, Harry, 196–7, 201, 213 Marx, Karl, 11, 101, 102, 104, 111, 223 lumpenproletariat, 237 mathematics, 9–10, 17–18, 19, 21–4, 26, 247, 248, 255, 259 of 2007 financial crash, 194, 195–6 and Ken Arrow, 71, 72, 73–5, 76–7, 82–3, 97 axioms (abstract assumptions), 198 fractals (scale-invariance), 194, 195–6, 201, 219 and orthodox decision theory, 190–91, 214 Ramsey Rule on discounting, 208–9, 212 and Savage, 189–90, 193, 197, 198, 199, 205 and Schelling, 139 Sen’s framework on voting systems, 80–81 standard deviation, 182, 192, 194 and stock market statistics, 190–91, 195–6 use of for military ends, 71–2 maximizing behaviour and Becker, 129–31, 133–4, 147 and catastrophe, 211 and Coase, 47, 55, 59, 61, 63–9 economic imperialism, 124–5, 129–31, 133–4, 147, 148–9 Posner’s wealth-maximization principle, 57–63, 64–7, 137 profit-maximizing firms, 228 see also wealth-maximization principle; welfare maximization McCluskey, Kirsty, 194 McNamara, Robert, 138 median voter theorem, 77, 95–6 Merton, Robert, 201 Meucci, Antonio, 222 microeconomics, 9, 232, 259 Microsoft, 222 Miles, David, 258 Mill, John Stuart, 102, 111, 243 minimum wage, national, 96 mobility, economic and social correlation with inequality, 226–8, 243 as low in UK, 227 as low in USA, 226–7 US–Europe comparisons, 226–7 Modern Times (Chaplin film, 1936), 154 modernism, 67 Moivre, Abraham de, 193 monetarism, 87, 89, 132, 232 monopolies and cartels, 101, 102, 103–4 public sector, 48–9, 50–51, 93–4 Mont Pèlerin Society, 3–9, 13, 15, 132 Morgenstern, Oskar, 20–22, 24–5, 28, 35, 124, 129, 189, 190 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 91, 92–3 Murphy, Kevin, 229 Mussolini, Benito, 216, 219 Nash equilibrium, 22–3, 24, 25, 27–8, 33–4, 41–2 Nash, John, 17–18, 22–3, 24, 25–6, 27–8, 33–4, 41–2 awarded Nobel Prize, 34–5, 38, 39, 40 mental health problems, 25, 26, 34 National Health Service, 106, 162 ‘neoliberalism’, avoidance of term, 3* Neumann, John von ambition to make economics a science, 20–21, 24–5, 26, 35, 125, 151, 189 as Cold War warrior, 20, 26, 138 and expansion of scope of economics, 124–5 as father of game theory, 18, 19, 20–22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 34, 41 final illness and death of, 19, 34, 35, 43–4 genius of, 19–20 as inspiration for Dr Strangelove, 19 and Nash’s equilibrium, 22–3, 25, 38* simplistic view of humanity, 28 theory of decision-making, 189, 190, 203 neuroscience, 14 New Deal, US, 4, 194, 231 Newton, Isaac, 223 Newtonian mechanics, 21, 24–5 Nixon, Richard, 56, 184, 200 NORAD, Colorado Springs, 181 nuclear weapons, 18–19, 20, 22, 27, 181 and Ellsberg, 200 and game theory, 18, 20, 21–2, 24, 27, 33–4, 35, 70, 73, 198 MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), 35, 138 and Russell’s Chicken, 33–4 and Schelling, 138, 139 Nudge economists, 13, 171–5, 177–8, 179, 180, 251 Oaten, Mark, 121 Obama, Barack, 110, 121, 157, 172, 180 Olson, Mancur, 103, 108, 109, 119–20, 122 The Logic of Collective Action (1965), 103–4 On the Waterfront (Kazan film, 1954), 165 online invisibility, 100* organs, human, trade in, 65, 123, 124, 145, 147–8 Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 42–3 Osborne, George, 233–4 Packard, David, 159 Paine, Tom, 243 Pareto, Vilfredo 80/20 rule’ 218 and inequality, 217, 218–19, 220 life and background of, 216–17 Pareto efficiency, 217–18, 256* Paul the octopus (World Cup predictor, 2010), 133 pensions, workplace, 172, 174 physics envy, 9, 20–21, 41, 116, 175–6, 212, 247 Piketty, Thomas, 234, 235 plastic shopping bag tax, 159–60 Plato’s Republic, 100–101, 122 political scientists and Duncan Black, 78, 95–6 Black’s median voter theorem, 95–6 Buchanan’s ideology, 84–5 crises of the 1970s, 85–6 influence of Arrow, 72, 81–2, 83 see also public choice theory; social choice theory Posner, Richard, 54, 56–63, 137 ‘mimic the market’ approach, 61–3, 65 ‘The Economics of the Baby Shortage’ (1978), 61 precautionary principle, 211–12, 214 price-fixing, 101, 102, 103–4 Princeton University, 17, 19–20 Prisoner’s Dilemma, 26–8, 29–32, 42–3 prisons, cell upgrades in, 123 privatization, 50, 54, 88, 93–4 probability, 182–4 and Keynes, 185, 186–7, 188–9, 210 Linda Problem, 202–3 modern ideas of, 184–5 Ramsey’s personal probabilities (beliefs as probabilities), 187–8, 190, 197, 198, 199, 204–5 and Savage, 190, 193, 197, 198, 199, 203, 205 ‘Truth and Probability’ (Ramsey paper), 186–8, 189, 190 see also risk and uncertainty Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 productivity Baumol’s cost disease, 90–92, 93, 94 and efficiency wages, 237–8 improvement in labour-intensive services, 92–3 labour input, 92 protectionism, 246, 255 psychology availability heuristic, 226 behaviourism, 154–8, 237 and behavioural economics, 12, 170–71 cognitive dissonance, 113–14 and financial incentives, 156–7, 158–60, 163–4, 171 framing effects, 170–71, 259 of free-riding, 113–14, 115 intrinsic motivations, 158–60, 161–3, 164, 165–6, 176 irrational behaviour, 12, 15, 171 learning of social behaviour, 163–4 moral disengagement, 162, 163, 164, 166 motivated beliefs, 227 ‘self-command’ strategies, 140 view of in game theory, 26–31 view of in public choice theory, 85–6 and welfare maximization, 149 ‘you deserve what you get’ belief, 223–6, 227–8, 236, 243 public choice theory as consensus view, 84–5 and crises of the 1970s, 85–6 foolish voter assumption, 86–8 ‘paradox of voter turnout’, 88–9, 95–6, 115–16 partial/self-contradictory application of, 86, 87–9 ‘political overload’ argument, 85, 86–7 ‘public bad, private good’ mantra, 93–4, 97 and resistance to tax rises, 94, 241 self-fulfilling prophecies, 95–7 and selfishness, 85–6, 87–8, 89, 94, 95–7 as time-bomb waiting to explode, 85 public expenditure in 1970s and ’80s, 89 Baumol’s cost disease, 90–92, 93, 94 and Keynesian economics, 4 and public choice theory, 85–8, 89, 241 and tax rises, 241–2 public-sector monopolies, 48–9, 50–51, 93–4 Puzzle of the Harmless Torturers, 118–19 queue-jumping, 123, 124 QWERTY layout, 42 racial discrimination, 126–7, 133, 136, 140 Ramsey, Frank, 186–8, 189, 190, 205, 208 Ramsey Rule, 208–9, 212 RAND Corporation, 17, 41, 103, 138, 139 and Ken Arrow, 70–71, 72–3, 74, 75–6, 77, 78 and behaviourism, 154 and Cold War military strategy, 18, 20, 21–2, 24, 27, 33–4, 70, 73, 75–6, 141, 200, 213 and Ellsberg, 182–4, 187, 197–8, 200 and Russell’s Chicken, 33 Santa Monica offices of, 18 self-image as defender of freedom, 78 rational behaviour assumptions in game theory, 18, 28, 29–32, 35–8, 41–3, 70, 124 axioms (abstract mathematical assumptions), 198 Becker’s version of, 128–9, 135, 140, 151 behavioural economics/Nudge view of, 173, 174–5 distinction between values and tastes, 136–8 economic imperialist view of, 135, 136–8, 140, 151 and free-riding theory, 100–101, 102, 103–4, 107–8, 109–10, 115–16 and orthodox decision theory, 198, 199 public choice theory relates selfishness to, 86 term as scientific-sounding cover, 12 see also homo economicus Reader’s Digest, 5, 6 Reagan, Ronald, 2, 87–8, 89, 104, 132 election of as turning point, 6, 216, 220–21 and top-rate tax cuts, 231, 233 regulators, 1–2 Chicago view of, 40 Reinhart, Carmen, 258 religion, decline of in modern societies, 15, 185 renewable energy, 116 rent-seeking, 230, 238 ‘right to recline’, 63–4 risk and uncertainty bell curve distribution, 191–4, 195, 196–7, 201, 203–4, 257 catastrophes, 181–2, 191, 192, 201, 203–4, 211–12 delusions of quantitative ‘risk management’, 196, 213 Ellsberg’s experiment (1961), 182–4, 187, 197, 198–200 errors in conventional thinking about, 191–2, 193–4, 195–7, 204–5, 213 financial orthodoxy on risk, 196–7, 201–2 and First World War, 185 and fractals (scale-invariance), 194, 195–6, 201 hasard and fortuit, 185* ‘making sense’ of through stories, 202–3 ‘measurable’ and ‘unmeasurable’ distinction, 185–6, 187–9, 190, 210–11, 212–13 measurement in numerical terms, 181–4, 187, 189, 190–94, 196–7, 201–2, 203–5, 212–13 orthodox decision theory, 183–4, 185–6, 189–91, 193–4, 201–2, 203–5, 211, 212–14 our contemporary orthodoxy, 189–91 personal probabilities (beliefs as probabilities), 187–8, 190, 197, 198, 199, 204–5 precautionary principle, 211–12, 214 pure uncertainty, 182–3, 185–6, 187–9, 190, 197, 198–9, 210, 211, 212, 214, 251 redefined as ‘volatility’, 197, 213 the Savage orthodoxy, 190–91, 197, 198–200, 203, 205 scenario planning as crucial, 251 Taleb’s black swans, 192, 194, 201, 203–4 ‘Truth and Probability’ (Ramsey paper), 186–8, 189, 190 urge to actuarial alchemy, 190–91, 197, 201 value of human life (‘statistical lives’), 141–5, 207 see also probability Robertson, Dennis, 13–14 Robinson, Joan, 260 Rodrik, Dani, 255, 260–61 Rogoff, Ken, 258 Rothko, Mark, 4–5 Rumsfeld, Donald, 232–3 Russell, Bertrand, 33–4, 74, 97, 186, 188 Ryanair, 106 Sachs, Jeffrey, 257 Santa Monica, California, 18 Sargent, Tom, 257–8 Savage, Leonard ‘Jimmie’, 189–90, 193, 203, 205scale-invariance, 194, 195–6, 201, 219 Scandinavian countries, 103, 149 Schelling, Thomas, 35* on access to lifeboats, 150–51 awarded Nobel Prize, 138–9 and Cold War nuclear strategy, 138, 139–40 and economic imperialism, 141–5 and game theory, 138–9 and Washington–Moscow hotline, 139–40 work on value of human life, 141–5, 207 ‘The Intimate Contest for Self-command’ (essay, 1980), 140, 145 ‘The Life You Save May be Your Own’ (essay, 1968), 142–5, 207 Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, 172 Schmidt, Eric, 105 Scholes, Myron, 201 Schwarzman, Stephen, 235 Second World War, 3, 189, 210 selfishness, 41–3, 178–9 and Becker, 129–30 and defence of inequality, 242–3 as free marketeers’ starting point, 10–12, 13–14, 41, 86, 178–9 and game theory, 18 and public choice theory, 85–6, 87–8, 89, 94, 95–7 Selten, Reinhard, 34–5, 36, 38, 40 Sen, Amartya, 29, 80–81 service sector, 90–93, 94 Shakespeare, William, Measure for Measure, 169 Shaw, George Bernard, 101 Shiller, Robert, 247 Simon, Herbert, 223 Skinner, Burrhus, 154–5, 158 Smith, Adam, 101, 111, 122 The Wealth of Nations (1776), 10–11, 188–9 snowflakes, 195 social choice theory, 72 and Ken Arrow, 71–83, 89, 95, 97, 124–5, 129 and Duncan Black, 78, 95 and free marketeers, 79, 82 Sen’s mathematical framework, 80–81 social media, 100* solar panels, 116 Solow, Bob, 163, 223 Sorites paradox, 117–18, 119 sovereign fantasy, 116–17 Soviet Union, 20, 22, 70, 73, 82, 101, 104, 167, 237 spectrum auctions, 39–40, 47, 49 Stalin, Joseph, 70, 73, 101 the state anti-government attitudes in USA, 83–5 antitrust regulation, 56–8 dismissal of almost any role for, 94, 135, 235–6, 241 duty over full employment, 5 economic imperialist arguments for ‘small government’, 135 increased economic role from 1940s, 3–4, 5 interventions over ‘inefficient’ outcomes, 53 and monetarism, 87, 89 and Mont Pèlerin Society, 3, 4, 5 and privatization, 50, 54, 88, 93–4 public-sector monopolies, 48–50, 93–4 replacing of with markets, 79 vital role of, 236 statistical lives, 141–5, 207 Stern, Nick, 206, 209–10 Stigler, George, 50, 51, 56, 69, 88 De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum (with Becker, 1977), 135–6 Stiglitz, Joseph, 237 stock markets ‘Black Monday’ (1987), 192 and fractals (scale-invariance), 194, 195–6, 201 orthodox decision theory, 190–91, 193–4, 201 Strittmatter, Father, 43–4 Summers, Larry, 10, 14 Sunstein, Cass, 173 Nudge (with Richard Thaler, 2008), 171–2, 175 Taleb, Nassim, 192 Tarski, Alfred, 74–5 taxation and Baumol’s cost disease, 94 and demand for positional goods, 239–41 as good thing, 231, 241–2, 243 Laffer curve, 232–3, 234 new doctrine of since 1970s, 232–4 property rights as interdependent with, 235–6 public resistance to tax rises, 94, 239, 241–2 and public spending, 241–2 revenue-maximizing top tax rate, 233–4, 235 tax avoidance and evasion, 99, 105–6, 112–13, 175, 215 ‘tax revolt’ campaigns (1970s USA), 87 ‘tax as theft’ culture, 235–6 top-rate cuts and inequality, 231, 233–5, 239 whines from the super-rich, 234–5, 243 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 153–4, 155, 167, 178, 237 Thaler, Richard, 13 Nudge (with Cass Sunstein, 2008), 171–2, 175 Thatcher, Margaret, 2, 88, 89, 104, 132 election of as turning point, 6, 216, 220–21 and Hayek, 6, 7 and inequality, 216, 227 privatization programme, 93–4 and top-rate tax cuts, 231 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944), 20, 21, 25, 189 Titanic, sinking of (1912), 150 Titmuss, Richard, The Gift Relationship, 162–3 tobacco-industry lobbyists, 8 totalitarian regimes, 4, 82, 167–8, 216, 219 see also Soviet Union trade union movement, 104 Tragedy of the Commons, 27 Truman, Harry, 20, 237 Trump, Donald, 233 Tucker, Albert, 26–7 Tversky, Amos, 170–72, 173, 202–3, 212, 226 Twitter, 100* Uber, 257 uncertainty see risk and uncertainty The Undercover Economist (Tim Harford, 2005), 130 unemployment and Coase Theorem, 45–7, 64 during Great Depression, 3–4 and Keynesian economics, 4, 5 United Nations, 96 universities auctioning of places, 124, 149–50 incentivization as pervasive, 156 Vietnam War, 56, 198, 200, 249 Villari, Pasquale, 30 Vinci, Leonardo da, 186 Viniar, David, 182, 192 Volkswagen scandal (2016), 2, 151–2 Vonnegut, Kurt, 243–4 voting systems, 72–4, 77, 80, 97 Arrow’s ‘Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives’, 81, 82 Arrow’s ‘Universal Domain’, 81, 82 and free marketeers, 79 ‘hanging chads’ in Florida (2000), 121 recount process in UK, 121 Sen’s mathematical framework, 80–81 Waldfogel, Joel, 161* Wanniski, Jude, 232 Watertown Arsenal, Massachusetts, 153–4 Watson Jr, Thomas J., 181 wealth-maximization principle, 57–63 and Coase, 47, 55, 59, 63–9 as core principle of current economics, 253 created markets, 65–7 extension of scope of, 124–5 and justice, 55, 57–62, 137 and knee space on planes, 63–4 practical problems with negotiations, 62–3 and values more important than efficiency, 64–5, 66–7 welfare maximization, 124–5, 129–31, 133–4, 148–9, 176 behavioural economics/Nudge view of, 173 and vulnerable/powerless people, 146–7, 150 welfare state, 4, 162 Wilson, Charlie, 215 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 186, 188 Wolfenschiessen (Swiss village), 158, 166–7 Woolf, Virginia, 67 World Bank, 96 World Cup football tournament (2010), 133 World Health Organization, 207 Yale Saturday Evening Pest, 4–5 Yellen, Janet, 237 THE BEGINNING Let the conversation begin … Follow the Penguin twitter.com/penguinukbooks Keep up-to-date with all our stories youtube.com/penguinbooks Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your pinterest.com/penguinukbooks Like ‘Penguin Books’ on facebook.com/penguinbooks Listen to Penguin at soundcloud.com/penguin-books Find out more about the author and discover more stories like this at penguin.co.uk ALLEN LANE UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa Allen Lane is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com First published 2019 Copyright © Jonathan Aldred, 2019 The moral right of the author has been asserted Jacket photograph © Getty Images ISBN: 978-0-241-32544-5 This ebook is copyright 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pages: 741 words: 179,454

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, carbon credits, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, Celtic Tiger, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deal flow, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discrete time, diversification, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Goodhart's law, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Bogle, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, load shedding, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, negative equity, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Nixon shock, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Satyajit Das, savings glut, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, tail risk, Teledyne, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the market place, the medium is the message, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Turing test, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Regulators set the rates that the bank could pay its depositors, the rates it could charge borrowers, and the amount it could lend. There was little trading. Exotics remained exotic. The world worked to the 3-6-3 rule—borrow at 3 percent, lend at 6 percent, hit the golf course at 3.00 p.m. Following the 1929 stock market crash and the collapse of the banking system, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (named after Democratic Senator Carter Glass of Lynchburg, Virginia, and Democratic Congressman Henry B. Steagall of Alabama) separated commercial banking (taking deposits and lending money) and investment banking (advising, arranging, underwriting, and trading securities). Regulation sought to prevent conflicts of interest where the same institution was lending (granting credit) and investing (using credit).

The ability to expand into broader financial services would reduce risk through diversification of activity. Proponents pointed to Europe, where universal banks undertook both banking and securities businesses. In 1999, the coup de grâce was administered by Phil Gramm (Republican of Texas) and Jim Leach (Republican of Iowa), who introduced legislation repealing the Glass-Steagall Act. The repeal paved the way for financial supermarkets—one-stop money shops taking deposits, making loans, providing advice, underwriting and trading securities, managing investments, and providing insurance. Byron Dorgan, one of only eight senators who voted against the abolition, presciently observed that “this bill will in my judgement raise the likelihood of future massive taxpayer bailouts.”1 Giant financial supermarkets destroyed old banking traditions.

See also John Maynard Keynes genocide, 38 George, Lloyd, 48, 340 Gere, Richard, 326 Germany, 312 gold, 359 inflation in, 22 get-rich investment and trading-secrets books, 98 Gherkin, 79 Gibson Greetings, 135 Gipp, George, 97 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The, 360 Girls Gone Wild, 344 Gladwell, Malcolm, 329 Glass, Carter, 66 Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, 66, 201 Glassman, James, 97, 99 Gleacher, Eric, 148 Glengarry Glen Ross, 185 global credit process, 88 Global Crossing, 154 global financial crisis, 310, 346-347 aftermath, 361-366 European debt crisis, 357-359 Greece, 354-356 solutions, 352-354 global saving glut thesis, 303 globalization, 38, 41 GNH (gross national happiness), 364 Go-Between, The, 185 Godfather, The, 147 gold, 21, 25-27, 58 China’s investment in, 87 circulation of, 32 effect of speculators on price, 28 Germany, 359 reserves, 30 Sons of Gwalia (SoG), 216 standard, 29-31 golden ring, 314 golden years, 46.


pages: 395 words: 116,675

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, altcoin, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Broken windows theory, carbon tax, Columbian Exchange, computer age, Corn Laws, cosmological constant, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, Donald Davies, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Eben Moglen, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, endogenous growth, epigenetics, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fail fast, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, George Santayana, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, hydraulic fracturing, imperial preference, income per capita, indoor plumbing, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, land reform, Lao Tzu, long peace, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Necker cube, obamacare, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, twin studies, uber lyft, women in the workforce

The IMF sees the need for some kind of permanent liquidity facility, but instead of a central bank it proposes for El Salvador a pool drawn from all banks’ current reserve requirements, with a penal rate of interest for those banks that need to use the facility. This is not unlike the system that Scotland operated with such success for so long. The China price Surely, though, the great financial crisis that began in 2008 was caused by too little regulation, and too much greed? So at least goes the conventional wisdom. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (which separated banking and securities trading) in 1999 was the culmination of a decade of financial deregulation, according to this view. Like so much conventional wisdom, this is almost wholly wrong. As the author George Gilder comments, in the run-up to the crisis, ‘every large institution was thronged with examiners, overseers, supervisors, inspectors, monitors, compliance officers and a menagerie of other regulatory constabulary’.

‘Mahatma’ 178 Garzik, Jeff 312 Gas Research Institute 136 Gassendi, Pierre 12, 13 Gates, Bill 222 Gaua 81 Gazzaniga, Michael 144, 147 GCHQ 303 genes: background 59–61; function of 65; and the genome 62–4; and junk or surplus DNA 66–72; mutation 72–5; selfish gene 66, 68 Genghis Khan 87, 223 geology 17 George III 245 Georgia Inst. of Technology 272 German Society for Racial Hygiene 198, 202 Germany 12, 29, 101, 122, 138, 231, 243, 247, 251, 253, 318 Ghana 181, 229 Giaever, Ivar 273 Gilder, George 287 Gilfillan, Colum 127 Gladstone, William Ewart 246 Glaeser, Edward 92 Glasgow University 22, 25 Glass-Steagall Act 287 global warming 271–6 Glorious Revolution (England) 243 Gobi desert 92 Goddard, Robert 138 Godkin, Ed 250 Goethe, Charles 202 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 248 Goldberg, Jonah 252; Liberal Fascism 199, 251 Goldman Sachs 3 Goldsmith, Sir Edward 211 Goodenough, Oliver 36 Google 120, 130, 132, 188 Gore, A1205, 211, 273, 274 Gosling, Raymond 121 Gottlieb, Anthony 41 Gottlieb, Richard 11 Gould, Stephen Jay 38, 53, 69 government: commerce and freedom 243–4; counterrevolution of 247–50; definition 236; free trade and free thinking 244–6; as God 254–5; and the Levellers 241–2; liberal fascism 250–2; libertarian revival 252–3; prison system 237–8; and protection rackets 238–41; and the wild west 235–6 Grant, Madison 202; The Passing of the Great Race 200–1 Graur, Dan 71, 72 Gray, Asa 44; Descent of Man 44–5 Gray, Elisha 119 Great Depression 105, 125, 318 Great Recession (2008–09) 97, 297 Greece 259 Green, David 115 Green, Paul 226 Green Revolution 208, 210 Greenblatt, Stephen 9, 11n Greenhalgh, Susan 212; Just One Child 210–11 Greenspan Put 289 Gregory, Ryan 71 Gregory VII, Pope 239 Gresham’s Law 279 Guardian (newspaper) 53 Gulf War 298 Gutenberg, Johannes 220 Hadiths 262 Haeckel, Ernst 197, 198 Hahnemann, Samuel 271 Haig, David 57 Hailey, Malcolm, Lord 231 Hailo 109 Haiti 207 Hamel, Gary 224 Hamilton, Alexander 244 Hannan, Daniel 35, 242, 315 Hannauer, Nick 107 Hansen, Alvin 105 Hanson, Earl Parker, New Worlds Emerging 209 Harford, Tim, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure 127, 255 Harriman, E.H. 200 Harris, Judith Rich 155–6, 158–65, 169; The Nurture Assumption 160–1 Harris, Sam 147, 148, 149–50, 151, 152 Harvard Business Review 224 Harvard University 9, 28, 57, 155, 159, 300 Hayek, Friedrich 35, 102, 128, 133, 230, 232, 243; The Constitution of Liberty 300; The Road to Serfdom 253 Haynes, John Dylan 146–7 Hazlett, Tom 223 Heidegger, Martin 201 Helsinki 211, 212 Henrich, Joe 89 Henry II 34 Henry VII 240 Henry the Navigator, Prince 134 Heraclius 262 Heritage Foundation 241 Higgs, Robert 240 Hill, P.J. 235–6 Hines, Melissa 169 Hitler, Adolf 198, 201, 217, 251, 252, 253; Mein Kampf 252 Hobbes, Thomas 8, 12, 197–8, 243 Holdren, John 208 Holland 142 Holland, Tom, In the Shadow of the Sword 261–2 Holocaust 214 Hong Kong 31, 92, 97, 101, 190, 191, 233–4 Hood, Bruce 148; The Self Illusion 145 Horgan, John 60 Hortlund, Per 284 ‘How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia’ (2010) 232 Howard, John 273 Hu Yaobang 212 Human Genome Project 64 Human Rights Watch 232 Hume, David 20, 21–2, 40–1, 54, 276; Concerning Natural Religion 39–40; Natural History of Religion 257 Humphrey, Nick 144, 154 Hussein, Saddam 298 Hutcheson, Francis 22, 25 Hutchinson, Allan 33 Hutton, James 17 Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World 167 Huxley, Julian 205, 211 Hyderabad 181 Ibsen, Henrik 249 Iceland 32 Iliad 87 Immigration Act (US, 1924) 201 Incas 86, 259 India 34, 87, 108, 125, 177–8, 181, 183, 196, 204, 206, 213, 214, 258, 259 Industrial (R)evolution 63, 104, 108,109–10, 135, 220, 248, 254–5, 277 Infoseek (search engine) 120 Intel 223 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 273–4 International Code of Conduct for Information Security 305 International Federation of Eugenics Organisations 202 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 286 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) 305 internet: balkanisation of the web 302–6; and bitcoin 308–12; and blockchains 306–9, 313–14; central committee of 305–6; complexity of 300–1; emergence of 299–300; individuals associated with 301–2; and politics 314–16 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 305–6 Iraq 32, 255 Ireland 213, 246 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 240 Islam 259, 260, 262–3 Islamabad 92 Islamic State 240 Israel, Paul 119 Italian city states 101 Italy 34, 247, 251 Ive, Sir Jonathan 319 Jablonka, Eva 56, 57 Jackson, Doug 309 Jacobs, Jane 92 Jagger, Bianca 211 Jainism 260 Japan, Japanese 32, 122, 125, 231, 232, 288 Jefferson, Thomas 15, 20, 114, 244 Jehovah 13, 276 Jerome, St 11 Jesus Christ 8, 9, 88, 257, 258, 263, 266 Jevons, William Stanley 63, 106 Jews 29, 142, 197, 202–3, 257 Jobs, Steve 119, 222 Johnson, Boris 166; The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History 217 Johnson, Lyndon B. 206, 207, 289 Johnson, Steven Berlin 220; Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation 127 Jones, Judge John 49, 50, 51 Jonson, Ben 15 J.P.


pages: 397 words: 112,034

What's Next?: Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the World Economy by David Hale, Lyric Hughes Hale

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, classic study, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, diversification, energy security, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, global village, high net worth, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage tax deduction, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, passive investing, payday loans, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precautionary principle, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, yield curve

Known as the Dodd-Frank Act after its principal authors, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), the law will affect most financial entities and weigh on transactions ranging from complicated derivative schemes to the purchase of a gift card at the mall. Clocking in at over 2,300 pages—ten times the length of the earlier Glass-Steagall Act—Dodd-Frank granted new or expanded powers to ten regulatory agencies, established a new independent consumer protection panel, and mandated the creation of what could be more than five hundred new rules governing the operation of financial firms. Its impact will depend greatly on how these rules are crafted and implemented.

See gross domestic product (GDP) Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), 280 Germany, xv, 9, 12–13, 57; federal deficit in, 68; government debt, 159–160; productivity losses in, xvi Ghana, xxii, xxv, 119, 127, 184–185 Gillard, Julia, 150 Gladwell, Malcolm, 276, 277 Glass-Steagall Act, 264 global economy. See world economy global financial crisis: Australia and, xxiii–xxiv, 140–141, 149–150; causes of, 274–275; corporate compliance and, xxviii–xxix; end of, 3; government intervention in, 3–4; in Japan, xxi, 92; in Latin America, xix–xx, 50–51; in Mexico, xviii; as North Atlantic crisis, 139–140; public debt and, 256–257; in South Africa, xxii–xxiii; in Sub-Saharan Africa, xxii, 117 Globalive, 26 globalization, 79 global public goods, 254–255 global warming.


pages: 403 words: 119,206

Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market by B. Mark Smith

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, book value, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, compound rate of return, computerized trading, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, joint-stock company, junk bonds, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market clearing, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, money market fund, Myron Scholes, Paul Samuelson, price stability, prudent man rule, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, shareholder value, short selling, stocks for the long run, the market place, transaction costs

Roosevelt asked that the law be based on “the ancient truth that those who manage banks, corporations and other agencies handling other people’s money are trustees acting for others.”8 Wall Street had always operated on the basis of caveat emptor; Roosevelt proposed that “the burden of telling the whole truth [be placed] on the seller.”9 In response, Congress passed the Securities Act of 1933, granting the federal government the power to oblige underwriters to observe certain guidelines in their solicitations, and also requiring that most new issues be registered with the government before being sold to the public. Shortly thereafter, the Banking Act of 1933, to become better known as the Glass-Steagall Act, gave the Federal Reserve more control over member banks’ speculative activities and drew a distinct line between the activities of commercial and investment banks by requiring that commercial banks divest themselves of investment affiliates. The legislation also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure bank deposits, an extremely important innovation that would virtually eliminate bank runs in the future.

(archbishop of New York) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Federal Reserve System; anti-inflationary policy of; and bull market of 1920s; and bull market of 1990s; and collapse of Long Term Capital Management; computer models of crashes devised by; and crash of 1929; and crash of 1987; creation of; European central banks and; during Great Depression; Greenspan appointed chairman of; Hoover and; margin requirements of; “October Massacre” precipitated by; Open Market Investment Committee; in postwar era; and silver crisis of 1980; Volker appointed chairman of; during World War I Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Fenner & Beane Fidelity; Capital Fund; Magellan Fund; Trend Fund Financial Analysts Journal First National Bank of Chicago First National City Bank First Pennsylvania Bank Fischer, Irving Fischer, Lawrence Fisher Body Fisk, Jim fixed-income securities; see also bonds Forbes magazine Ford Motor Company Fortune magazine 401(k) plans France, Bank of Frick, Henry Clay Friedman, Milton Friend, Irwin Fulbright, J. William fundamental analysis Funston, G. Keith futures, stock index Galbraith, John Kenneth Garnac Grain Company Gary, Elbert H. Gates, John General Electric General Motors Germany, central banks of glamour stocks; mutual fund holdings in Glass, Carter Glassman, James Glass–Steagall Act (1933) Global Marine “go-go” funds, see performance funds gold Goldberg, Arthur Goldman, Sachs & Company Goldsmith, James Gould, George Gould, Jay Gould, Leslie Graham, Benjamin Great Depression; causes of; and crash of 1929; dividend payments during; stock market reforms during; valuation approaches during Great Northern Railroad Greeley, Horace greenbacks Greenburgh, William Greenspan, Alan growth stocks; and crash of 1962; interest rates and; see also glamour stocks Gudemen, Edward Hadley, Arthur T.


pages: 429 words: 120,332

Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens by Nicholas Shaxson

Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, call centre, capital controls, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, export processing zone, failed state, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, high net worth, income inequality, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, light touch regulation, Londongrad, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, New Journalism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old-boy network, out of africa, passive income, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, transfer pricing, vertical integration, Washington Consensus

London’s first claim to be a tax haven is the subject of this chapter: its role as the creator and developer of the Euromarkets, Wall Street’s giant escape route from the checks and balances of U.S. financial regulation. Here the subsidiaries and affiliates of U.S. commercial banks have long been allowed to engage in, among many other things, investment banking—“casino banking,” as some have called it—something the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 explicitly prohibited. Over the years, as this business became more integral to their global banking models, Wall Street could increasingly pressure the U.S. government to do away with the original restrictions to allow them to do at home what they already did offshore, and this was arguably the main factor that led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999.

., 190 Gaydamak, Arkady, 137–9, 249n16–18, 250n21 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Keynes), 50 Geneva, 10, 16, 67, 96–7, 137–8, 146, 153, 176, 249n18 Geoghegan, Thomas, 199–200 George, Eddie, 76 Germany, 3, 5, 49, 50, 97, 138, 146–7, 185, 187, 209, 239n13 Ghana, 19, 65 Gibraltar (British overseas territory), 18–19, 27, 87 Gill, Casey, 99–100 Gillard, Michael, 136 Glasman, Maurice, 72–4, 86, 244n73 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 67 Global Development Finance: Illicit Flows Report 2009, 30 global financial crisis (2007–present), 30–2, 46, 52, 98, 132, 166, 169 Global Financial Integrity (GFI) Program, 29, 131, 139–40, 170, 183, 217, 237n44, 257n50 globalization, 10, 32–3, 56, 59–60, 86, 130, 132, 149, 152–3, 219, 221, 233n2, 240n22 Goldman Sachs, 68, 71, 81, 103, 119, 125, 132, 213–14 Google Inc., 14, 125 Gordon report, 117, 251n2 Gramm, Phil, 140, 226 les grands, 2, 4, 10 Great Britain: See British empire; British tax havens Great Depression, 31, 35, 52, 54–5, 63, 70, 108, 130, 169, 240n17 The Greatest Trust in the World (Armour), 36 Greenberger, Michael, 68 Greenspan, Alan, 107 G20, 30, 106, 168–9, 215, 223 Guernsey (British Crown Dependency), 17, 27, 69, 79, 87, 103, 205, 235n19 Gurría, Angel, 168 Halliburton, 17, 235n17 Harper’s magazine, 255n18 Harvard Club, 9 Hayward, Nathan, 194–5 Hayek, Friedrich, 59 Healey, Dennis, 25, 245n24 Helms, Jesse, 160–1 Helmsley, Leona, 7 Henry, Jim, 140–2 Heritage Foundation, 150–1 Heys, John, 189 Hezbollah, 178 Hitler, Adolf, 50, 98, 113, 156, 188 Hodge, Sir Julian, 184 Hoffman, Michael, 58 Hogan, Paul, 33 Honduras, 13–15 Hong Kong, 18–19, 27–8, 74, 85, 88, 97, 105–6, 111, 121, 133, 147, 158, 162, 244n71, 245n30, 251n36 Hoover, Herbert, 36 Hopkins, A.


pages: 374 words: 113,126

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bike sharing, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, forward guidance, full employment, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, lateral thinking, life extension, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working-age population

The 1933 and 1935 Banking Acts introduced changes to the Federal Reserve System to enhance the ability of the Fed to stabilize the banking system. The measures included extending the ability of the Federal Reserve to more easily lend money based on receiving collateral, including to non-financial firms; the Glass–Steagall Act, resulting in the separation of commercial and investment banking functions; regulation of deposit interest rates; and strict limits on entry to the market. Also important was the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 1933 to stem the problem of ruinous bank runs. The FDIC remains in place today and guarantees that depositors won’t lose their money (currently up to $250,000) if a bank goes under.

Friedman and the 2008 financial crisis The global financial crisis occurred in 2008 with repercussions across the world economy. Financial deregulation since the 1980s meant that financial markets and global linkages across national borders became much more diverse. Then, in 1999, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act repealed the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 that had previously separated retail from investment banking. More of the risks undertaken by investment banks could be transmitted to retail (deposit-holding) banks. In the 2008 crisis, we were at the cusp of the first potential systemic banking failure since the 1929 crash that had led to the passage of Glass–Steagall in the first place.


pages: 374 words: 114,660

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality by Angus Deaton

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon tax, clean water, colonial exploitation, Columbian Exchange, compensation consultant, creative destruction, declining real wages, Downton Abbey, Easter island, Edward Jenner, end world poverty, financial engineering, financial innovation, Ford Model T, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, John Snow's cholera map, knowledge economy, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, new economy, off-the-grid, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, very high income, War on Poverty, zoonotic diseases

The economists Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef have shown how compensation in the financial sector, which was high in the 1920s, fell in the wake of post–Depression era regulation, and then rose again, especially after 1980.31 They show that changes in four kinds of financial regulation and deregulation—allowing banks to have multiple branches, the separation of commercial and investment banks, interest rate ceilings, and the separation of banks and insurance companies—can together match the patterns of compensation in the financial sector. The imposition of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1932 and its eventual repeal in 1999 are the bookends in the saga. Congress does not impose and repeal such laws in a vacuum. Lobbying by potential winners and losers is intense, and well-financed interests know how to use money to support or punish political campaigns. The political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue that political lobbying has played a key role in the increase in top incomes.32 They note that the number of firms represented by registered lobbyists in Washington increased from 175 in 1971 to 2,500 in 1982, in large part a reaction to the wave of government regulation of business associated with the Great Society.

See also men; women gender roles, 133 Germany: cholera in, 96; foreign aid of, 275; POW camps of, 2–3 germ theory of disease: development of, 10, 96–97; effects of application of, 126, 239, 319; inequalities resulting from, 98, 140; practices based on, 93, 94, 99–100, 133, 239; spread of, 101, 127, 133, 150–51 Ghana: commodity exports of, 286; foreign aid received by, 300–301, 315; incomes in, 284 Gilens, Martin, 212 Gini coefficient, 187–88. See also income inequalities givewell.org, 271 givingwhatwecan.org, 269, 271 Glass-Steagall Act, 211, 213 Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI Alliance), 104, 321 Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, 276, 307–8, 309 globalization: economic growth and, 231–32; health effects of, 149–52; impact on wages, 195, 257; impacts on labor, 194–96; inequality as consequence of, 5, 41–42, 195, 257–59, 260; inequality reductions from, 257; in past, 150; politics and, 10–11; of production, 10, 195, 246 global poverty: amounts needed to eliminate, 268–70, 271–73; economic growth and, 233–35, 312; inequalities, 4–5, 41–46, 257–59, 261–63; poverty lines, 220, 223–24, 249, 256; reduction of, 44–46, 45f, 167, 247, 249–51.


pages: 407 words: 114,478

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William J. Bernstein

Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, behavioural economics, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, butter production in bangladesh, buy and hold, buy low sell high, carried interest, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edmond Halley, equity premium, estate planning, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, George Santayana, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, index fund, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, John Bogle, John Harrison: Longitude, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, market bubble, mental accounting, money market fund, mortgage debt, new economy, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, quantitative easing, railway mania, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, South Sea Bubble, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, survivorship bias, Teledyne, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the rule of 72, transaction costs, Vanguard fund, yield curve, zero-sum game

The Securities Act of 1933 made the issuance of stocks and bonds a more open and fair process. The Securities Act of 1934 regulated stock and bond trading and established the SEC. The Investment Company Act of 1940, passed in reaction to the investment trust debacle, allowed the development of the modern mutual fund industry. And finally, the Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial and investment banking. This last statute has recently been repealed. Sooner or later, we will likely painfully relearn the reasons for its passage almost seven decades ago. This legislative ensemble made the U.S. securities markets the most tightly regulated in the world.

Merrill was repulsed by the corrupt financial climate of the late 1920s, with its bucket shops and overt stock manipulation, and strove to be different. Wall Street then was the ultimate insider’s poker game in which the investing public invariably played the sucker. The 1929 crash produced a wave of popular revulsion against the brokerage industry and resulted in the passage of the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934, and the Glass-Steagall Act, which still shape the financial industry today. But for decades before this, Charlie Merrill knew there was something wrong, and he wanted to fix it. In 1939 he got his chance, accepting the leadership of a new firm: the merged Merrill, Lynch & Co. and E.A. Pierce and Cassatt, later renamed Merrill Lynch.


pages: 479 words: 113,510

Fed Up: An Insider's Take on Why the Federal Reserve Is Bad for America by Danielle Dimartino Booth

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business cycle, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Greenspan put, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, invisible hand, John Meriwether, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, liquidity trap, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Navinder Sarao, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, Phillips curve, price stability, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, stock buybacks, tail risk, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, yield curve

Hadn’t he read about people in California’s Inland Empire making fifty thousand dollars a year and somehow qualifying for mortgages to buy a half dozen homes? How could he not find trouble in the 125 percent loan-to-value toxic garbage trading hands? And that’s what Wall Street traders called it. Didn’t Bernanke see that the era of deregulation, with the fall of the last remnants of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, had let Pandora out of her box? Did he not know that Pandora was now a wild alcoholic thanks to Greenspan lowering interest rates from 6.5 percent to 1 percent? And then raising rates at such a predictable pace it kept markets in a comatose state? This inexplicable act had set off a speculative fervor that eclipsed that of the Roaring Twenties, thanks to investors’ increasingly desperate search for yield.

While giving lip service to “too big to fail” creating moral hazard, Dudley’s proposed solutions involved the creation of government authorities to wind down failing financial companies, raising bank capital requirements, improving regulatory abilities to assess risk, and insuring that firms were sufficiently liquid. At no time did he mention the word “size.” To my mind, the most elegant pathway out of TBTF was a modern-day version of the Glass-Steagall Act. Remove the taxpayer from the situation, leave the gambling to the investment banks, and call it a day. An illusory calm hypnotized the markets in April 2010. In the three weeks after QE ended at the end of March, U.S. equity markets reached their highest level in two years. Meanwhile the VIX, sometimes referred to as the stock market’s “fear gauge,” dropped to 15.23, its lowest point since July 2007—the eve of the credit crisis.


pages: 573 words: 115,489

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, biodiversity loss, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, Philip Mirowski, Post-Keynesian economics, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, secular stagnation, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, Works Progress Administration, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

The 1990s and early 2000s were characterised by increasing deregulation of financial markets and a massive innovation in the design of complex financial instruments, all driven (or at least justified) by an ideological assumption that a financial free market would be the best thing possible for the economy. Way back in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government passed something called the Glass Steagal Act, a showpiece of US legislation which forced a separation between commercial and investment banking. Basically, it stopped banks taking risks with their depositors’ money. In 1999, less than a decade before the crisis, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act overturned this separation. Realising that this put deposits at risk, governments began to introduce deposit guarantees.

INDEX Locators in italic refer to figures absolute decoupling 84–6; historical perspectives 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; mathematical relationship with relative decoupling 96–101, 111 abundance see opulence accounting errors, decoupling 84, 91 acquisition, instinctive 68 see also symbolic role of goods adaptation: diminishing marginal utility 51, 68; environmental 169; evolutionary 226 advertising, power of 140, 203–4 Africa 73, 75–7; life-expectancy 74; philosophy 227; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; growth 99; relative income effect 58, 75; schooling 78 The Age of Turbulence (Greenspan) 35 ageing populations 44, 81 agriculture 12, 148, 152, 220 Aids/HIV 77 algebra of inequality see inequality; mathematical models alienation: future visions 212, 218–19; geographical community 122–3; role of the state 205; selfishness vs. altruism 137; signals sent by society 131 alternatives: economic 101–2, 139–40, 157–8; hedonism 125–6 see also future visions; post-growth macroeconomics; reform altruism 133–8, 196, 207 amenities see public services/amenities Amish community, North America 128 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith) 123, 132 angelised growth see green growth animal welfare 220 anonymity/loneliness see alienation anthropological perspectives, consumption 70, 115 anti-consumerism 131 see also intrinsic values anxiety: fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; novelty 116–17, 124, 211 Argentina 58, 78, 78, 80 Aristotle 48, 61 The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama) 49 arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 assets, stranded 167–8 see also ownership austerity policies xxxiii–xxxv, 189; and financial crisis 24, 42–3; mathematical models 181 Australia 58, 78, 128, 206 authoritarianism 199 autonomy see freedom/autonomy Ayres, Robert 143 backfire effects 111 balance: private interests/common good 208; tradition/innovation 226 Bank for International Settlements 46 bank runs 157 banking system 29–30, 39, 153–7, 208; bonuses 37–8 see also financial crisis; financial system basic entitlements: enterprise as service 142; income 67, 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; limits to growth 63–4 see also education; food; health Basu, Sanjay 43 Baumol, William 112, 147, 222, 223; cost disease 170, 171, 172, 173 BBC survey, geographical community 122–3 Becker, Ernest 69 Belk, Russ 70, 114 belonging 212, 219 see also alienation; community; intrinsic values Bentham, Jeremy 55 bereavement, material possessions 114, 214–15 Berger, Peter 70, 214 Berry, Wendell 8 Better Growth, Better Climate (New Climate Economy report) 18 big business/corporations 106–7 biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 biological perspectives see evolutionary theory; human nature/psyche biophysical boundaries see limits (ecological) Black Monday 46 The Body Economic (Stuckler and Basu) 43 bond markets 30, 157 bonuses, banking 37–8 Bookchin, Murray 122 boom-and-bust cycles 157, 181 Booth, Douglas 117 borrowing behaviour 34, 118–21, 119 see also credit; debt Boulding, Elise 118 Boulding, Kenneth 1, 5, 7 boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) bounded capabilities for flourishing 61–5 see also limits (flourishing within) Bowen, William 147 Bowling Alone (Putnam) 122 Brazil 58, 88 breakdown of community see alienation; social stability bubbles, economic 29, 33, 36 Buddhist monasteries, Thailand 128 buen vivir concept, Ecuador xxxi, 6 built-in obsolescence 113, 204, 220 Bush, George 121 business-as-usual model 22, 211; carbon dioxide emissions 101; crisis of commitment 195; financial crisis 32–8; growth 79–83, 99; human nature 131, 136–7; need for reform 55, 57, 59, 101–2, 162, 207–8, 227; throwaway society 113; wellbeing 124 see also financial systems Canada 75, 206, 207 capabilities for flourishing 61–5; circular flow of the economy 113; future visions 218, 219; and income 77; progress measures 50–5, 54; role of material abundance 67–72; and prosperity 49; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; role of shame 123–4; role of the state 200 see also limits (flourishing within); wellbeing capital 105, 107–10 see also investment Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty) 33, 176, 177 Capital Institute, USA 155 capitalism 68–9, 80; structures 107–13, 175; types 105–7, 222, 223 car industry, financial crisis 40 carbon dioxide emissions see greenhouse gas emissions caring professions, valuing 130, 147, 207 see also social care Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams) 213 causal path analysis, subjective wellbeing 59 Central Bank 154 central human capabilities 64 see also capabilities for flourishing The Challenge of Affluence (Offer) 194 change see alternatives; future visions; novelty/innovation; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Chicago school of economics 36, 156 children: advertising to 204; labour 62, 154; mortality 74–5, 75, 206 Chile xxxiii, xxxvii, 58, 74, 74, 75, 76 China: decoupling 88; GDP per capita 75; greenhouse gas emissions 91; growth 99; life expectancy 74; philosophy 7; post-financial crisis 45–6; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; relative income effect 58; resource use 94; savings 27; schooling 76 choice, moving beyond consumerism 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy Christian doctrine see religious perspectives chromium, commodity price 13 Cinderella economy 219–21, 224 circular economy 144, 220 circular flow of the economy 107, 113 see also engine of growth citizen’s income 207 see also universal basic income civil unrest see social stability Clean City Law, São Paulo 204 climate change xxxv, 22, 47; critical boundaries 17–20; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 98; fatalism 186; investment needs 152; role of the state 192, 198, 201–2 see also greenhouse gas emissions Climate Change Act (2008), UK 198 clothing see basic entitlements Club of Rome, Limits to Growth report xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16, Cobb, John 54 collectivism 191 commercial bond markets 30, 157 commitment devices/crisis of 192–5, 197 commodity prices: decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; fluctuation/volatility 14, 21; resource constraints 13–14 common good: future visions 218, 219; vs. freedom and autonomy 193–4; vs. private interests 208; role of the state 209 common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199 see also public services/amenities communism 187, 191 community: future visions of 219–20; geographical 122–3; investment 155–6, 204 see also alienation; intrinsic values comparison, social 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect competition 27, 112; positional 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also struggle for existence complexity, economic systems 14, 32, 108, 153, 203 compulsive shopping 116 see also consumerism Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (CoP21) 19 conflicted state 197, 201, 209 connectedness, global 91, 227 conspicuous consumption 115 see also language of goods consumer goods see language of goods; material goods consumer sovereignty 196, 198 consumerism 4, 21, 22, 103–4, 113–16; capitalism 105–13, 196; choice 196; engine of growth 104, 108, 120, 161; existential fear of death 69, 212–15; financial crisis 24, 28, 39, 103; moving beyond 216–18; novelty and anxiety 116–17; post-growth economy 166–7; role of the state 192–3, 196, 199, 202–5; status 211; tragedy of 140 see also demand; materialism contemplative dimensions, simplicity 127 contraction and convergence model 206–7 coordinated market economies 27, 106 Copenhagen Accord (2009) 19 copper, commodity prices 13 corporations/big business 106–7 corruption 9, 131, 186, 187, 189 The Cost Disease: Why Computers get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’t (Baumol) 171, 172 Costa Rica 74, 74, 76 countercyclical spending 181–2, 182, 188 crafts/craft economies 147, 149, 170, 171 creative destruction 104, 112, 113, 116–17 creativity 8, 79; and consumerism 113, 116; future visions 142, 144, 147, 158, 171, 200, 220 see also novelty/innovation credit, private: deflationary forces 44; deregulation 36; financial crisis 26, 27, 27–31, 34, 36, 41; financial system weaknesses 32–3, 37; growth imperative hypothesis 178–80; mortgage loans 28–9; reforms in financial system 157; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–19; and stimulation of growth 36 see also debt (public) credit unions 155–6 crises: of commitment 192–5; financial see financial crisis critical boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi 127 Cuba: child mortality 75; life expectancy 74, 77, 78, 78; response to economic hardship 79–80; revolution 56; schooling 76 Cushman, Philip 116 Dalai Lama 49, 52 Daly, Herman xxxii, 54, 55, 160, 163, 165 Darwin, Charles 132–3 Das Kapital (Marx) 225 Davidson, Richard 49 Davos World Economic Forum 46 Dawkins, Richard 134–5 de Mandeville, Bernard 131–2, 157 death, denial of 69, 104, 115, 212–15 debt, public-sector 81; deflationary forces 44; economic stability 81; financial crisis 24, 26–32, 27, 37, 41, 42, 81; financial systems 28–32, 153–7; money creation 178–9; post-growth economy 178–9, 223 Debt: The First Five Thousand Years (Graeber) 28 decoupling xix, xx, xxxvii, 21, 84–7; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 84, 86, 87, 88, 95, 104; green growth 163, 163–5; historical perspectives 87–96, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95; need for new economic model 101–2; relationship between relative and absolute 96–101 deep emission and resource cuts 99, 102 deficit spending 41, 43 deflationary forces, post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 degrowth movement 161–3, 177 demand 104, 113–16, 166–7; post-financial crisis 44–5; post-growth economy 162, 164, 166–9, 171–2, 174–5 dematerialisation 102, 143 democratisation, and wellbeing 59 deposit guarantees 35 deregulation 27, 34, 36, 196 desire, role in consumer behaviour 68, 69, 70, 114 destructive materialism 104, 112, 113, 116–17 Deutsche Bank 41 devaluation of currency 30, 45 Dichter, Ernest 114 digital economy 44, 219–20 dilemma of growth xxxi, 66–7, 104, 210; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; decoupling 85, 87, 164; degrowth movement 160–3; economic stability 79–83, 174–6; material abundance 67–72; moving beyond 165, 166, 183–4; role of the state 198 diminishing marginal utility: alternative hedonism 125, 126; wellbeing 51–2, 57, 60, 73, 75–6, 79 disposable incomes 27, 67, 118 distributed ownership 223 Dittmar, Helga 126 domestic debt see credit dopamine 68 Dordogne, mindfulness community 128 double movement of society 198 Douglas, Mary 70 Douthwaite, Richard 178 downshifting 128 driving analogy, managing change 16–17 durability, consumer goods 113, 204, 220 dynamic systems, managing change 16–17 Eastern Europe 76, 122 Easterlin, Richard 56, 57, 59; paradox 56, 58 eco-villages, Findhorn community 128 ecological investment 101, 166–70, 220 see also investment ecological limits see limits (ecological) ecological (ecosystem) services 152, 169, 223 The Ecology of Money (Douthwaite) 178 economic growth see growth economic models see alternatives; business-as-usual model; financial systems; future visions; mathematical models; post-growth macroeconomics economic output see efficiency; productivity ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’ (Keynes) 145 economic stability 22, 154, 157, 161; financial system weaknesses 34, 35, 36, 180; growth 21, 24, 67, 79–83, 174–6, 210; post-growth economy 161–3, 165, 174–6, 208, 219; role of the state 181–3, 195, 198, 199 economic structures: post-growth economy 227; financial system reforms 224; role of the state 205; selfishness 137 see also business-as-usual model; financial systems ecosystem functioning 62–3 see also limits (ecological) ecosystem services 152, 169, 223 Ecuador xxxi, 6 education: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; and income 67, 76, 76; investment in 150–1; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements efficiency measures 84, 86–8, 95, 104, 109–11, 142–3; energy 41, 109–11; growth 111, 211; investment 109, 151; of scale 104 see also labour productivity; relative decoupling Ehrlich, Paul 13, 96 elasticity of substitution, labour and capital 177–8 electricity grid 41, 151, 156 see also energy Elgin, Duane 127 Ellen MacArthur Foundation 144 emissions see greenhouse gas emissions employee ownership 223 employment intensity vs. carbon dioxide emissions 148 see also labour productivity empty self 116, 117 see also consumerism ends above means 159 energy return on investment (EROI) 12, 169 energy services/systems 142: efficiency 41, 109–11; inputs/intensity 87–8, 151; investment 41, 109–10, 151–2; renewable xxxv, 41, 168–9 engine of growth 145; consumerism 104, 108, 161; services 143, 170–4 see also circular flow of the economy enough is enough see limits enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 158 see also novelty/innovation entitlements see basic entitlements entrepreneur as visionary 112 entrepreneurial state 220 Environmental Assessment Agency, Netherlands 62 environmental quality 12 see also pollution environmentalism 9 EROI (energy return on investment) 12, 169 Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus) 9–11, 132–3 evolutionary map, human heart 136, 136 evolutionary theory 132–3; common good 193; post-growth economy 226; psychology 133–5; selfishness and altruism 196 exchange values 55, 61 see also gross domestic product existential fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15 exponential expansion 1, 11, 20–1, 210 see also growth external debt 32, 42 extinctions/biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 Eyres, Harry 215 Fable of the Bees (de Mandeville) 131–2 factor inputs 109–10 see also capital; labour; resource use fast food 128 fatalism 186 FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change) 92 fear of death, existential 69, 104, 115, 212–15 feedback loops 16–17 financial crisis (2008) 6, 23–5, 32, 77, 103; causes and culpability 25–8; financial system weaknesses 32–7, 108; Keynesianism 37–43, 188; nationalisation of financial sector 188; need for financial reforms 175; role of debt 24, 26–32, 27, 81, 179; role of state 191; slowing of growth 43–7, 45; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–21, 119; types/definitions of capitalism 106; youth unemployment 144–5 financial systems: common pool resources 192; debt-based/role of debt 28–32, 153–7; post-growth economy 179, 208; systemic weaknesses 32–7; and wellbeing 47 see also banking system; business-as-usual model; financial crisis; reform Findhorn community 128 finite limits of planet see limits (ecological) Fisher, Irving 156, 157 fishing rights 22 flourishing see capabilities for flourishing; limits; wellbeing flow states 127 Flynt, Larry 40 food 67 see also basic entitlements Ford, Henry 154 forestry/forests 22, 192 Forrester, Jay 11 fossil fuels 11, 20 see also oil Foucault, Michel 197 fracking 14, 15 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) 92 France: GDP per capita 58, 75, 76; inequality 206; life-expectancy 74; mindfulness community 128; working hours 145 free market 106: financial crisis 35, 36, 37, 38, 39; ideological controversy/conflict 186–7, 188 freedom/autonomy: vs. common good 193–4; consumer 22, 68–9; language of goods 212; personal choices for improvement 216–18; wellbeing 49, 59, 62 see also individualism Friedman, Benjamin 176 Friedman, Milton 36, 156, 157 frugality 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 fun (more fun with less stuff) 129, 217 future visions 2, 158, 217–21; community banking 155–6; dilemma of growth 211; enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 147–8, 158; entrepreneur as visionary 112; financial crisis as opportunity 25; and growth 165–6; investment 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208; money as social good 140, 153–7, 158; processes of change 185; role of the state 198, 199, 203; timescales for change 16–17; work as participation 140, 144–9, 148, 158 see also alternatives; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Gandhi, Mahatma 127 GDP see gross domestic product gene, selfish 134–5 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) 54, 54 geographical community 122–3 Germany xxxi; Federal Ministry of Finance 224–5; inequality 206; relative income effect 58; trade balance 31; work as participation 146 Glass Steagal Act 35 Global Commodity Price Index (1992–2015) 13 global corporations 106–7 global economy 98: culture 70; decoupling 86–8, 91, 93–5, 95, 97, 98, 100; exponential expansion 20–1; inequality 4, 5–6; interconnectedness 91, 227; post-financial crisis slowing of growth 45 Global Research report (HSBC) 41 global warming see climate change Godley, Wynne 179 Goldman Sachs 37 good life 3, 6; moral dimension 63, 104; wellbeing 48, 50 goods see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods Gordon, Robert 44 governance 22, 185–6; commons 190–2; crisis of commitment 192–5, 197; economic stability 34, 35; establishing limits 200–8, 206; growth 195–9; ideological controversy/conflict 186–9; moving towards change 197–200, 220–1; post-growth economy 181–3, 182; power of corporations 106; for prosperity 209; signals 130 government as household metaphor 30, 42 governmentality 197, 198 GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) 54, 54 Graeber, David 28 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 35 Great Depression 39–40 Greece: austerity xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxvii, 43; energy inputs 88; financial crisis 28, 30, 31, 77; life expectancy 74; schooling 76; relative income effect 58; youth unemployment 144 Green Economy initiative 41 green: growth xxxvii, 18, 85, 153, 166, 170; investment 41 Green New Deal, UNEP 40–1, 152, 188 greenhouse gas emissions 18, 85, 86, 91, 92; absolute decoupling 89–92, 90, 92, 98–101, 100; dilemma of growth 210–11; vs. employment intensity 148; future visions 142, 151, 201–2, 220; Kyoto Protocol 18, 90; reduction targets 19–20; relative decoupling 87, 88, 89, 93, 98–101, 100 see also climate change Greenspan, Alan 35 gross domestic product (GDP) per capita 3–5, 15, 54; climate change 18; decoupling 85, 93, 94; financial crisis 27, 28, 32; green growth 163–5; life expectancy 74, 75, 78; as measure of prosperity 3–4, 5, 53–5, 54, 60–1; post-financial crisis 43, 44; post-growth economy 207; schooling 76; wellbeing 55–61, 58 see also income growth xxxvii; capitalism 105; credit 36, 178–80; decoupling 85, 96–101; economic stability 21, 24, 67, 80, 210; financial crisis 37, 38; future visions 209, 223, 224; inequality 177; labour productivity 111; moving beyond 165, 166; novelty 112; ownership 105; post-financial crisis slowing 43–7, 45; prosperity as 3–7, 23, 66; role of the state 195–9; sustainable investment 166–70; wellbeing 59–60; as zero sum game 57 see also dilemma of growth; engine of growth; green growth; limits to growth; post-growth macroeconomy growth imperative hypothesis 37, 174, 175, 177–80, 183 habit formation, acquisition as 68 Hall, Peter 106, 188 Hamilton, William 134 Hansen, James 17 happiness see wellbeing/happiness Happiness (Layard) 55 Hardin, Garrett 190–1 Harvey, David 189, 192 Hayek, Friedrich 187, 189, 191 health: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; inequality 72–3, 205–6, 206; investment 150–1; and material abundance 67, 68; personal choices for improvement 217; response to economic hardship 80; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements Heath, Edward 66, 82 hedonism 120, 137, 196; alternatives 125–6 Hirsch, Fred xxxii–xxxiii historical perspectives: absolute decoupling 86, 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; relative decoupling 86, 87–9, 89 Holdren, John 96 holistic solutions, post-growth economy 175 household finances: house purchases 28–9; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–20, 119 see also credit household metaphor, government as 30, 42 HSBC Global Research report 41 human capabilities see capabilities for flourishing human happiness see wellbeing/happiness human nature/psyche 3, 132–5, 138; acquisition 68; alternative hedonism 125; evolutionary map of human heart 136, 136; intrinsic values 131; meaning/purpose 49–50; novelty/innovation 116; selfishness vs. altruism 133–8; short-termism/living for today 194; spending vs. saving behaviour 34, 118–21, 119; symbolic role of goods 69 see also intrinsic values human rights see basic entitlements humanitarian perspectives: financial crisis 24; growth 79; inequality 5, 52, 53 see also intrinsic values hyperbolic discounting 194 hyperindividualism 226 see also individualism hyper-materialisation 140, 157 I Ching (Chinese Book of Changes) 7 Iceland: financial crisis 28; life expectancy 74, 75; relative income effect 56; response to economic hardship 79–80; schooling 76; sovereign money system 157 identity construction 52, 69, 115, 116, 212, 219 IEA (International Energy Agency) 14, 152 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 45, 156–7 immaterial goods 139–40 see also intrinsic values; meaning/purpose immortality, symbolic role of goods 69, 104, 115, 212–14 inclusive growth see inequality; smart growth income 3, 4, 5, 66, 124; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; child mortality 74–5, 75; decoupling 96; economic stability 82; education 76; life expectancy 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; poor nations 67; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; tax revenues 81 see also gross domestic product INDCs (intended nationally determined commitments) 19 India: decoupling 99; growth 99; life expectancy 74, 75; philosophy 127; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; savings 27; schooling 76 indicators of environmental quality 96 see also biodiversity; greenhouse gas emissions; pollution; resource use individualism 136, 226; progressive state 194–7, 199, 200, 203, 207 see also freedom/autonomy industrial development 12 see also technological advances inequality 22, 67; basic entitlements 72; child mortality 75, 75; credible alternatives 219, 224; deflationary forces 44; fatalism 186; financial crisis 24; global 4, 5–6, 99, 100; financial system weaknesses 32–3; post-growth economy 174, 176–8; role of the state 198, 205–7, 206; selfishness vs. altruism 137; symbolic role of goods 71; wellbeing 47, 104 see also poverty infant mortality rates 72, 75 inflation 26, 30, 110, 157, 167 infrastructure, civic 150–1 Inglehart, Ronald 58, 59 innovation see novelty/innovation; technological advances inputs 80–1 see also capital; labour productivity; resource use Inside Job documentary film 26 instant gratification 50, 61 instinctive acquisition 68 Institute for Fiscal Studies 81 Institute for Local Self-Reliance 204 institutional structures 130 see also economic structures; governance intended nationally determined commitments (INDCs) 19 intensity factor, technological 96, 97 see also technological advances intentional communities 127–9 interconnectedness, global 91, 227 interest payments/rates 39, 43, 110; financial crisis 29, 30, 33, 39; post-growth economy 178–80 see also credit; debt Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 18, 19, 201–2 International Energy Agency (IEA) 14, 152 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 45, 156–7 intrinsic values 126–31, 135–6, 212; role of the state 199, 200 see also belonging; community; meaning/purpose; simplicity/frugality investment 107–10, 108; ecological/sustainable 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; and innovation 112; loans 29; future visions 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208, 220; and savings 108; social 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 invisible hand metaphor 132, 133, 187 IPAT equation, relative and absolute decoupling 96 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 18, 19, 201–2 Ireland 28; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75; schooling 76; wellbeing 58 iron cage of consumerism see consumerism iron ore 94 James, Oliver 205 James, William 68 Japan: equality 206; financial crisis 27, 45; life expectancy 74, 76, 79; relative income effect 56, 58; resource use 93; response to economic hardship 79–80 Jefferson, Thomas 185 Jobs, Steve 210 Johnson, Boris 120–1 Kahneman, Daniel 60 Kasser, Tim 126 keeping up with the Joneses 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect Kennedy, Robert 48, 53 Keynes, John Maynard/Keynesianism 23, 34, 120, 174, 181–3, 187–8; financial crisis 37–43; financial system reforms 157; part-time working 145; steady state economy 159, 162 King, Alexander 11 Krugman, Paul 39, 85, 86, 102 Kyoto Protocol (1992) 18, 90 labour: child 62, 154; costs 110; division of 158; elasticity of substitution 177, 178; intensity 109, 148, 208; mobility 123; production inputs 80, 109; structures of capitalism 107 labour productivity 80–1, 109–11; Baumol’s cost disease 170–2; and economic growth 111; future visions 220, 224; investment as commitment 150; need for investment 109; post-growth economy 175, 208; services as engine of growth 170; sustainable investment 166, 170; trade off with resource use 110; work-sharing 145, 146, 147, 148, 148, 149 Lahr, Christin 224–5 laissez-faire capitalism 187, 195, 196 see also free market Lakoff, George 30 language of goods 212; material footprint of 139–40; signalling of social status 71; and wellbeing 124 see also consumerism; material goods; symbolic role of goods Layard, Richard 55 leadership, political 199 see also governance Lebow, Victor 120 Lehman Brothers, bankruptcy 23, 25, 26, 118 leisure economy 204 liberal market economies 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6 life expectancy: and income 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; inequality 206; response to economic hardship 80 see also basic entitlements life-satisfaction 73; inequality 205; relative income effect 55–61, 58 see also wellbeing/happiness limits, ecological 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 20–2; climate change 17–20; decoupling 86; financial crisis 23–4; growth 21, 165, 210; post-growth economy 201–2, 226–7; role of the state 198, 200–2, 206–7; and social boundaries 141; wellbeing 62–63, 185 limits, flourishing within 61–5, 185; alternative hedonism 125–6; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 215, 218, 219, 221; paradox of materialism 121–23; prosperity 67–72, 113, 212; role of the state 201–2, 205; selfishness 131–8; shame 123–4; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–21, 119 see also sustainable prosperity limits to growth: confronting 7–8; exceeding 20–2; wellbeing 62–3 Limits to Growth report (Club of Rome) xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16 ‘The Living Standard’ essay (Sen) 50, 123–4 living standards 82 see also prosperity Lloyd, William Forster 190 loans 154; community investment 155–6; financial system weaknesses 34 see also credit; debt London School of Economics 25 loneliness 123, 137 see also alienation long-term: investments 222; social good 219 long-term wellbeing vs. short-term pleasures 194, 197 longevity see life expectancy love 212 see also intrinsic values low-carbon transition 19, 220 LowGrow model for the Canadian economy 175 MacArthur Foundation 144 McCracken, Grant 115 Malthus, Thomas Robert 9–11, 132–3, 190 market economies: coordinated 27, 106; liberal 27, 35–6, 106, 107 market liberalism 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6; wellbeing 47 marketing 140, 203–4 Marmot review, health inequality in the UK 72 Marx, Karl/Marxism 9, 189, 192, 225 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 11, 12, 15 material abundance see opulence material goods 68–9; identity 52; language of 139–40; and wellbeing 47, 48, 49, 51, 65, 126 see also symbolic role of goods material inputs see resource use materialism: and fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; and intrinsic values 127–31; paradox of 121–3; price of 126; and religion 115; values 126, 135–6 see also consumerism mathematical models/simulations 132; austerity policies 181; countercyclical spending 181–2, 182; decoupling 84, 91, 96–101; inequality 176–8; post-growth economy 164; stock-flow consistent 179–80 Mawdsley, Emma 70 Mazzucato, Mariana 193, 220 MDG (Millennium Development Goals) 74–5 Meadows, Dennis and Donella 11, 12, 15, 16 meaning/purpose 2, 8, 22; beyond material goods 212–16; consumerism 69, 203, 215; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 218–20; wellbeing 49, 52, 60, 121–2; work 144, 146 see also intrinsic values means and ends 159 mental health: inequality 206; meaning/purpose 213 metaphors: government as household 30, 42; invisible hand 132, 133, 187 Middle East, energy inputs 88 Miliband, Ed 199 Mill, John Stuart 125, 159, 160, 174 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 74–5 mindfulness 128 Minsky, Hyman 34, 35, 40, 182, 208 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 11, 12, 15 mixed economies 106 mobility of labour, loneliness index 123 Monbiot, George 84, 85, 86, 91 money: creation 154, 157, 178–9; and prosperity 5; as social good 140, 153–7, 158 see also financial systems monopoly power, corporations 106–7 The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (Friedman) 82, 176 moral dimensions, good life 63 see also intrinsic values moral hazards, separation of risk from reward 35 ‘more fun with less stuff’ 129, 217 mortality fears 69, 104, 115, 212–15 mortality rates, and income 74, 74–6, 75 mortgage loans 28–9, 35 multinational corporations 106–7 national debt see debt, public-sector nationalisation 191; financial crisis 38, 188 natural selection 132–3 see also struggle for existence nature, rights of 6–7 negative emissions 98–9 negative feedback loops 16–17 Netherlands 58, 62, 206, 207 neuroscientific perspectives: flourishing 68, 69; human behaviour 134 New Climate Economy report Better Growth, Better Climate 18 New Deal, USA 39 New Economics Foundation 175 nickel, commodity prices 13 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001) 121 Nordhaus, William 171, 172–3 North America 128, 155 see also Canada; United States Norway: advertising 204; inequality 206; investment as commitment 151–2; life expectancy 74; relative income effect 58; schooling 76 novelty/innovation 104, 108, 113; and anxiety 116–17, 124, 211; crisis of commitment 195; dilemma of growth 211; human psyche 135–6, 136, 137; investment 150, 166, 168; post-growth economy 226; role of the state 196, 197, 199; as service 140, 141–4, 158; symbolic role of goods 114–16, 213 see also technological advances Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler and Sunstein) 194–5 Nussbaum, Martha 64 nutrient loading, critical boundaries 17 nutrition 67 see also basic entitlements obesity 72, 78, 206 obsolescence, built in 113, 204, 220 oceans: acidification 17; common pool resources 192 Offer, Avner 57, 61, 71, 194, 195 oil prices 14, 21; decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; resource constraints 15 oligarchic capitalism 106, 107 opulence 50–1, 52, 67–72 original sin 9, 131 Ostrom, Elinor and Vincent 190, 191 output see efficiency; gross domestic product; productivity ownership: and expansion 105; private vs. public 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; new models 223–4; types/definitions of capitalism 105–7 Oxfam 141 paradoxes: materialism 121–3; thrift 120 Paris Agreement 19, 101, 201 participation in society 61, 114, 122, 129, 137; future visions 200, 205, 218, 219, 225; work as 140–9, 148, 157, 158 see also social inclusion part-time working 145, 146, 149, 175 Peccei, Aurelio 11 Perez, Carlota 112 performing arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 personal choice 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy personal property 189, 191 Pickett, Kate 71, 205–6 Piketty, Thomas 33, 176, 177 planetary boundaries see limits (ecological) planning for change 17 pleasure 60–1 see also wellbeing/happiness Plum Village mindfulness community 128 Polanyi, Karl 198 policy see governance political leadership 199 see also governance Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts 41 pollution 12, 21, 53, 95–6, 143 polycentric governance 191, 192 Poor Laws 10 poor nations see poverty population increase 3, 12, 63, 96, 97, 190; Malthus on 9–11, 132–3 porn industry 40 Portugal 28, 58, 88, 206 positional competition 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison positive feedback loops 16–17 post-growth capitalism 224 post-growth macroeconomics 159–60, 183–4, 221; credit 178–80; degrowth movement 161–3; economic stability 174–6; green growth 163–5; inequality 176–8; role of state 181–3, 182, 200–8, 206; services 170–4; sustainable investment 166–70 see also alternatives; future visions; reform poverty 4, 5–6, 216; basic entitlements 72; flourishing within limits 212; life expectancy 74, 74; need for new economic model 101; symbolic role of goods 70; wellbeing 48, 59–60, 61, 67 see also inequality; relative income effect power politics 200 predator–prey analogy 103–4, 117 private credit see credit private vs. public: common good 208; ownership 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; salaries 130 privatisation 191, 219 product lifetimes, obsolescence 113, 204, 220 production: inputs 80–1; ownership 191, 219, 223 productivity: investment 109, 167, 168, 169; post-growth economy 224; services as engine of growth 171, 172, 173; targets 147; trap 175 see also efficiency measures; labour productivity; resource productivity profits: definitions of capitalism 105; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 87; investment 109; motive 104; post-growth economy 224; and wages 175–8 progress 2, 50–5, 54 see also novelty/innovation; technological advances progressive sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 progressive state 185, 220–2; contested 186–9; countering consumerism 202–5; equality measures 205–7, 206; governance of the commons 190–2; governance as commitment device 192–5; governmentality of growth 195–7; limit-setting 201–2; moving towards 197–200; post-growth macroeconomics 207–8, 224; prosperity 209 prosocial behaviour 198 see also social contract prosperity 1–3, 22, 121; capabilities for flourishing 61–5; and growth 3–7, 23, 66, 80, 160; and income 3–4, 5, 66–7; limits of 67–72, 113, 212; materialistic vision 137; progress measures 50–5, 54; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; social perspectives 2, 22, 48–9; state roles 209 see also capabilities for flourishing; post-growth macroeconomics; sustainable prosperity; wellbeing prudence, financial 120, 195, 221; financial crisis 33, 34, 35 public sector spending: austerity policies 189; countercyclical spending strategy 181–2, 182; welfare economy 169 public services/amenities: common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199; future visions 204, 218–20; investment 155–6, 204; ownership 223 see also private vs. public; service-based economies public transport 41, 129, 193, 217 purpose see meaning/purpose Putnam, Robert 122 psyche, human see human nature/psyche quality, environmental 12 see also pollution quality of life: enterprise as service 142; inequality 206; sustainable 128 quality to throughput ratios 113 quantitative easing 43 Queen Elizabeth II 25, 32, 34, 37 quiet revolution 127–31 Raworth, Kate 141 Reagan, Ronald 8 rebound phenomenon 111 recession 23–4, 28, 81, 161–3 see also financial crisis recreation/leisure industries 143 recycling 129 redistribution of wealth 52 see also inequality reforms 182–3, 222; economic structures 224; and financial crisis 103; financial systems 156–8, 180 see also alternatives; future visions; post-growth economy relative decoupling 84–5, 86; historical perspectives 87–9, 89; relationship with absolute decoupling 96–101, 111 relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison religious perspectives 9–10, 214–15; materialism as alternative to religion 115; original sin 9, 131; wellbeing 48, 49 see also existential fear of death renewable energy xxxv, 41, 168–169 repair/renovation 172, 220 resource constraints 3, 7, 8, 11–15, 47 resource productivity 110, 151, 168, 169, 220 resource use: conflicts 22; credible alternatives 101, 220; decoupling 84–9, 92–5, 94, 95; and economic output 142–4; investment 151, 153, 168, 169; trade off with labour costs 110 retail therapy 115 see also consumerism; shopping revenues, state 222–3 see also taxation revolution 186 see also social stability rights: environment/nature 6–7; human see basic entitlements risk, financial 24, 25, 33, 35 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek) 187 Robinson, Edward 132 Robinson, Joan 159 Rockström, Johan 17, 165 romantic movement 9–10 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 35, 39 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 9, 131 Russia 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 sacred canopy 214, 215 salaries: private vs. public sector 130, 171; and profits 175–8 Sandel, Michael 150, 164, 218 São Paulo, Clean City Law 204 Sardar, Zia 49, 50 Sarkozy, Nicolas xxxi, 53 savage state, romantic movement 9–10 savings 26–7, 28, 107–9, 108; investment 149; ratios 34, 118–20, 119 scale, efficiencies of 104 Scandinavia 27, 122, 204 scarcity, managing change 16–17 Schumpeter, Joseph 112 Schwartz, Shalom 135–6, 136 schooling see education The Science of Desire (Dichter) 114 secular stagnation 43–7, 45, 173 securitisation, mortgage loans 35 security: moving towards 219; and wellbeing 48, 61 self-development 204 self-expression see identity construction self-transcending behaviours see transcendence The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) 134–5 selfishness 133–8, 196 Sen, Amartya 50, 52, 61–2, 123–4 service concept/servicization 140–4, 147–8, 148, 158 service-based economies 219; engine of growth 170–4; substitution between labour and capital 178; sustainable investment 169–70 see also public services SFC (stock-flow consistent) economic models 179–80 shame 123–4 shared endeavours, post-growth economy 227 Sheldon, Solomon 214 shelter see basic entitlements shopping 115, 116, 130 see also consumerism short-termism/living for today 194, 197, 200 signals: sent out by society 130, 193, 198, 203, 207; social status 71 see also language of goods Simon, Julian 13 simplicity/simple life 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 simulations see mathematical models/simulations slow: capital 170; movement 128 smart growth 85, 163–5 see also green growth Smith, Adam 51, 106–7, 123, 132, 187 social assets 220 social boundaries (minimum standards) 141 see also basic entitlements social care 150–1 see also caring professions social comparison 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect social contract 194, 198, 199, 200 social inclusion 48, 69–71, 114, 212 see also participation in society social investment 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 social justice 198 see also inequality social logic of consumerism 114–16, 204 social stability 24, 26, 80, 145, 186, 196, 205 see also alienation social status see status social structures 80, 129, 130, 137, 196, 200, 203 social tolerance, and wellbeing 59, 60 social unrest see social stability social wage 40 social welfare: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 socialism 223 Sociobiology (Wilson) 134 soil integrity 220 Solon, quotation 47, 49, 71 Soper, Kate 125–6 Soros, George 36 Soskice, David 106 Soviet Union, former 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 Spain 28, 58, 144, 206 SPEAR organization, responsible investment 155 species loss/extinctions 17, 47, 62, 101 speculation 93, 99, 149, 150, 154, 158, 170; economic stability 180; financial crisis 26, 33, 35; short-term profiteering 150; spending: behaviour of ordinary people 34, 119, 120–1; countercyclical 181–2, 182, 188; economic stability 81; as way out of recession 41, 44, 119, 120–1; and work cycle 125 The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett) 71, 205–6 spiritual perspectives 117, 127, 128, 214 stability see economic stability; social stability stagflation 26 stagnant sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 stagnation: economic stability 81–2; labour productivity 145; post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 see also recession state capitalism, types/definitions of capitalism 106 state revenues, from social investment 222–3 see also taxation state roles see governance status 207, 209, 211; and possessions 69, 71, 114, 115, 117 see also language of goods; symbolic role of goods Steady State Economics (Daly) xxxii steady state economies 82, 159, 160, 174, 180 see also post-growth macroeconomics Stern, Nicholas 17–18 stewardship: role of the state 200; sustainable investment 168 Stiglitz, Joseph 53 stock-flow consistent (SFC) economic models 179–80 Stockholm Resilience Centre 17, 201 stranded assets 167–8 see also ownership structures of capitalism see economic structures struggle for existence 8–11, 125, 132–3 Stuckler, David 43 stuff see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods subjective wellbeing (SWB) 49, 58, 58–9, 71, 122, 129 see also wellbeing/happiness subprime lending 26 substitution, between labour and capital 177–178 suffering, struggle for existence 10 suicide 43, 52, 77 Sukdhev, Pavan 41 sulphur dioxide pollution 95–6 Summers, Larry 36 Sunstein, Cass 194 sustainability xxv–xxvi, 102, 104, 126; financial systems 154–5; innovation 226; investment 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; resource constraints 12; role of the state 198, 203, 207 see also sustainable prosperity Sustainable Development Strategy, UK 198 sustainable growth see green growth sustainable prosperity 210–12; creating credible alternatives 219–21; finding meaning beyond material commodities 212–16; implications for capitalism 222–5; personal choices for improvement 216–18; and utopianism 225–7 see also limits (flourishing within) SWB see subjective wellbeing; wellbeing/happiness Switzerland 11, 46, 157; citizen’s income 207; income relative to wellbeing 58; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75 symbolic role of goods 69, 70–1; existential fear of death 212–16; governance 203; innovation/novelty 114–16; material footprints 139–40; paradox of materialism 121–2 see also language of goods; material goods system dynamics model 11–12, 15 tar sands/oil shales 15 taxation: capital 177; income 81; inequality 206; post-growth economy 222 technological advances 12–13, 15; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 96–8, 100–3, 164–5; dilemma of growth 211; economic stability 80; population increase 10–11; role of state 193, 220 see also novelty/innovation Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 8 terror management, and consumption 69, 104, 115, 212–15 terrorist attacks (9/11) 121 Thailand, Buddhist monasteries 128 Thaler, Richard 194 theatre, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 theology see religious perspectives theory of evolution 132–3 thermodynamics, laws of 112, 164 Thich Nhat Hanh 128 thrift 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 throwaway society 113, 172, 204 timescales for change 16–17 tin, commodity prices 13 Today programme interview xxix, xxviii Totnes, transition movement 128–9 Towards a Green Economy report (UNEP) 152–3 Townsend, Peter 48, 61 trade balance 31 trading standards 204 tradition 135–6, 136, 226 ‘Tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin) 190–1 transcendence 214 see also altruism; meaning/purpose; spiritual perspectives transition movement, Totnes 128–9 Triodos Bank 156, 165 Trumpf (machine-tool makers) Germany 146 trust, loss of see alienation tungsten, commodity prices 13 Turkey 58, 88 Turner, Adair 157 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015) 19 UBS (Swiss bank) 46 Ubuntu, African philosophy 227 unemployment 77; consumer goods 215; degrowth movement 162; financial crisis 24, 40, 41, 43; Great Depression 39–40; and growth 38; labour productivity 80–1; post-growth economy 174, 175, 183, 208, 219; work as participation 144–6 United Kingdom: Green New Deal group 152; greenhouse gas emissions 92; labour productivity 173; resource inputs 93; Sustainable Development Strategy 198 United Nations: Development Programme 6; Environment Programme 18, 152–3; Green Economy initiative 41 United States: credit unions 155–6; debt 27, 31–32; decoupling 88; greenhouse gas emissions 90–1; subprime lending 26; Works Progress Administration 39 universal basic income 221 see also citizen’s income University of Massachusetts, Political Economy Research Institute 41 utilitarianism/utility, wellbeing 50, 52–3, 55, 60 utopianism 8, 38, 125, 179; post-growth economy 225–7 values, materialistic 126, 135–6 see also intrinsic values Veblen, Thorstein 115 Victor, Peter xxxviii, 146, 175, 177, 180 vision of progress see future visions; post-growth economy volatility, commodity prices 14, 21 wages: and profits 175–8; private vs. public sector 130, 171 walking, personal choices for improvement 217 water use 22 Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes (Smith) 123, 132 wealth redistribution 52 see also inequality Weber, Axel 46 welfare policies: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 welfare of livestock 220 wellbeing/happiness 47–50, 53, 121–2, 124; collective 209; consumer goods 4, 21, 22, 126; growth 6, 165, 211; intrinsic values 126, 129; investment 150; novelty/innovation 117; opulence 50–2, 67–72; personal choices for improvement 217; planetary boundaries 141; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; simplicity 129; utilitarianism 50, 52–3, 55, 60 see also capabilities for flourishing western lifestyles 70, 210 White, William 46 Whybrow, Peter 68 Wilhelm, Richard 7 Wilkinson, Richard 71, 205–6 Williams, Tennessee 213 Wilson, Edward 134 wisdom traditions 48, 49, 63, 128, 213–14 work: as participation 140–9, 148, 157, 158; and spend cycle 125; sharing 145, 146, 149, 175 Works Progress Administration, USA 39 World Bank 160 World Values Survey 58 youth unemployment, financial crisis 144–5 zero sum game, growth as 57, 71


pages: 358 words: 119,272

Anatomy of the Bear: Lessons From Wall Street's Four Great Bottoms by Russell Napier

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, collective bargaining, Columbine, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, diversified portfolio, fake news, financial engineering, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, hindsight bias, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Money creation, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shock, price stability, reserve currency, risk free rate, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, short selling, stocks for the long run, yield curve, Yogi Berra

In February 1932, the Republican administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to provide loans to banks and railroads. By 26 February, the Federal Reserve Board was sufficiently relaxed about gold outflow to reduce the discount rate by 50 basis points to 3%. On 17 February, the Glass-Steagall Act was passed, permitting government bonds to serve as collateral against Federal Reserve bank notes, thus removing a technical bar to the creation of greater liquidity by the Federal Reserve System. The DJIA was marginally higher in March 1932 than it had been in October 1931. Investors who thought the worst was over and bought in at the March 1932 high were to lose 54% of their funds before the market bottomed in July.

In his March 1933 Inaugural Address, Roosevelt declared that ‘the money changers have fled their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.’ Within weeks, Roosevelt’s first legislative action against Wall Street – the Securities Act of 1933 – passed through Congress, soon to be followed by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Banking Act of 1935 and the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. Against this background of encroaching legislation and regulation, the bull market in equities raged on. The bull market in equities took place against a background of major experimentation with the monetary cornerstone of America – the gold standard.


pages: 463 words: 115,103

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect by David Goodhart

active measures, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, computer age, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, data science, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deglobalization, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, desegregation, deskilling, different worldview, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Etonian, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Flynn Effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meritocracy, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shock, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, post-industrial society, post-materialism, postindustrial economy, precariat, reshoring, Richard Florida, robotic process automation, scientific management, Scientific racism, Skype, social distancing, social intelligence, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thorstein Veblen, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, young professional

The volume of legal regulations and instruments governing everyday activities therefore grows every year, a sign of the disappearance of the implicit understandings found in more cohesive cultures. It all makes work for the cognitive class to do. One good example is the comparison between the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 in the United States, which prevented banks from undertaking risky and speculative activities, and the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which was similarly designed to prevent future banking crises. Glass-Steagall was 37 pages long and written in relatively comprehensible English; Dodd-Frank was 848 pages supplemented with 398 pieces of rulemaking running to some 30,000 pages.

., The Winner-Take-All Society (with Cook), 142 Franklin, Benjamin, 43 French, Marilyn, The Women’s Room, 247 Fried, Erich, 277 Friedan, Betty, 247 Fry, Martin “Mini,” 173 further education (FE) colleges (UK), 105–6, 108–10, 115 future: “Future of Work” transformation and, 143–44 of knowledge economy, 143–44, 253–74 need for cognitive diversity, 88–89, 281–84 of nursing, 232–42 rebalancing of Hand, Head, and Heart work, ix–xiii, 4–5, 20–29, 257–58, 275, 277–78, 284–301 of the university, 298 Gabbard, Keith, 290 Galton, Francis, 74n Gardner, Howard, 67 Gates, Bill, 33 gender: androgyny and, 223–24 assortative mating and, 79–83 cognitive class and, 32–33 Covid-19 crisis and, xii domesticity and, 27, 32–33, 226–32, 242–43, 293 feminism and, 79–80, 160–61, 224, 228–29, 231, 244, 247, 249 gender divide in status, 190–92, 213–14 gender equality and, 16, 32–33, 226 gender pay gap, 141, 152, 163 Hand (manual) work and, 190–94 Heart (care) work and, 4–5, 26–27, 226–32, 242–45, 249, 293–94 involved fathers, 243, 293 job status and, 190–92, 213–14 in knowledge economy, 151–52 #MeToo movement, 26 professional women and, 26 traditional masculinity and, 190–94, 243–44 General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs, UK), 95–96, 141, 192, 198, 262 general intelligence (g), 56–71 measuring, 56, 61–71, see also IQ/IQ-type tests nature of, 57, 61, 62–63 geographic mobility, 17–19, 125–31, 273–74, 287–91 Germany: adult social care in, 218, 239 apprenticeships, 105, 112, 119–21, 198–99 decline of skilled workers, 139, 198 elite selection method, 66 geographic mobility and, 18, 288, 290 globalization and, 259 higher education system, 48, 50, 53, 102–4, 110, 117–21, 126, 156 immigration policy, 162 professions/professional exams, 44 social mobility research in, 81 vocational training in, 24, 35, 47, 117–19 Gest, Justin, The New Minority, 205 Gharbi, Musa al-, 283 GI Bill (1944, US), 43–44, 66, 96, 115 Gidron, Noam, 204 Gilens, Martin, 160 Gladwell, Malcolm, Outliers, 68 Glass-Steagall Act (1933, US), 284 globalization: centrifugal vs. centripetal forces and, x, 278 “Future of Work” transformation and, 143–44 Hand (manual) work and, 194–95, 198–206, 258–61 Head (cognitive) work and, 24, 258–62 hyper-globalization (Rodrik), ix lowest-cost approach and, x new version of, ix–x, 258–61 political cognitive domination and, 161–62, 175 training/retraining failure in developed countries, 111–17 world trade trends and, x see also immigration Goldie, Julie, 235–36 Goldin, Claudia, 117 Goldthorpe, John H., 75–76, 268, 269 Goleman, Daniel, 67 Goodman, David, 85n Google, 16, 33, 70 Gordon, Robert J., The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 122 Gottfredson, Linda, 57, 70–71 grammar school education, 46, 58, 65, 82, 98, 100 grandes écoles (France), 44, 48, 81, 102, 118, 141, 156 Gray, John, 166, 279 Great British Class Survey, 191, 191n great compression, 134 great divergence, 134–41 Green, Francis, 208–9 Greening, Justine, 17 grit (Duckworth), 67 groupthink, 20 Guilluy, Christophe, 126 Guyatt, Richard, 182 Hacker, Andrew, 82 Haidt, Jonathan: Heterodox Academy (US), 282–83 The Righteous Mind, 70 Hakim, Catherine, 248–49 Haldane, Andy, 255–58, 262, 298 Hall, Peter, 204 Hanbury, Jonathan, 238–39 Hand (manual) work, 189–215 Anywhere-Somewhere divide and, 12–20, 27 careers vs. jobs and, 211–12 Covid-19 crisis and, 7, 23, 26, 203, 277–78 craft skills, 114, 194, 195, 256–57, 294–96, 299–300, 301–2 decline of shop and home economics classes, 195–97 declining status of, 4–5, 13, 15, 189–95, 203–15 gender and, 190–94 globalization and, 194–95, 198–206, 258–61 immigration and, 194–95, 198–206 income divergence with Head (cognitive) work, 133–41 job/income decline and, 193–95, 199–200, 209, 210 new technologies in, 192, 198, 199 nostalgia for, 193, 194, 201–3 productivity in, 16–17 rebalancing with Head and Heart work, ix–xiii, 4–5, 20–29, 257–58, 275, 277–78, 284–301 as route to theoretical understanding, 196–97 scientific management and, 97, 260 separation from Head (cognitive) work, 97–99 skilled trades worker shortages, 15, 197–203 union membership decline and, 139–40 work satisfaction and, 208–11 see also apprenticeships Hankin, Steven M., 133, 142 happiness research, 11, 16–17, 220, 288, 302–3 Harari, Yuval Noah, 21, 36, 218–20, 299 Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, 47 Hargreaves, James, 42 Harrington, Mary, 248 Haskins, Ron, 82 Head (cognitive) work: Anywhere-Somewhere divide and, 12–20, 27 artificial intelligence (AI) and, 23–25 cognitive-analytical ability as gold standard of human esteem, 3–5, 11–12, 28 Covid-19 crisis and, 7, 23, 62, 277–78 crisis of meaning vs.


pages: 387 words: 119,244

Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy by Iain Martin

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, Basel III, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bletchley Park, call centre, central bank independence, computer age, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, deindustrialization, deskilling, Edward Thorp, Etonian, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, interest rate swap, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, moral hazard, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, old-boy network, pets.com, proprietary trading, Red Clydeside, shareholder value, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, upwardly mobile, value at risk, warehouse robotics

In the excitement, checks on credit-worthiness were weakened and the amount the buyer needed to put down as a deposit was reduced to almost nothing. In any case, the mood of the era was for all kinds of financial deregulation. Lobbying from Wall Street and machinations by friendly politicians in Washington meant that the so-called Glass–Steagall Act had been chipped away at for years. It had been introduced in 1933, during the Great Depression, to keep retail, savings and mortgage institutions separate from investment banks, so that their risky trading on the markets did not again bring down the banks that consumers relied on. In the 1980s and 1990s the expanding finance industry had successfully eroded Glass–Steagall to the point that shortly before leaving office Bill Clinton signed its death warrant.

., ref 1 financial crisis: beginning of, ref 1 Darling updates Commons on, ref 1 government spending at start of, ref 1 insurers crack under weight of, ref 1 recessions follow, ref 1 spreads to UK high street, ref 1 studies and reports of, ref 1 Financial Services Authority (FSA), ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10, ref 11, ref 12 ‘Arrow’ reports of, ref 1 and auditors, ref 1 and RBS collapse, ref 1 RBS on watch-list of, ref 1 self-investigation by, ref 1 successors to, ref 1 and tripartite regulation, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5; see also Bank of England Financial Times, ref 1, ref 2 First Active, ref 1 Fish, Larry, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9 chairs RBS Americas, ref 1 criticised, ref 1 pension of, ref 1 Fisher, Mark, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7 at Gogarburn opening, ref 1 moved to ABN Amro, ref 1 Fitch Ratings, ref 1, ref 2 Fleming, Ian, ref 1 Fletcher, Andrew, ref 1 Forbes, ref 1 foreign exchange, ref 1, ref 2 Formula 1, ref 1, ref 2 Fortis, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3 Fountain Workshop, ref 1 Franklyn Resources, ref 1 Freshfields, ref 1 Friedrich, Bill, ref 1, ref 2 Fuld, Dick, ref 1 Gaddafi, Muammar, ref 1 Gartmore, ref 1 GE, ref 1 George II, ref 1 George, Eddie, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4 Gibson, Mel, ref 1, ref 2 Gieve, John, ref 1 Giles, Chris, ref 1 Gladiator, ref 1 Glass–Steagall Act, ref 1 global financial crisis, see financial crisis Global Transaction Services, ref 1, ref 2 Glyn, Mills & Co., ref 1, ref 2 Goldman Sachs, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9 Goodwin, Andrew (brother), ref 1 Goodwin, Dale (sister), ref 1 Goodwin, Fred: affair of, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4 after RBS, ref 1 and away days, ref 1, ref 2 bailout terms heard by, ref 1 Barclays hated by, ref 1 becomes Clydesdale CEO, ref 1 becomes RBS CEO, ref 1 birth of, ref 1 Brown compared to, ref 1 Brown likes, ref 1 Bush dinner guest, ref 1 and car dealership, ref 1 CDO presentation by, ref 1 at CEOs–Darling meeting, ref 1 at CEOs meeting, ref 1 Chequers invitation to, ref 1 ‘classic bully’, ref 1 cleanliness campaigns of, ref 1 at Clydesdale, see Clydesdale Bank colleagues testify to abilities of, ref 1 cult status of, ref 1 at Darling 2008 meeting, ref 1 Darling visited by (2007), ref 1 document criticises management of, ref 1 early life of, ref 1, ref 2 extraordinary general meeting appearance of, ref 1 face-to-face firing disliked by, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3 first job of, ref 1 fixation on detail by, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6 and Forbes, ref 1 ‘Fred the Shred’ nickname of, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4 and FSA, ref 1, ref 2 at Gogarburn opening, ref 1 Harvard study on, ref 1, ref 2 ‘has shut out the world’, ref 1 Hester view of, ref 1 ‘I want to be bigger than J.


pages: 772 words: 203,182

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right by George R. Tyler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Black Swan, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Bolshevik threat, bonus culture, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lake wobegon effect, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, pension reform, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, pirate software, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

For example, the Clinton administration returned fiscal prudence and balanced budgets to Washington, a remarkable accomplishment. Yet too many officials supported Reagan era deregulation, especially in finance. Tossed under the bus were restraints on bank size and activities imposed during the Depression by the Glass-Steagall Act. The Clinton administration also endorsed offshoring (exporting jobs), and dragged its heels on minimum wages and labor law enforcement. Moreover, like the Republican Party, Democrats have their share of prominent members who have walked through the revolving door, including Robert Rubin, the former Goldman Sachs banker and US Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration.

Banks were restricted in activities and the industry became boring as leverage declined and loan standards rose. That stability diminished in the Reagan era, as the New Deal web of prudent and precautionary reforms began to be disassembled. Elimination of the firewall between banks and investment activities was an important milestone that occurred with abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act during the Clinton administration. That enabled banks whose deposits were insured by taxpayers to speculate on stocks, derivatives, and virtually anything else. Another important milestone was Greenspan’s abandonment of the Net Capitalization Rule in 2004. This so-called “Bear Stearns exemption” abolished the 1977 12:1 leverage cap requiring the five biggest investment banks to maintain $1 of reserves for every $12 invested.17 With the cap lifted, leverage at these giant financial firms jumped as high as 33:1, meaning a scant 3 percent rise in investment return doubles profits.

(Vice President), 79, 132 Chiara, Rosazza-Bondibene (University of London), 339 Christie, Chris (New Jersey Governor), 89 Churchill, Winston, 62, 338–339, 342 Citigroup, 76, 88, 460 Citizens for Tax Justice, 190 Clean Air Act, 94 Clifton, Jim (Gallup), 228, 428–29 Clinton, Bill (President) Commodity Futures Modernization Act, 218 deregulation, 30, 218 fiscally responsible leader, 76, 181, 184–5, 208 Glass-Steagall Act, abolition of the, 218 national debt payoff, 209-11 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 345–46 offshoring, endorsed, 76, 345 permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China, 345 taxes, 198, 276 Clowes, Michael (author), The Money Flood, 149, 153, 410 Codetermination. 51–52, 163, 442–63 Constitutional Court upheld, 168 Germany, after World War II, 166-9, 308 human capital and productivity growth, maximizes, 169–72 long term and, 56 makes corporate governance accountable, 164–65 performance at the technology frontier, maximizes, 175–77 shareholder return, maximizes, 172–75 Cohen, Adam (journalist), 334 Cohen, Cynthia, 303 Cohen, Lauren (Harvard Business School), 119 Cohen, Stephen D.


pages: 840 words: 202,245

Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present by Jeff Madrick

Abraham Maslow, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bear Stearns, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carl Icahn, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, desegregation, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, inventory management, invisible hand, John Bogle, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kitchen Debate, laissez-faire capitalism, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Mary Meeker, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, price stability, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, scientific management, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, tail risk, Tax Reform Act of 1986, technology bubble, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, union organizing, V2 rocket, value at risk, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

If a commercial bank owned equity in a company, it had incentives to lend money to the company, disregarding the risk of the loans. There were natural incentives to provide biased information to stockbroker clients about companies in which the banks had investments or to whom they made loans. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, named after its congressional sponsors, Senator Carter Glass and Congressman Henry Bascom Steagall, legally separated commercial banks, which collected deposits and lent money, from investment banks and stockbrokers, who could own parts of companies, raise equity for clients, and advise investors on what investments to make.

Again, mergers drove others to make still bigger mergers in an ever-widening circle. Earlier that year, Weill and Dimon approached J.P. Morgan to inquire about their interest in a possible merger with Travelers. J.P. Morgan was posting mediocre results. This time, for a change, Travelers was the bigger firm. But there was at least one obstacle, the New Deal Glass-Steagall Act, which legally separated insurance, commercial banking, and investment banking. Weill was determined to make such a combination work, and the Dean Witter acquisition made him all the more impatient. His law firm, Wachtell Lipton, suggested there might be a way to merge with J.P. Morgan if the Federal Reserve would agree not to undo the merger immediately but grant a two-to-five-year window while the merger was reviewed.

Germain bill, 6.1, 11.1, 11.2, 13.1, 14.1, 18.1, 19.1 gas prices, 6.1, 9.1 GE Capital, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 17.1 Geithner, Timothy, 16.1, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5 Gelband, Mike Geneen, Harold, 4.1, 12.1 General Electric (GE), 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 7.1, 8.1, 9.1, 11.1, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.5, 16.1, 16.2, 17.1, 17.2, 18.1 general equilibrium analysis General Motors, 12.1, 12.2, 17.1, 19.1 General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, The (Keynes), 2.1, 2.2 Germany, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 7.1, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, 15.1, 15.2 Gerstner, Louis, 13.1, 16.1 gilts Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association), 18.1, 18.2, 18.3 Giuliani, Rudolph, 12.1, 13.1 Glantz, Ronald Glass, Carter Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 1.1, 6.1, 16.1, 16.2, 17.1, 17.2 Global Crossing, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3 Glucksman, Lewis God and Man at Yale (Buckley), prl.1–6 gold, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 6.1, 9.1, 14.1, 15.1, 15.2, 15.3 Goldin, Claudia Goldman Sachs, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 11.1, 13.1, 14.1, 15.1, 15.2, 15.3, 15.4, 15.5, 16.1, 17.1, 18.1, 18.2, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6, 19.7, 19.8 gold standard, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 14.1 Goldwater, Barry, prl.1, prl.2, prl.3, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1 Golub, Harvey, 16.1, 19.1 goods and services, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 8.1, 9.1, 10.1, 14.1 Gorton, Gary government, U.S.: budget of, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 9.1, 14.1, 14.2, 19.1; see also deficits, budget; defense spending by, prl.1, 2.4, 3.5, 3.6, 8.1, 11.1, 11.2; economic regulation by, itr.1, itr.2, prl.1, prl.2, prl.3, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 2.11, 2.12, 3.7, 5.1, 5.2, 14.3, 19.2; limited, ix–x, prl.1, 1.2, 2.13, 3.8, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 9.2, 9.3, 10.1, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 14.4; local and state, prl.1, prl.2, 2.14, 7.6; social programs of, itr.1, prl.1, prl.2, prl.3, prl.4, prl.5, 1.3, 2.15, 2.16, 2.17, 2.18, 2.19, 3.9, 3.10, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11, 10.2, 11.6; spending by, prl.1, 1.4, 2.20, 2.21, 2.22, 2.23, 2.24, 2.25, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14, 7.12, 9.4, 9.5, 11.7, 14.5, 19.3 Government Accounting Office (GAO—called Government Accountability Office since 2004) government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 19.1 Gramm, Phil, 16.1, 17.1 Gramm, Wendy Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999) Grasso, Richard Gray, Harry, 4.1, 5.1 Gray Memo Great Britain, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 8.1, 11.1, 15.1, 15.2, 15.3, 15.4, 15.5, 15.6, 15.7, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3 Great Depression, itr.1, prl.1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, 14.1, 15.1, 15.2, 18.1, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5 Great Inflation of 1973–74 Great Society, prl.1, 10.1 Greenberg, Alan “Ace,” 364 Greenberg, Hank, 19.1, 19.2 Greenhill, Robert, 4.1, 4.2, 16.1, 16.2, 16.3 greenmail, 4.1, 4.2, 13.1, 13.2 Greenspan, Alan, 6.1, 14.1, 14.2; background of, 1.1, 14.3; budget deficits policy of, 14.4, 14.5, 14.6, 14.7; in Bush administration, 14.8, 18.1; in Clinton administration, 13.1, 14.9, 14.10, 14.11, 15.1, 15.2, 17.1, 18.2; as consultant, 10.1, 14.12, 14.13; deregulation supported by, 14.14, 14.15, 14.16, 14.17, 14.18, 14.19, 14.20, 15.3, 15.4, 16.1, 17.2; derivatives policy of, 14.21, 14.22, 14.23, 14.24; economic policies of, 14.25, 14.26, 15.5, 15.6, 17.3, 17.4, 17.5; education of, 14.27, 14.28; as Federal Reserve chairman, 1.2, 3.1, 6.2, 12.1, 13.2, 13.3, 14.29, 14.30, 14.31, 15.7, 15.8, 15.9, 16.2, 16.3, 17.6, 17.7, 17.8, 17.9, 18.3, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3; in Ford administration, 3.2, 3.3, 14.32, 14.33; free market ideology of, 3.4, 5.1, 13.4, 14.34, 14.35, 14.36, 14.37, 14.38, 14.39, 14.40, 14.41, 15.10; hedge funds and policies of, 15.11, 15.12, 15.13, 15.14; housing bubble and policies of, 14.42, 18.4, 18.5, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6, 19.7; inflation and, 12.2, 14.43, 14.44, 14.45, 14.46, 14.47, 14.48, 14.49, 14.50, 14.51, 14.52, 15.15, 17.10; interest rates policy of, 6.3, 12.3, 13.5, 14.53, 14.54, 14.55, 14.56, 14.57, 14.58, 15.16, 15.17, 15.18, 15.19, 15.20, 15.21, 17.11, 18.6, 18.7, 18.8, 18.9, 18.10, 18.11, 18.12, 19.8, 19.9, 19.10, 19.11; Keating letter of, 14.59, 14.60, 14.61; memoirs of, 14.62, 14.63; in Reagan administration, 13.6, 14.64, 14.65, 14.66, 14.67; as Republican, 14.68, 14.69, 14.70, 14.71; reputation of, 14.72, 14.73, 14.74, 14.75; stock market and policies of, 14.76, 14.77, 14.78, 14.79, 14.80, 14.81, 14.82; tax policies of, 14.83, 14.84, 14.85; unemployment rate policy of, 14.86, 14.87, 14.88, 14.89, 14.90, 14.91, 14.92, 14.93, 14.94, 14.95; Volcker compared with, 14.96, 14.97, 14.98, 14.99, 14.100 “Greenspan put,” 244 Greider, William Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 7.1, 9.1, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, 14.4, 17.1, 17.2, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4 Grubman, Jack, 16.1, 16.2, 17.1, 17.2 Gulf + Western, 1.1, 8.1 Gulf Oil, 5.1, 13.1 Gutfreund, John, 15.1, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3 Haig, Alexander, 6.1, 6.2 Hamilton, Alexander Hansen, Alvin, 2.1, 3.1 Harris, Fried Frank Harris, Lou Harvard Business School, 4.1, 4.2, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.5, 13.1, 15.1, 15.2, 16.1, 16.2, 16.3, 17.1 Hawkins, Augustus Hayden Stone Hayek, Friedrich von, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 7.1 Hayes, Robert health care, prl.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 6.1, 8.1, 11.1, 16.1, 16.2, 19.1 hedge funds, xi, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, 14.4, 15.1, 16.1, 16.2, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18.1, 18.2, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6; see also specific funds herd instinct, 15.1, 19.1 Hickman, W.


pages: 654 words: 120,154

The Firm by Duff McDonald

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset light, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, book value, borderless world, collective bargaining, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, family office, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, new economy, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, Ralph Nader, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Solow, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, The Nature of the Firm, vertical integration, young professional

Stepping into the Breach Unwittingly, the federal government did its part to create the modern consulting business. Starting in the last part of the nineteenth century, Washington made periodic regulatory efforts to curb the power of big business, including the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act and Clayton Act of 1914, and the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The intended effect of these measures was to prevent corporations from colluding with one another to fix prices and otherwise manipulate the markets. The unintended effect, according to historian Christopher McKenna, was to accelerate the creation of an informal—but legal—way of sharing information among oligopolists.

See also Huey, John Foster, Dick, 217, 247, 249, 250, 263 four-box matrix (BCG), 88, 109, 113, 140, 143, 144 Four Roses Whiskey, 54 Foy, Peter, 139–40, 162, 165, 176 frameworks, McKinsey, 143–45 Fraser, George MacDonald, 47 Fraser, Jane, 248 Frazer, George, 14 Frazer and Torbet, 14 Frito-Lay, 211 From Higher Aims to Hired Hands (Khurana), 65, 124–25 Fuld, Dick, 230 Fuller, Joe, 198 The Functions of the Executive (Barnard), 55 The Future of Management (Hamel), 333 Gaither Commission, 70 Galleon fund, 308, 310, 313, 314, 315, 316 Gandhi, Mahatma, 314 Gay, Edwin, 26 GB Voyager Multi-Strategy Fund, 313 Geigy, 79 General Electric (GE): in American Century, 17 and BCG-McKinsey competition, 113–15 Bedaux as consultants for, 27 decentralization of, 76 diversification at, 63 government contracts for, 69 and hiring McKinsey to prove a point, 189–90 McKinsey alumni and, 282 McKinsey lending advice to, 291 mergers and, 17 multidivisional structure of, 18 NBC purchase by, 189–90 specialization at, 215 strategic business units at, 114–15 strategic planning at, 113–15 General Foods, 64 General Mills, 295 General Motors (GM): in American Century, 17 bankruptcy of, 184 Drucker book about, 90 growth and control dilemma at, 17 Japanese as competitors of, 183 McKinsey as consultant to, 2, 86, 174, 181–84 as McKinsey failure, 191 McKinsey impact on, 86, 174, 181–84, 327, 332 organization/reorganization of, 54, 55, 183–84 Patton Work for, 65 Sloan impact on, 19, 54 Smith as CEO of, 177 General Post Office, British, 76, 77, 78 General Survey Outline (GSO), McKinsey’s, 22–23, 25, 28, 141 generalists, 94, 120–23, 133, 139, 142–46, 197, 201, 215 George, Bill, 313 George Fry & Associates, 42 Germany: cost cutting/layoffs in, 212–14 criticisms of McKinsey in, 212–14 McKinsey activities in, 87–88, 107–8, 157–61, 165, 212–14, 279 McKinsey European expansion and, 79, 228 McKinsey office managers in, 162 Peters and Waterman’s work and, 150 power of McKinsey office in, 108 “the McKinsey society” in, 212–14 Gerstner, Lou, 7, 41–42, 81–82, 217, 233, 303–4 Ghemawat, Pankaj, 56 Gillette, 314 Gingrich, Newt, 232 Gladwell, Malcolm, 262–63 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 18 Glassdoor surveys, 295 Glennan, Keith, 68 “global profit pools,” 302–3 globalization. See growth/expansion, McKinsey; specific nation or city Globe and Mail (Canada): Barton comments to, 300 Gluck, Fred: appearance of, 196, 219 Barton compared to, 299 and BCG as competitor, 116, 140, 264 Carnegie and, 194–95 clients and, 194–96, 197, 198, 245 compensation for, 207–8 Daniel and, 135–36, 142, 146, 196–97 Davis recommitment to era of, 278 early years at McKinsey of, 194–95 elections as managing director of, 153, 168, 197, 198 “Excellence” folio and, 147 focus of McKinsey and, 139 and Fortune-Huey profile of McKinsey, 206 generalist-specialist debate and, 142 and greed at McKinsey, 219 and growth/expansion of McKinsey, 193, 198, 221 Gupta and, 224, 225 Henzler and, 158 and intellectualization of McKinsey, 164 and IT consulting, 200–203 knowledge focus of, 145, 197, 214–18, 223, 278 legacy of, 215, 219, 271 McKinsey bureaucracy and, 277 McKinsey hiring of, 194 McKinsey image and, 194 and McKinsey as Jesuits of Capitalism, 215–20 McKinsey revenues/fees and, 197, 203, 205, 219 McKinsey structure/organization and, 142 personal life of, 219–20 personal and professional background of, 170, 193–94 Peters-Waterman work and, 147, 148 post-McKinsey activities of, 220 practice bulletins of, 141, 278 promotions of, 197 reengineering and, 211 and self-image of McKinsey, 166 sharing culture and, 143 and strategy initiative, 146, 153, 197 Superteam of, 140–42 technology interests of, 193, 196 writings by, 141–42 Godrej, Adi, 314 Gogel, Don, 232 Golden West Financial, 254–55 Goldman Sachs: Buffett investment in, 313, 315 Bush administration and, 284 competitors of, 328 Enron compared with, 246 in the future, 328 Gupta as board member at, 311–12, 313, 315–16, 321, 322 and Gupta insider-trading case, 315–16, 317 Japanese clients of, 165 and long-term/short-term strategy, 292 McKinsey alumni at, 232 McKinsey compared with, 9 Golightly, Henry, 46–47 Good Bank/Bad Bank exercise, 175 Google, 4, 182, 264, 295, 327, 329 Gorman, James, 7, 42, 197 Gourmet magazine, 280 government: British, 107 bureaucratization of consulting process for, 72 Dutch, 175 local, 283 as McKinsey clients, 67–69, 70, 282–86 McKinsey impact on, 326 public/private partnerships and, 176 and U.S. government as McKinsey client, 67–69, 70, 282–86 and “whole government transformation” advice of consultants, 293.


pages: 425 words: 122,223

Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street by Peter L. Bernstein

Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brownian motion, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, corporate raider, debt deflation, diversified portfolio, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate swap, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, law of one price, linear programming, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, martingale, means of production, Michael Milken, money market fund, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Journalism, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, stochastic process, Thales and the olive presses, the market place, The Predators' Ball, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, transfer pricing, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Fischer Black, known for keeping his cool, became so angry that he stalked out. Two years of product development and arduous marketing efforts brought a few prospects for the Stagecoach Fund, including Greyhound and Illinois Bell. But then the Investment Company Institute, the trade association of the mutual fund industry, brought suit under the Glass-Steagall Act against Citicorp because of its efforts to distribute its commingled trust funds to all customers through its branch network. The ICI claimed that Citicorp was in effect marketing mutual funds. In ICI v. Camp, the Supreme Court ruled that Glass-Steagall did apply and that banks should stay out of the mutual fund marketing business; the decision gutted Wells Fargo’s plans to launch the Stagecoach Fund.

Dow Jones Averages: see Industrial Average (Dow Jones) “Dow Theory Comment” Drexel, Morgan & Company Eastman Kodak Econometrica Econometrics Econometric Society Economics (Samuelson) Efficient Frontier Efficient market concept calculations performance analysis and risk models and stock indexes and stock prices and tests of Employee savings plans Endowment funds Entity Theory Equilibrium Equity management ERISA Exchange rates Favorite Fifty stocks Filter investment strategy Financial Analysis Department (FAD) Financial Analysts Journal Forecasting Foreign exchange markets Frankfurt Stock Exchange Free market concept Futures General Motors Georgia Pacific Lumber Gillette General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes) Glass-Steagall Act Great Crash, The (Galbraith) Greyhound “Growth Stocks and the Petersburg Paradox” (Durand) Haloid Xerox Harvard Business Review Harvard Business School Harvard University Hedging schemes Hong Kong Stock Exchange “How Market Theory Can Help Investors Set Goals, Select Investment Managers, and Appraise Investment Performance” (O’Brien) “How to Use Security Analysis to Improve Portfolio Selection” (Treynor/Black) IBM IBM computers ICI v.


pages: 538 words: 121,670

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, carbon tax, carried interest, circulation of elites, cognitive dissonance, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, crony capitalism, David Brooks, Edward Glaeser, Filter Bubble, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, invisible hand, jimmy wales, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Pareto efficiency, place-making, profit maximization, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, TSMC, Tyler Cowen, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

In fact, the United States did not suffer another major banking crisis for just about 40 years—by far the longest such stretch in the nation’s history. Although there were many reasons for this, it is difficult to ignore the federal government’s active role in managing financial risk. This role began to take shape in 1933 with the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act…. The simple truth is that New Deal financial regulations worked. In fact, [they] worked remarkably well.3 If you want to understand where the craziness began, we should begin where the “New Deal financial regulations” begin to end. This is the delta in the environment. Or it is at least the one self-conscious change that should be the first target of suspicion.

(When SEC chairman Arthur Levitt tried to introduce tougher conflict-of-interest rules for the accounting industry, Senator Phil Gramm, Senate Banking chair, “threatened to cut the SEC’s budget.”)14 Finally, in 1999, President Clinton gave the industry its most important gift: he signed the law that abolished the Glass-Steagall Act,15 thereby confirming the deregulation already effected by bank regulators. “[R]egulators essentially left the abuses of the 1990s to what Justice Cardozo had called the ‘morals of the marketplace.’ ”16 “Self-policing,” as Tett put it, when describing an antiderivatives bill in 1994, had “won the day.”17 This was not the only victory for the deregulation movement.


pages: 402 words: 126,835

The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era by Ellen Ruppel Shell

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, big-box store, blue-collar work, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, company town, computer vision, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, deskilling, digital divide, disruptive innovation, do what you love, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, follow your passion, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, game design, gamification, gentrification, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, human-factors engineering, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial research laboratory, industrial robot, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, John Elkington, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, move fast and break things, new economy, Norbert Wiener, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, precariat, Quicken Loans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban renewal, Wayback Machine, WeWork, white picket fence, working poor, workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, zero-sum game

“cost reduction via the replacement of labor” Michael Spence, “Labor’s Digital Displacement,” Project Syndicate, May 22, 2014, https://www.project-syndicate.org/​commentary/​michael-spence-describes-an-era-in-which-developing-countries-can-no-longer-rely-on-vast-numbers-of-cheap-workers?barrier=accessreg. CHAPTER 14 “The free market sometimes needs referees” Sam Stein, “Glass-Steagall Act: The Senators And Economists Who Got It Right,” Huffington Post, June 11, 2009, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/​2009/​05/​11/​glass-steagall-act-the-se_n_201557.html. a “favorable view” of unions Shiva Maniam, “Most Americans See Labor Unions, Corporations Favorably,” Pew Research Center, Fact Tank, January 30, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2017/​01/​30/​most-americans-see-labor-unions-corporations-favorably.


pages: 756 words: 120,818

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization by Michael O’sullivan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, classic study, cloud computing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, credit crunch, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, knowledge economy, liberal world order, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, performance metric, Phillips curve, private military company, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Sinatra Doctrine, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, Suez canal 1869, supply-chain management, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, tulip mania, Valery Gerasimov, Washington Consensus

A paper from the staff at the Richmond Federal Reserve highlighted the fact that the concentration of a small number of large companies is in some cases as high as it was during the Gilded Age.3 This has allowed the dominant companies to enjoy higher margins, higher stock returns, and more-profitable merger deals. The authors flag lax regulatory oversight (as well as technological barriers to entry) as one reason for the rise of dominant firms. In this light, one proposal that we may hear more of is that, echoing the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated the activities of commercial and investment banks (some banks and the sectors they had invested in—oil, railways, and steel companies—were nearly as dominant as the large technology companies are today), there would be a Glass Steagall–themed act that would break up corporate giants such as Amazon, Google, and perhaps even Tencent Holdings, China’s media-enabled e-commerce player.

See democracy constitutions, 280–282 consumer culture, 289–290 corporate governance, 203–205 corruption and transparency, 262 countries changes coming, 20 economic growth and policy, 14–15 first globalization, 60–61 greatness and success, 153, 157 inequality levels, 38–39, 40 intangible infrastructure, 159–162 microlevel and policy discovery, 163–164 national development, 157–159 next levelling, 77 old order breakdown, 5–6 rise and fall, 151, 152–156 role in multipolar world, 18–19 strength, 158–159, 162–165 values and rights, 239 wealth inequality, 42 Crabtree, James, 43 Crazy Rich Asians (film), 25 crises and central banks, 172, 173 and change, 104, 105–106 and new ideas, 73 next recession, 185–186 politics and economics, 66, 104, 105–106 and SDR bonds, 265–266 See also financial crisis of 2008 Cromwell, Oliver, 3, 81–82, 91, 94 cryptocurrencies, 67–68 culture, and soft power, 219–220 currency Bancor, 265–266 and Brexit, 248 forecasting, 154–155 and QE, 177 rise and fall of nations, 153–154, 248 US dollar, 154, 155, 226, 267 Currie, Janet, 45 cyberwarfare and cybersecurity, 264, 272, 274–275 daily life, patterns, 50 Dalio, Ray, 55 Darling, Alistair, 199–200 Davies, Jim, 42 Dawes Plan, 191–192 Deaton, Angus, 44, 45 debt and central banks, 16–18, 174, 176–177, 189–190 future international conference proposal, 17, 192–194, 201–202 and IMF, 265–266 Levellers as model, 97 next levelling, 77, 304–305 next recession, 185–186, 191, 192–193 old debt, 186–187 problem of debt and indebtedness, 16–18, 168, 186–190, 191, 205–206, 304–305 reduction strategies, 188–190 restructuring schemes in past, 190–192 restructuring schemes of future, 194–202, 203 and risks, 173–174, 184–185, 201, 205–207, 209 solution for, 17, 184, 207–208 See also specific countries Declaration of Independence (US), 94 declinism, 152, 155 democracy and Agreements of the People, 13 decline and crisis, 12, 106, 109 emergence and spread, 3, 4, 107 inspiration in Levellers, 4, 93, 94, 95 and intangible infrastructure, 161 old order breakdown, 5, 7 and political dislocation, 52–53 vs. republic, 278 small-sized nations, 260 Democracy Index, 106, 260 Democratic Party (US), 35, 36 demographics, and economic growth, 147–148 dental care, inequalities, 45 Detroit, 163–164 development economics, 70 Diggers Party (fictional), 121–122 dollar (US), 154, 155, 226, 267 Dornbusch, Rudiger, 67 Downing, Kate, 44 Draghi, Mario, 128, 170, 174, 176, 180, 283 Drezner, Dan, 74 Duggan, Mike, 164 Durkheim, Émile, 147 Duverger, Maurice, 115 Duverger’s Law, 115 Eastasia, as pole in multipolar world, 225, 226–230 Ebola crisis, 27 ECB (European Central Bank), 177, 195, 268, 286 economic growth as challenge and problem, 14–15, 24–25, 148 cycle and current end of cycle, 136–138 financialized growth, 137–138 lack in current cycle, 141–142 long-term factors, 147–148 and next levelling, 76–77, 305 organic growth, 141–142 as promise by politicians, 155–156 solutions, 14–15, 149–151, 165 Economic Policy Institute, 40 economics and world economy change and crises, 66, 104, 105–106 Colbertian approach, 227 conformist views and groupthink, 69–70, 177 cycle and cycle in business, 136–140, 142 eastward shift, 212 expansion in, 139–141, 142 flow-based view, 283–284 forecasting and long-term trends, 66–71, 76, 192 forecasting and next levelling, 76–79, 304–305 and institutions, 161–162 and intangible infrastructure, 159–160, 161–162 interconnections worldwide, 8–9 investment, 145–147 jargon, 134–135 Levellers as model, 96, 97 levelling, 76–79, 212–213, 304–305 next recession and crisis, 66, 76, 185–186, 192–193, 198, 291 old order breakdown, 4–5, 11, 24, 304 “out of control” world, 24 and politics, 51–52, 105–106 and productivity, 141, 142–144 profit margins, 31–32 rent economy, 142 and rule of law, 161–162 small-sized nations, 260–261 state involvement, 227–228 technology in, 214 transition to multipolar world, 185, 218 unipolarity, 218 US influence and power, 226, 267 See also specific countries and regions Economist, 106, 260 education, 15–16, 44, 45, 46, 160 Eichengreen, Barry, 154–155 elections and voters accountability, 78 discontent, 12 estrangement from politics, 108–109 involvement, 306 loyalty and allegiances, 111–112 political dislocation, 52–54 radical and right-wing parties, 55 and religion, 90 self-identification in US, 52 voter turnout, 54 Elizabeth II (Queen), 68 email accounts, 49 emerging countries condescension from West, 257 debt, 186, 187 inequality and globalization, 38, 41 new political parties, 115–116 wealth and expectations, 25, 39, 116 English Civil War, 3, 81–82 English history Constitution, 82 First Civil War and post–Civil War, 81–82, 92 Putney Debates, 3–4, 12, 82, 84–85, 91 See also Levellers equality, 85, 86, 87, 96 equity valuations in US, 65 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 101, 154 Eritrea, 281 ETFs, 67 EU Treasury, 283, 285–288 Eubanks, Virginia, 46 Eugénie, Empress, 227 Eurasia, as pole in multipolar world, 225, 233–237 Europe constitutional reform for multipolar world, 280–283 corporate finance, 202 debt and restructuring, 188, 194–197 education, 15–16 financial reform for multipolar world, 283–288 Hanseatic League 2.0, 245, 260–261 media, 107 national governments and fiscal rules, 284–285 new political parties, 54–55, 110–111 as pole in multipolar world, 279, 280–288 political dislocation and pessimism, 52–54 politics, 107, 108, 109 QE and markets, 181–183 right-wing parties, 54–55 soft power, 219–220 voter turnout, 54 European Central Bank (ECB), 177, 195, 268, 286 European Commission, 236, 284–285 European Union (EU) commonalities and identity, 281–283 constitution, 280–282 debt restructure, 195 description and aims, 233, 235 foreign policy, 236 immigration, 233–234, 237 as independent entity, 235–236 members and membership, 237, 278 pessimism in, 53–54 as pole in multipolar world, 221, 222–223, 233–237 problems, 233–235, 236, 237–238 setting up of businesses, 287–288 taxation, 286 treasury, 283 eurozone crisis and euro crisis, 104, 182, 234, 265 debt, 188, 195, 196 economic mechanisms and policy, 284–285 membership, 237, 278 stabilization levy, 286–287 exceptionalism, 247 Federal Reserve System (the Fed) establishment, 172 and financial crisis of 2008, 69, 175 and QE, 175, 176–177, 183 role in multipolar world, 267, 268 Federalist Papers, 278 finance crises in history, 172 and globalization, 267–268 knowledge, 167 macroprudential policy, 285 reform for multipolar world, 283–288 risk (see risks (financial)) See also economics and world economy financial crisis of 2008 as bubble, 173 central banks, 173–174, 175, 179 and change, 105 description and parallels, 64, 65–66 financialized growth, 137–138, 146 forecast and signs, 68–69, 71, 173 Greenspan approach, 171 financial markets bubbles, 172, 173–174 and first globalization, 60–62 and governance, 203–204 origin and spread, 226 and QE, 181–183 rise and fall of nations, 153 financialized growth, 137–138, 146 Findlay, Ronald, 59–60 first wave globalization (1870–1913), 57, 58, 59–64 Firth, Charles, 85 Flake, Jeff, 126 food and calories, 48 foreign direct investment (FDI), 62 France, 117, 227 Franklin, Benjamin, 277 Freedman, Lawrence, 67 freedom and liberty, 85, 168, 169 freshwater, 48–49 Fukuyama, Francis, 162 future outlook Agreements as model, 13–14 challenges, 12, 14–15, 16–17, 18 economic forecasting, 66–70 history as reference, 2, 11, 57, 65 levelling as solution to challenges, 12–16, 17–18, 19–21, 117 warning and scenarios from trends, 6–7, 10–12 G7, and trade, 24 g20 countries concept, 261 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 66 Galka, Max, 217 Galvin, Alyse, 129 GDP, and rule of law, 161–162 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) initiative, 273 genetics and gene editing, 297–298 geopolitics and currency, 155 future dominance model, 18–19 hard vs. soft power, 219–220 next levelling, 77, 243, 303–304 old order breakdown, 5–6 as problem, 18 respect in, 256, 257 trends in future, 243 See also poles in multipolar world Germany, 118, 191–192 Gibbon, Edward, 152 Gilbert, Dan, 164 Gini coefficient, 38 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 154 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 214 Global Britain, 246, 249–251 Global Trade Alert center, 34 globalization and business cycle, 139 China, 216 criticisms and attacks, 28–29, 38 definition, 7, 59 in finance, 267–268 first wave (1870–1913), 58, 59–64 governance and institutions, 62–64 and inequality, 37–41, 44–47 and investment, 146–147 as only way forward, 7 origins, 225–226, 241 parallels with first wave, 57, 61–62, 64–65 positions on, 36–37 as positive force, 28, 29, 30, 38–39, 41, 139, 241–242 preservation of, 213–214, 215 problems with, 25, 26–28 replacement and transition, 8, 9, 36, 57, 185, 215, 242, 261, 304 retreat, 28, 30–32, 51, 55–56, 57, 63–64, 106, 136–138, 213–215, 238–239, 304 side effects, 28, 34–37, 55–56 small-sized nations, 261 and technology, 213–214 and trade, 30, 31, 32–33 transition to multipolar world, 238–239 trilemma, 237–238 warning from trends, 11, 30 wealth inequality, 41–44 Good-Bye to All That (Graves), 29–30 Goodhart, David, 79–80 Gordon, Robert, 141–142 governance bubble in, 204 corporate governance, 203–205 and financial markets, 203–204 and globalization, 62–64 Levellers vs.


pages: 385 words: 128,358

Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in a Global Market by Steven Drobny

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital controls, central bank independence, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, diversification, diversified portfolio, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Greenspan put, high batting average, implied volatility, index fund, inflation targeting, interest rate derivative, inventory management, inverted yield curve, John Meriwether, junk bonds, land bank, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, market bubble, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Maui Hawaii, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nick Leeson, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, panic early, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, price anchoring, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, rolodex, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, tail risk, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, Vision Fund, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

I’ve always been nervous about the derivatives market. It is so complex and intertwined that nobody really knows how it all fits together. Greenspan thinks it’s a great system for passing off risk, but there’s somebody out there sitting on a hell of a lot of risk. And it’s socialized risk! When they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, it resulted in a consolidated banking industry. Now we have fewer risk takers, so the size of the remaining risk takers is larger.The Fed calls the risk of a systemic blowup a “low probability, high impact event,” which the markets aren’t built for. There’s not enough liquidity to absorb one of these events.

See also Natural gas General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes), 164 Geopolitical issues, xii, 150, 200, 203–204, 223–224, 340 German Bunds, 85–87, 129, 136, 339 German stock market index (DAX), 193 Germany, 14, 16, 68, 85, 110, 167, 210, 246 G5 currencies, 283 Ghana, 59–60 Gibson Greetings, 17 Glass-Steagall Act, 206 INDEX Global equities, xii Global fixed currency, 6 Global fixed income, 71 Global imbalances, types of, 34 Globalization process, 211 Global long/short equity investments, 8 Global macro, xi, xiii–xiv, 1–29, 279–281, 291–292, 327, 329, 345–348. See also Global macro market major events; Global macro markets Global macro market major events, 10–21, 23–28, 48–49 Global macro markets, 24, 32–34 Global micro, 32–34, 257 Global risk, 204 Going long, 54 Gold, 63–64, 152–153, 219–220, 226–228, 230, 246, 268 Goldman Sachs, 10, 32, 71, 73–78, 90–92, 95–96, 98–100, 163, 245–246, 284 Goldsmith, Sir James, 246 Gorton, David, 311–324 Government bonds, 141 Grau, Bennet, 90 Great Britain, 15, 136, 209.


pages: 505 words: 142,118

A Man for All Markets by Edward O. Thorp

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 3Com Palm IPO, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Brownian motion, buy and hold, buy low sell high, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carried interest, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, Edward Thorp, Erdős number, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, Garrett Hardin, George Santayana, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, high net worth, High speed trading, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Livingstone, I presume, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, Mason jar, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Murray Gell-Mann, Myron Scholes, NetJets, Norbert Wiener, PalmPilot, passive investing, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, Pluto: dwarf planet, Ponzi scheme, power law, price anchoring, publish or perish, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, RFID, Richard Feynman, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical arbitrage, stem cell, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, tail risk, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Predators' Ball, the rule of 72, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, Vanguard fund, Vilfredo Pareto, Works Progress Administration

Otherwise, the broker will sell off stock until this is accomplished. The collapse of the banking system was fueled in part by depositors, who, seeing some banks fail, rushed to withdraw their money from the others while there was still time. To dispel such panics in the future, the Banking Act of 1933 (the second Glass-Steagall Act), separated commercial and investment banking in an effort to limit the impact of speculation. It also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which covered losses up to a certain limit. (In 2015 the amount insured was $250,000 per account.) This safety net was severely tested in the 1980s, when the savings and loan collapse cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—that is, US taxpayers—$250 billion, about $1,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

If allowed to happen, this domino effect might have led to a worldwide financial collapse, but a Federal Reserve–inspired consortium intervened, took over LTCM, supplied more funding, and conducted an orderly liquidation. Nothing appears to have been learned from this. Spearheaded by Congress, the banking industry got what it wanted. The first Glass-Steagall Act, enacted in the Great Depression to separate commercial and investment banking, was repealed in 1999. This allowed big institutions to take on more risk with less regulation through the trading of massive amounts of unregulated derivative securities. When Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairperson (1996–99) Brooksley Born wanted to regulate the derivatives that would later be a major cause of disaster, the PBS program Frontline detailed how she was blocked in 1998 by the triumvirate of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Deputy US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, all of whom would later advise government on the 2008–09 bailout.


pages: 457 words: 143,967

The Bank That Lived a Little: Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market by Philip Augar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, business logic, call centre, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, family office, financial deregulation, financial innovation, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, hiring and firing, index card, index fund, interest rate derivative, light touch regulation, loadsamoney, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, money market fund, moral hazard, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, prediction markets, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, risk free rate, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Sloane Ranger, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, too big to fail, vertical integration, wikimedia commons, yield curve

It was there he met his future wife, Debora, who worked in her family’s office furniture business, Aceco.1 After returning to New York in 1989, he was taken aside by the firm’s president, the Englishman Dennis Weatherstone – who gave the eulogy at David Band’s memorial service – and was handed an interesting project. Weatherstone had been lobbying the Federal Reserve to waive parts of a cornerstone of US banking legislation, the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, which forbade deposit taking banks such as J. P. Morgan from underwriting securities. The Federal Reserve was about to soften its stance – it finally gave J. P. Morgan permission to trade and sell corporate securities in 1990 – and Staley was one of the three people deputed to build an equities business in preparation for this deregulation.

‘Chairman is named at Barclays Global Investors’, New York Times, 9 August 2002 12. The Big Vision, 2004 1. Patrick McGeehan and Andrew Ross Sorkin, ‘Chase Manhattan to acquire J. P. Morgan for $30.9 billion’, New York Times, 14 September 2000.In 1999 the US Congress had passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act effectively repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Congress.gov/106/plaws/publ102/PLAW-106publ102.pdf 2. Barclays Annual Report 2004, p. 8 3. Ibid., p. 111; Barclays Annual Report 2005, p. 104 4. Barclays Annual Report 2005, p. 33 5. ‘Grown up stuff’, Financial Times, 28 May 2005 6. Barclays Annual Report 2005, p. 41 7. Barclays Annual Report 2006, p. 133, £1.6m pay and bonus, £3.4m buy out, 802.208 shares.


pages: 462 words: 129,022

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent by Joseph E. Stiglitz

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carried interest, central bank independence, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, DeepMind, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global supply chain, greed is good, green new deal, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, late fees, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, Peter Thiel, postindustrial economy, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, two-sided market, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, working-age population, Yochai Benkler

Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010); and Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality. 38.For a fuller discussion of the determinants of wage inequality, see the discussion in chapter 2, including note 23. 39.So too, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the law that separated commercial and investment banks, has been followed by an enormous increase in concentration in the banking sector, giving them still more market power. The assets of the five largest banks as a share of total commercial banking assets increased from 29 percent in 1998 (the year before the repeal of Glass-Steagall) to 46 percent in 2015. “5-Bank Asset Concentration for United States,” St.

., 67 gambling, by banks, 106–7, 207 Garland, Merrick, 166–67 Gates, Bill, 5, 117 GDP elites and, 22 as false measure of prosperity, 33, 227 financial sector’s increasing portion of, 109 Geithner, Tim, 102 gender discrimination, 41, 200–204 gene patents, 74–75 general welfare, 242–47 generic medicines, 60, 89 genetically modified food (GMO), 88 genetics, 126–27 George, Henry, 206 Germany, 132, 152 gerrymandering, 6, 159, 162 GI Bill, 210 Gilded Age, 12, 246 Glass-Steagall Act, 315n25, 341n39 globalization, 79–100 budget deficits and trade imbalances, 90 collective action to address, 154–55 effect on average citizens, 4, 21 in era of AI, 135 failure to manage, xxvi false premises about, 97–98 and global cooperation in 21st century, 92–97 and intellectual property, 88–89 and internet legal frameworks, 135 and low-skilled workers, 21, 82, 86, 267n39 and market power, 61 pain of, 82–87 and protectionism, 89–92 and 21st-century trade agreements, 87–89 and tax revenue, 84–86 technology vs., 86–87 and trade wars, 93–94 value systems and, 94–97 GMO (genetically modified food), 88 Goebbels, Joseph, 266n35 Goldman Sachs, 104 Google AlphaGo, 315n1 antipoaching conspiracy, 65 and Big Data, 123, 127, 128 conflicts of interest, 124 European restrictions on data use, 129 gaming of tax laws by, 85 market power, 56, 58, 62, 128 and preemptive mergers, 60 Gordon, Robert, 118–19 Gore, Al, 6 government, 138–56 assumption of mortgage risk, 107 Chicago School’s view of, 68–69 debate over role of, 150–52 and educational system, 220 failure of, 148–52 in finance, 115–16 and fractional reserve banking, 111 and Great Depression, 120 hiring of workers by, 196–97 increasing need for, 152–55 interventions during economic downturns, 23, 120 lack of trust in, 151 lending guarantees, 110–11 managing technological change, 122–23 and need for collective action, 140–42 and political reform, xxvi pre-distribution/redistribution by, xxv in progressive agenda, 243–44 public–private partnerships, 142 regulation and rules, 143–48 restoring growth and social justice, 179–208 social protection by, 231 government bonds, 215 Great Britain, wealth from colonialism, 9 Great Depression, xiii, xxii, 13, 23, 120 “great moderation,” 32 Great Recession, xxvi; See also financial crisis (2008) deregulation and, 25 diseases of despair, 42 elites and, 151 employment recovery after, 193 inadequate fiscal stimulus after, 121 as market failure, 23 pace of recovery from, 39–40 productivity growth after, 37 and retirement incomes, 214–15 weak social safety net and, 190 Greenspan, Alan, 112 Gross Fixed Capital Formation, 271n4 gross investment, 271n4 growth after 2008 financial crisis, 103 in China, 95 decline since 1980, 35–37 economic agenda for, xxvii failure of financial sector to support, 115 and inequality, 19 international living standard comparisons, 35–37 knowledge and, 183–86 labor force, 181–82 market power as inimical to, 62–64 in post-1970s US economy, 32 restoring, 181–86 taxation and, 25 guaranteed jobs, 196–97 Harvard University, 16 Hastert Rule, 333n31 health inequality in, 41–43 and labor force participation, 182 health care and American exceptionalism, 211–12 improving access to services, 203 public option, 210–11 in UK and Europe, 13 universal access to, 212–13 hedonic pricing, 347n13 higher education, 219–20; See also universities Hispanic Americans, 41 hi-tech companies, 54, 56, 60, 73 Hitler, Adolf, 152, 266n35 Hobbes, Thomas, 12 home ownership, 216–18 hours worked per week, US ranking among developed economies, 36–37 House of Representatives, 6, 159 housing, as barrier to finding new jobs, 186 housing bubble, 21 housing finance, 216–18 human capital index (World Bank), 36 Human Development Index, 36 Human Genome Project, 126 hurricanes, 207 IA (intelligence-assisting) innovations, 119 identity, capitalism’s effect on, xxvi ideology, science replaced by, 20 immigrants/immigration, 16, 181, 185 imports, See globalization; trade wars incarceration, 161, 163, 193, 201, 202 incentive payments for teachers, 201 voting reform and, 162–63 income; See also wages average US pretax income (1974-2014), 33t universal basic income, 190–91 income inequality, 37, 177, 200, 206 income of capital, 53 India, guaranteed jobs in, 196–97 individualism, 139, 225–26 individual mandate, 212, 213 industrial policies, 187 industrial revolution, 9, 12, 264–65n24 inequality; See also income inequality; wealth inequality benefits of reducing, xxiv–xxv and current politics, 246 in early years after WWII, xix economists’ failure to address, 33 education system as perpetuator of, 219 and election of 2016, xix–xxi and excess profits, 49 and financial system design, 198 growth of, xii–xiii, 37–45 in health, 41–43 in opportunity, 44–45 in race, ethnicity, and gender, 40–41 and 2017 tax bill, 236–37 technology’s effect on, 122–23 in 19th and early 20th century, 12–13 20th-century attempts to address, 13–14 tolerance of, 19 infrastructure European Investment Bank and, 195–96 fiscal policy and, 195 government employment and, 196–97 public–private partnerships, 142 returns on investment in, 195, 232 taxation and, 25 and 2017 tax bill, 183 inheritance tax, 20 inherited wealth, 43, 278n38 innovation intellectual property rights and, 74–75 market power and, 57–60, 63–64 net neutrality and, 148 regulation and, 134 slowing pace of, 118–19 and unemployment, 120, 121 innovation economy, 153–54 insecurity, social protection to address, 188–91 Instagram, 70, 73, 124 institutions fragility of, 230–36 in progressive agenda, 245 undermining of, 231–33 insurance companies, 125 Intel, 65 intellectual property rights (IPR) China and, 95–96 globalization and, 88–89, 99 and stifling of innovation, 74–75 and technological change, 122 in trade agreements, 80, 89 intelligence-assisting (IA) innovations, 119 interest rates, 83, 110, 215 intergenerational justice, 204–5 intergenerational transmission of advantage/disadvantage, xxv–xxvi, 199–201, 219 intermediation, 105, 106 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 217 International Monetary Fund, xix internet, 58, 147 Internet Explorer, 58 inversions, 302n10 investment buybacks vs., 109 corporate tax cuts and, 269n44 and intergenerational justice, 204 long-term, 106 weakening by monopoly power, 63 “invisible hand,” 76 iPhone, 139 IPR, See intellectual property rights Ireland, 108 IRS (Internal Revenue Service), 217 Italy, 133 IT sector, 54; See also hi-tech companies Jackson, Andrew, 101, 241 Janus v.


Adam Smith: Father of Economics by Jesse Norman

active measures, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, electricity market, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial engineering, financial intermediation, frictionless, frictionless market, future of work, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invention of the telescope, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, lateral thinking, loss aversion, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mirror neurons, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, Naomi Klein, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, scientific worldview, seigniorage, Socratic dialogue, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, time value of money, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Veblen good, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, working poor, zero-sum game

These trends have, if anything, significantly worsened since the financial crisis of 2008. Thus the Basel I rulebook governing international bank capital requirements, published in 1988, was 30 pages long; the Basel II rulebook of 2004 was 347 pages long; the Basel III rulebook of 2010 came in at 616 pages. In the USA, a key piece of post-Depression legislation, the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, was 37 pages long; the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 was no fewer than 848 pages long—and that ignores more than 400 pieces of associated further rule-making which could take Dodd–Frank as a whole up to a mind-boggling 30,000 pages of regulation. And regulation begets regulators. In the UK, the number of bank regulators has risen since the late 1970s by a factor of forty.

., in, 84–85 franchise capitalism, 263 Freakonomics (Dubner and Levitt), 208–209 free commerce, 200 free trade, 258–259, 277, 280 freedom, 108–109, 115–116, 186 free-market, xiii, 211, 230–231, 238, 245 in America, 276–277 The Wealth of Nations on, 184–185 See also markets French Revolution, 150 Friedman, Milton, xii–xiii, 226, 253 further future, 305 game theory, 203, 299–300 General Competitive Analysis (Arrow and Hahn), 193, 195 general equilibrium, 194–195, 204–205, 207, 212, 244 See also equilibrium General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Keynes), 207 George II (king), 69–70 George III (king), 70–71 Germany, 240, 274 Gibbon, Edward, 22–23, 123 Glasgow, Scotland, 10, 16–17, 22, 48–49, 51, 53–54, 84, 144 Glassford, John, 16 Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, 260 globalization, 259, 280, 287, 321–322, 330 God, 28, 74, 148 goods. See Veblen goods goods markets, 108, 247–248 Google, 282 Gordon Riots, 83 government, xi, 333 American, 257–258 in England, 79 freedom and, 186 law and, 74 Lectures of Jurisprudence on, 143 local, in Scotland, 14 markets and, 80–81, 172, 187 property rights and, 78, 80–81 regulation by, 188–189 Stewart on, 187 taxation by, 189 The Theory of Moral Sentiments on, 71, 271 trade and, 186–187 weak, 234–235 Graham, Benjamin, 224–225, 228, 252 the grammar of society, 298 Great Crash, of 1929, 250 the Great Enrichment, 274 great society, 147–149 the Greeks, 213–214 Greenspan, Alan, xi Grotius, Hugo, 74 Haakonssen, Knud, 65 Hahn, Frank, 193, 195, 213 Haldane, Andy, 260 Hamilton, Alexander, 276, 278 Hamilton, Duke of, 96 harmony, among humans, 65, 317–318 Hawkins, John, 231 Hayek, Friedrich, 212 Henry VII (king), 100–101 Henry VIII (king), 164 Hicks, John, 208 hierarchy, 154 history conjectural, 77–78 Marx on, 211 The Wealth of Nations on, 190 History of Astronomy (Smith, A.), 44, 152, 166, 168, 172 History of Economic Analysis (Schumpeter), 175 History of England (Hume), 48, 120, 126 Hobbes, Thomas, 20, 74, 183, 296 Holland, 272 Holt, Andreas, 132 homo economicus.


pages: 497 words: 143,175

Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies by Judith Stein

1960s counterculture, accelerated depreciation, activist lawyer, affirmative action, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, desegregation, do well by doing good, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial deregulation, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, income per capita, intermodal, invisible hand, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Martin Wolf, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, post-industrial society, post-oil, price mechanism, price stability, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, three-martini lunch, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, working poor, Yom Kippur War

Democratic opposition was meager; Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone cast the only negative vote in the Senate. The financial services industry, riding high, got its capital gains tax cut. It would complete its wish list by obtaining the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999, which swept aside key provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The new law removed the last firewalls among commercial banks, insurance companies, securities firms, and investment banks. The following year the president signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted many financial products, like credit default swaps, from government regulation.

See also Kennedy Round; Tokyo Round; Uruguay Round General Instrument Generalized Special Preferences (GSP) General Motors Gephardt, Richard Gergen, David Germany: auto industry currency economy government economic interventions imports industry inflation international trade and Middle Eastern oil national politics postwar economic development unemployment rates Gingrich, Newt Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry Gitlin, Todd Glass-Steagall Act Glenn, John Goldberg, Arthur Golden, Harry Goldin, Claudia Goldschmidt, Neil Goldwater, Barry Gomory, Ralph E. Gordon, Robert Gore, Al Gramley, Lyle Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act Great Compression Great Depression Great Society Green, William Greenberg, Jack Greenspan, Alan gross domestic product (GDP), U.S.


pages: 455 words: 138,716

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, book value, butterfly effect, buy and hold, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, company town, Corrections Corporation of America, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Edward Snowden, ending welfare as we know it, fake it until you make it, fixed income, forensic accounting, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, illegal immigration, information retrieval, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Michael Milken, naked short selling, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, regulatory arbitrage, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, social contagion, telemarketer, too big to fail, two and twenty, War on Poverty

The whole world with its myriad sets of laws and rules presented endless opportunities for regulatory arbitrage. It would be harder for the cop on the beat to chase an offender that simultaneously existed everywhere and nowhere. Moreover, even within the United States there had been intentional, lobbied-for changes in corporate structure: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prevented the mergers of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies (this repeal led to the creation of megafirms like Citigroup), and Supreme Court decisions rolling back bans on interstate banking (which led to a string of mergers, resulting in the formation of giant national banks like Wachovia and Bank of America).

He brought in a team of economic advisers who offered what was, for the Democrats, a bold new approach on the economy, an approach based upon balancing the budget on the one hand and deregulating Wall Street on the other. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, Clinton is most frequently criticized for overseeing two radical changes to our regulatory structure: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to allow the mergers of investment banks, commercial banks, and insurance companies, and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which deregulated the burgeoning derivatives market. Less commonly understood is that Clinton, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers also oversaw the collapse of what are known as “selective credit controls,” the tools used to rein in irresponsible lending.


pages: 461 words: 128,421

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street by Justin Fox

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Abraham Wald, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, card file, Carl Icahn, Cass Sunstein, collateralized debt obligation, compensation consultant, complexity theory, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, democratizing finance, Dennis Tito, discovery of the americas, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, Edward Thorp, endowment effect, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, floating exchange rates, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, impulse control, index arbitrage, index card, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Bogle, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, libertarian paternalism, linear programming, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, market design, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, Nikolai Kondratiev, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, performance metric, Ponzi scheme, power law, prediction markets, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, pushing on a string, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, stocks for the long run, tech worker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Predators' Ball, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, transaction costs, tulip mania, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, value at risk, Vanguard fund, Vilfredo Pareto, volatility smile, Yogi Berra

Its most visible accomplishment was Master Charge (now MasterCard), the multibank alternative to hometown rival Bank of America’s BankAmericard (which later reinvented itself in Master Charge’s image as Visa). It also pioneered the index fund. Wells Fargo’s CEO wanted to give his bank’s retail customers access to the stock market free of the sales-pitch-laden, stock-by-stock approach of Wall Street brokerages. His dream shattered against the strictures of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which banned banks from getting into the brokerage business.31 But McQuown’s team had spent several years investigating the merits of an index-based mutual fund, and along the way became the nation’s chief employer of moonlighting finance professors—most of whom McQuown had met at CRSP seminars.

., 111 Fidelity Capital, 120–21, 123, 124, 166 Fidelity Trend, 120–21 Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), 278–79 Financial Analysts Federation, 118, 121 Financial Analysts Journal, 96, 101, 111, 112, 118, 121, 126–27, 130, 131, 205, 209 Financial Times, 163 First Call, 281 Fischhoff, Baruch, 185–86 Fisher, Irving, 320–321, 323 background, 8–11 and the business cycle, 19–20, 311 on common stocks, 22–23 and Cowles, 36 and equilibrium theory, 301, 304 and the Federal Reserve, 242–43 and financial success, 20–23 and Friedman, 93, 94 and the gold standard, 11, 12 and interest rates, 313, 318 and investor foresight, 18 and Keynesian economics, 34–35 and Macaulay, 28–29 and market crashes, 24–25, 32, 33 and market efficiency, 101–2 and market uncertainty, 12–15 and Markowitz, 57 and mathematics, 13 and Mitchell, 31, 258 and neoclassical economics, 30 and Pareto’s Law, 349–50n. 2 and probability theory, 15 and randomness, 27 and Samuelson, 61 and Shiller, 196 and stock valuation, 53–54 and Thaler, 289 and tuberculosis, 4–6, 12–13, 35 and Veblen, 31 and Working, 39 Fisher, Lawrence, 98–100, 140–41 Food Research Institute, 39 Forbes, 129, 221 Ford Foundation, 95 foresight, limits to, 12, 49 Fortune, 70, 114, 130, 218, 220, 271, 274, 291, 365–66n. 19 Foundations of Economic Analysis (Samuelson), 61, 180–81 Foundations of Statistics (Savage), 56 The Fountainhead (Rand), 91 401(k)s, 290–92, 293–95 four-factor model, 209–10 Fractal Geometry of Nature (Mandelbrot), 234 Frank, Jerome, 156 Frank, Thomas, 269, 270 Freddie Mac, 313 French, Kenneth, 208, 225, 248, 299–300 Friedman, Milton, 323 and asset pricing, 87–88 and behavioral economics, 188 and the Chicago School, 90, 92–94, 96 and currency speculation, 145, 250 and government regulation, 93–94 and Hayek, 92 and Markowitz, 55 and operations research, 47–48 and options, 146 and the random walk hypothesis, 196 and the rational market hypothesis, 179–80 and the role of business, 159–61, 273 and Samuelson, 74 and Savage, 52 and statistics, 56, 176 and utility theory, 75–78 Friedman, Thomas, 290–91 Friend, Irwin, 106 Frisch, Ragner, 36, 61 Fuller, Russell, 289 futures market, 39–40, 43–44, 133, 194, 219–20, 244 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 157, 160, 165 gambling, 67, 216–17 game theory, 14, 50–52, 67 Games, Chance, and Risk (Bachelier), 65 Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 6–7 General Electric, 15, 19, 156, 270–71 General Motors, 137, 156 The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes), 34, 244 Gerard, Ralph Waldo, 216, 218 Germany, 40, 268 Gibson, George Rutledge, xiii–xiv Giuliani, Rudy, 168, 242 Glass, Carter, 244 Glassman, James, 263 Glass-Steagall Act, 127–28 Gleick, James, 70, 234 globalization, 258, 269 Goizueta, Roberto, 270–71, 279 gold standard, 11, 12 Goldman Sachs, 240–41 Good to Great (Collins), 284 Goodbody & Co., 126 Goodman, George A. W., 120, 193 Gore, Al, Sr., 164 Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA), 79, 178–79 Graham, Benjamin, 324 and arbitrage, 249 and Buffett, 214, 215 and corporate management, 155 and dividends, 82 and the efficient market hypothesis, 119–20, 366n. 29 and Fama, 209 and Haugen, 254 and index funds, 131 and Markowitz, 53 and “noise traders,” 252 and options, 220, 276–77 and professional investors, 130 and Security Analysis conference, 211, 213 and stock analysis, 53–54, 116–17, 204–5 and value investing, 116, 117–19 Granger, Clive, 70, 192–93 Grantham, Jeremy, 260 Great Depression, 25, 28, 32–35, 61, 81–82, 93, 113, 150 Greenspan, Alan, xi–xiii, 242–43, 244, 257–58, 312–13, 317–18, 319, 324 Gresham’s Law, 314 Grossman, Sanford, 182, 202, 207 Guggenheim Exploration Co., 116, 220, 249 Hamilton, Mary, 281 Hamilton, William Peter, 17–19, 23, 25–26, 36–38, 323, 366n. 29 Hammer, Gil, 127 Hanson, Dale, 273–74 harmonic analysis, 41 Harper’s, 9 Harvard Business Review, 122, 164, 170, 171, 275 Harvard Business School, 78–79, 83–84, 85, 169 Haugen, Robert, 208, 254 Hayek, Friedrich, 32, 90, 91–92, 102, 181, 307, 323 hedge funds, 214–15, 218–19, 225, 239–42, 243, 254, 255, 316 Henwood, Doug, 270 herd behavior, 13, 307, 310 Hessen, Robert, 351–52n. 2 heuristics, 178, 185, 291, 303–4, 316 A History of Economic Theory (Niehans), 60 Home Depot, 278 hostile takeovers, 166–68, 168–71, 271–72, 354–55n. 37 House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, xi housing market, 316–17 Houthakker, Hendrik, 44, 64, 65, 69–70, 72, 133 How to Buy Stocks (Engel), 98 Hubbard, Glenn, 183 Humboldt’s Gift (Bellow), 89 Hume, David, 30, 337–38n. 7 Ibbotson, Roger, 140, 141–42, 146, 256, 263–64, 294–95, 350n. 12 Ibbotson Associates, 142–43 Icahn, Carl, 168 income distribution, 70 index funds, xiv, 38, 127–31, 140–41, 169, 200, 227–28, 230–31, 272 inductive reasoning, 30 industrial revolution, 154, 309 inefficiency, 201, 259, 260, 262.


pages: 520 words: 129,887

Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce

Abraham Maslow, addicted to oil, An Inconvenient Truth, Apollo 11, Bernie Madoff, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, Thomas L Friedman, uranium enrichment, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

Consider the case of former U.S. senator Phil Gramm, the man who did more to enable Enron and the Wall Street pirates than perhaps any other member of the U.S. Congress. You remember Gramm. He was the senator who got more campaign contributions from the now-defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen than any other. As head of the Senate Banking Committee, he engineered the 1999 financial services bill that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era set of rules that helped to slow the trend toward gigantism in the banking, insurance, and securities business. Gramm led congressional efforts to put a leash on both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He was also the author of the “Enron exemption,” the provision that he slipped into a bill that furthered Enron’s ability to escape federal regulation of EnronOnline, the company’s massive trading operation.

See Butane; Greenhouse gases; Methane; Natural gas; Propane Gas-fired generators Gasoline Gasoline engines(fig.) Gasoline prices Gasoline shortages, fear over Gaza Gazprom General Electric(photo) Generators diesel-fired gas-fired rising power density and falling costs of See also Electricity generation Georgia Power Geothermal energy(fig.) (fig.) Germany(fig.)(table) Getty, J. Paul Glass-Steagall Act Global Catastrophes and Trends (Smil) Global climate change adaptation to and decarbonization fears about, feeding on major contributor to media campaign against positions on public opinion toward See also Carbon dioxide emissions Global coal production Global commercial energy use, daily Global economy, interconnectedness of the Global electricity generation(fig.)


pages: 349 words: 134,041

Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives by Satyajit Das

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, Bretton Woods, BRICs, Brownian motion, business logic, business process, buy and hold, buy low sell high, call centre, capital asset pricing model, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, currency risk, disinformation, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Everything should be made as simple as possible, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Haight Ashbury, high net worth, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index card, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Meriwether, junk bonds, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, mass affluent, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Journalism, Nick Leeson, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Parkinson's law, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Salesforce, Satyajit Das, shareholder value, short selling, short squeeze, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, technology bubble, the medium is the message, the new new thing, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, Vanguard fund, volatility smile, yield curve, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond

Investment banks, too, continued to behave much as they always had. The division between commercial banks (taking deposits and making loans) and investment banks (trading and underwriting securities or providing advice) was still strong. It was enshrined in many places in legislation (e.g. the US Glass-Steagall Act). Investment banks bought and sold shares and bonds, mainly on behalf of clients, for commission. They underwrote and placed securities for large companies, helping them raise money. They advised their clients on the process of corporate cannibalism known as mergers and acquisitions. Bankers knew about making loans, credit risk and branch banking.

However, the text is different. 6 ‘What Worries Warren’ (3 March 2003) Fortune. 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 325 Index accounting rules 139, 221, 228, 257 Accounting Standards Board 33 accrual accounting 139 active fund management 111 actuaries 107–10, 205, 289 Advance Corporation Tax 242 agency business 123–4, 129 agency theory 117 airline profits 140–1 Alaska 319 Allen, Woody 20 Allied Irish Bank 143 Allied Lyons 98 alternative investment strategies 112, 308 American Express 291 analysts, role of 62–4 anchor effect 136 Anderson, Rolf 92–4 annuities 204–5 ANZ Bank 277 Aquinas, Thomas 137 arbitrage 33, 38–40, 99, 114, 137–8, 171–2, 245–8, 253–5, 290, 293–6 arbitration 307 Argentina 45 arithmophobia 177 ‘armpit theory’ 303 Armstrong World Industries 274 arrears assets 225 Ashanti Goldfields 97–8, 114 Asian financial crisis (1997) 4, 9, 44–5, 115, 144, 166, 172, 207, 235, 245, 252, 310, 319 asset consultants 115–17, 281 ‘asset growth’ strategy 255 asset swaps 230–2 assets under management (AUM) 113–4, 117 assignment of loans 267–8 AT&T 275 attribution of earnings 148 auditors 144 Australia 222–4, 254–5, 261–2 back office functions 65–6 back-to-back loans 35, 40 backwardation 96 Banca Popolare di Intra 298 Bank of America 298, 303 Bank of International Settlements 50–1, 281 Bank of Japan 220 Bankers’ Trust (BT) 59, 72, 101–2, 149, 217–18, 232, 268–71, 298, 301, 319 banking regulations 155, 159, 162, 164, 281, 286, 288 banking services 34; see also commercial banks; investment banks bankruptcy 276–7 Banque Paribas 37–8, 232 Barclays Bank 121–2, 297–8 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 326 4:44 pm Page 326 Index Baring, Peter 151 Baring Brothers 51, 143, 151–2, 155 ‘Basel 2’ proposal 159 basis risk 28, 42, 274 Bear Stearns 173 bearer eurodollar collateralized securities (BECS) 231–3 ‘behavioural finance’ 136 Berkshire Hathaway 19 Bermudan options 205, 227 Bernstein, Peter 167 binomial option pricing model 196 Bismarck, Otto von 108 Black, Fischer 22, 42, 160, 185, 189–90, 193, 195, 197, 209, 215 Black–Scholes formula for option pricing 22, 185, 194–5 Black–Scholes–Merton model 160, 189–93, 196–7 ‘black swan’ hypothesis 130 Blair, Tony 223 Bogle, John 116 Bohr, Niels 122 Bond, Sir John 148 ‘bond floor’ concept 251–4 bonding 75–6, 168, 181 bonuses 146–51, 244, 262, 284–5 Brady Commission 203 brand awareness and brand equity 124, 236 Brazil 302 Bretton Woods system 33 bribery 80, 303 British Sky Broadcasting (BSB) 247–8 Brittain, Alfred 72 broad index secured trust offerings (BISTROs) 284–5 brokers 69, 309 Brown, Robert 161 bubbles 210, 310, 319 Buconero 299 Buffet, Warren 12, 19–20, 50, 110–11, 136, 173, 246, 316 business process reorganization 72 business risk 159 Business Week 130 buy-backs 249 ‘call’ options 25, 90, 99, 101, 131, 190, 196 callable bonds 227–9, 256 capital asset pricing model (CAPM) 111 capital flow 30 capital guarantees 257–8 capital structure arbitrage 296 Capote, Truman 87 carbon trading 320 ‘carry cost’ model 188 ‘carry’ trades 131–3, 171 cash accounting 139 catastrophe bonds 212, 320 caveat emptor principle 27, 272 Cayman Islands 233–4 Cazenove (company) 152 CDO2 292 Cemex 249–50 chaos theory 209, 312 Chase Manhattan Bank 143, 299 Chicago Board Options Exchange 195 Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) 25–6, 34 chief risk officers 177 China 23–5, 276, 302–4 China Club, Hong Kong 318 Chinese walls 249, 261, 280 chrematophobia 177 Citibank and Citigroup 37–8, 43, 71, 79, 94, 134–5, 149, 174, 238–9 Citron, Robert 124–5, 212–17 client relationships 58–9 Clinton, Bill 223 Coats, Craig 168–9 collateral requirements 215–16 collateralized bond obligations (CBOs) 282 collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) 45, 282–99 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 327 Index collateralized fund obligations (CFOs) 292 collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) 283–5, 288 commercial banks 265–7 commoditization 236 commodity collateralized obligations (CCOs) 292 commodity prices 304 Commonwealth Bank of Australia 255 compliance officers 65 computer systems 54, 155, 197–8 concentration risk 271, 287 conferences with clients 59 confidence levels 164 confidentiality 226 Conseco 279–80 contagion crises 291 contango 96 contingent conversion convertibles (co-cos) 257 contingent payment convertibles (co-pays) 257 Continental Illinois 34 ‘convergence’ trading 170 convertible bonds 250–60 correlations 163–6, 294–5; see also default correlations corruption 303 CORVUS 297 Cox, John 196–7 credit cycle 291 credit default swaps (CDSs) 271–84, 293, 299 credit derivatives 129, 150, 265–72, 282, 295, 299–300 Credit Derivatives Market Practices Committee 273, 275, 280–1 credit models 294, 296 credit ratings 256–7, 270, 287–8, 297–8, 304 credit reserves 140 credit risk 158, 265–74, 281–95, 299 327 credit spreads 114, 172–5, 296 Credit Suisse 70, 106, 167 credit trading 293–5 CRH Capital 309 critical events 164–6 Croesus 137 cross-ruffing 142 cubic splines 189 currency options 98, 218, 319 custom repackaged asset vehicles (CRAVEs) 233 daily earning at risk (DEAR) concept 160 Daiwa Bank 142 Daiwa Europe 277 Danish Oil and Natural Gas 296 data scrubbing 142 dealers, work of 87–8, 124–8, 133, 167, 206, 229–37, 262, 295–6; see also traders ‘death swap’ strategy 110 decentralization 72 decision-making, scientific 182 default correlations 270–1 defaults 277–9, 287, 291, 293, 296, 299 DEFCON scale 156–7 ‘Delta 1’ options 243 delta hedging 42, 200 Deming, W.E. 98, 101 Denmark 38 deregulation, financial 34 derivatives trading 5–6, 12–14, 18–72, 79, 88–9, 99–115, 123–31, 139–41, 150, 153, 155, 175, 184–9, 206–8, 211–14, 217–19, 230, 233, 257, 262–3, 307, 316, 319–20; see also equity derivatives Derman, Emmanuel 185, 198–9 Deutsche Bank 70, 104, 150, 247–8, 274, 277 devaluations 80–1, 89, 203–4, 319 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 328 328 Index dilution of share capital 241 DINKs 313 Disney Corporation 91–8 diversification 72, 110–11, 166, 299 dividend yield 243 ‘Dr Evil’ trade 135 dollar premium 35 downsizing 73 Drexel Burnham Lambert (DBL) 282 dual currency bonds 220–3; see also reverse dual currency bonds earthquakes, bonds linked to 212 efficient markets hypothesis 22, 31, 111, 203 electronic trading 126–30, 134 ‘embeddos’ 218 emerging markets 3–4, 44, 115, 132–3, 142, 212, 226, 297 Enron 54, 142, 250, 298 enterprise risk management (ERM) 176 equity capital management 249 equity collateralized obligations (ECOs) 292 equity derivatives 241–2, 246–9, 257–62 equity index 137–8 equity investment, retail market in 258–9 equity investors’ risk 286–8 equity options 253–4 equity swaps 247–8 euro currency 171, 206, 237 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 297 European currency units 93 European Union 247–8 Exchange Rate Mechanism, European 204 exchangeable bonds 260 expatriate postings 81–2 expert witnesses 310–12 extrapolation 189, 205 extreme value theory 166 fads of management science 72–4 ‘fairway bonds’ 225 Fama, Eugene 22, 111, 194 ‘fat tail’ events 163–4 Federal Accounting Standards Board 266 Federal Home Loans Bank 213 Federal National Mortgage Association 213 Federal Reserve Bank 20, 173 Federal Reserve Board 132 ‘Ferraris’ 232 financial engineering 228, 230, 233, 249–50, 262, 269 Financial Services Authority (FSA), Japan 106, 238 Financial Services Authority (FSA), UK 15, 135 firewalls 235–6 firing of staff 84–5 First Interstate Ltd 34–5 ‘flat’ organizations 72 ‘flat’ positions 159 floaters 231–2; see also inverse floaters ‘flow’ trading 60–1, 129 Ford Motors 282, 296 forecasting 135–6, 190 forward contracts 24–33, 90, 97, 124, 131, 188 fugu fish 239 fund management 109–17, 286, 300 futures see forward contracts Galbraith, John Kenneth 121 gamma risk 200–2, 294 Gauss, Carl Friedrich 160–2 General Motors 279, 296 General Reinsurance 20 geometric Brownian motion (GBM) 161 Ghana 98 Gibson Greeting Cards 44 Glass-Steagall Act 34 gold borrowings 132 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 329 Index gold sales 97, 137 Goldman Sachs 34, 71, 93, 150, 173, 185 ‘golfing holiday bonds’ 224 Greenspan, Alan 6, 9, 19–21, 29, 43, 47, 50, 53, 62, 132, 159, 170, 215, 223, 308 Greenwich NatWest 298 Gross, Bill 19 Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corporation (GITIC) 276–7 guaranteed annuity option (GAO) contracts 204–5 Gutenfreund, John 168–9 gyosei shido 106 Haghani, Victor 168 Hamanaka, Yasuo 142 Hamburgische Landesbank 297 Hammersmith and Fulham, London Borough of 66–7 ‘hara-kiri’ swaps 39 Hartley, L.P. 163 Hawkins, Greg 168 ‘heaven and hell’ bonds 218 hedge funds 44, 88–9, 113–14, 167, 170–5, 200–2, 206, 253–4, 262–3, 282, 292, 296, 300, 308–9 hedge ratio 264 hedging 24–8, 31, 38–42, 60, 87–100, 184, 195–200, 205–7, 214, 221, 229, 252, 269, 281, 293–4, 310 Heisenberg, Werner 122 ‘hell bonds’ 218 Herman, Clement (‘Crem’) 45–9, 77, 84, 309 Herodotus 137, 178 high net worth individuals (HNWIs) 237–8, 286 Hilibrand, Lawrence 168 Hill Samuel 231–2 329 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 189 Homer, Sidney 184 Hong Kong 9, 303–4 ‘hot tubbing’ 311–12 HSBC Bank 148 HSH Nordbank 297–8 Hudson, Kevin 102 Hufschmid, Hans 77–8 IBM 36, 218, 260 ICI 34 Iguchi, Toshihude 142 incubators 309 independent valuation 142 indexed currency option notes (ICONs) 218 India 302 Indonesia 5, 9, 19, 26, 55, 80–2, 105, 146, 219–20, 252, 305 initial public offerings 33, 64, 261 inside information and insider trading 133, 241, 248–9 insurance companies 107–10, 117, 119, 150, 192–3, 204–5, 221, 223, 282, 286, 300; see also reinsurance companies insurance law 272 Intel 260 intellectual property in financial products 226 Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) 285–6 International Accounting Standards 33 International Securities Market Association 106 International Swap Dealers Association (ISDA) 273, 275, 279, 281 Internet stock and the Internet boom 64, 112, 259, 261, 310, 319 interpolation of interest rates 141–2, 189 inverse floaters 46–51, 213–16, 225, 232–3 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 330 330 Index investment banks 34–8, 62, 64, 67, 71, 127–8, 172, 198, 206, 216–17, 234, 265–7, 298, 309 investment managers 43–4 investment styles 111–14 irrational decisions 136 Italy 106–7 Ito’s Lemma 194 Japan 39, 43, 82–3, 92, 94, 98–9, 101, 106, 132, 142, 145–6, 157, 212, 217–25, 228, 269–70 Jensen, Michael 117 Jett, Joseph 143 JP Morgan (company) 72, 150, 152, 160, 162, 249–50, 268–9, 284–5, 299; see also Morgan Guaranty junk bonds 231, 279, 282, 291, 296–7 JWM Associates 175 Kahneman, Daniel 136 Kaplanis, Costas 174 Kassouf, Sheen 253 Kaufman, Henry 62 Kerkorian, Kirk 296 Keynes, J.M. 167, 175, 198 Keynesianism 5 Kidder Peabody 143 Kleinwort Benson 40 Korea 9, 226, 278 Kozeny, Viktor 121 Krasker, William 168 Kreiger, Andy 319 Kyoto Protocol 320 Lavin, Jack 102 law of large numbers 192 Leeson, Nick 51, 131, 143, 151 legal opinions 47, 219–20, 235, 273–4 Leibowitz, Martin 184 Leland, Hayne 42, 202 Lend Lease Corporation 261–2 leptokurtic conditions 163 leverage 31–2, 48–50, 54, 99, 102–3, 114, 131–2, 171–5, 213–14, 247, 270–3, 291, 295, 305, 308 Lewis, Kenneth 303 Lewis, Michael 77–8 life insurance 204–5 Lintner, John 111 liquidity options 175 liquidity risk 158, 173 litigation 297–8 Ljunggren, Bernt 38–40 London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) 6, 37 ‘long first coupon’ strategy 39 Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) 44, 51, 62, 77–8, 84, 114, 166–75, 187, 206, 210, 215–18, 263–4, 309–10 Long Term Credit Bank of Japan 94 LOR (company) 202 Louisiana Purchase 319 low exercise price options (LEPOs) 261 Maastricht Treaty and criteria 106–7 McLuhan, Marshall 134 McNamara, Robert 182 macro-economic indicators, derivatives linked to 319 Mahathir Mohammed 31 Malaysia 9 management consultants 72–3 Manchester United 152 mandatory convertibles 255 Marakanond, Rerngchai 302 margin calls 97–8, 175 ‘market neutral’ investment strategy 114 market risk 158, 173, 265 marketable eurodollar collateralized securities (MECS) 232 Markowitz, Harry 110 mark-to-market accounting 10, 100, 139–41, 145, 150, 174, 215–16, 228, 244, 266, 292, 295, 298 Marx, Groucho 24, 57, 67, 117, 308 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 331 Index mathematics applied to financial instruments 209–10; see also ‘quants’ matrix structures 72 Meckling, Herbert 117 Melamed, Leo 34, 211 merchant banks 38 Meriwether, John 167–9, 172–5 Merrill Lynch 124, 150, 217, 232 Merton, Robert 22, 42, 168–70, 175, 185, 189–90, 193–7, 210 Messier, Marie 247 Metallgesellschaft 95–7 Mexico 44 mezzanine finance 285–8, 291–7 MG Refining and Marketing 95–8, 114 Microsoft 53 Mill, Stuart 130 Miller, Merton 22, 101, 194 Milliken, Michael 282 Ministry of Finance, Japan 222 misogyny 75–7 mis-selling 238, 297–8 Mitchell, Edison 70 Mitchell & Butler 275–6 models financial 42–3, 141–2, 163–4, 173–5, 181–4, 189, 198–9, 205–10 of business processes 73–5 see also credit models Modest, David 168 momentum investment 111 monetization 260–1 monopolies in financial trading 124 moral hazard 151, 280, 291 Morgan Guaranty 37–8, 221, 232 Morgan Stanley 76, 150 mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) 282–3 Moscow, City of 277 moves of staff between firms 150, 244 Mozer, Paul 169 Mullins, David 168–70 multi-skilling 73 331 Mumbai 3 Murdoch, Rupert 247 Nabisco 220 Napoleon 113 NASDAQ index 64, 112 Nash, Ogden 306 National Australia Bank 144, 178 National Rifle Association 29 NatWest Bank 144–5, 198 Niederhoffer, Victor 130 ‘Nero’ 7, 31, 45–9, 60, 77, 82–3, 88–9, 110, 118–19, 125, 128, 292 NERVA 297 New Zealand 319 Newman, Frank 104 news, financial 133–4 News Corporation 247 Newton, Isaac 162, 210 Nippon Credit Bank 106, 271 Nixon, Richard 33 Nomura Securities 218 normal distribution 160–3, 193, 199 Northern Electric 248 O’Brien, John 202 Occam, William 188 off-balance sheet transactions 32–3, 99, 234, 273, 282 ‘offsites’ 74–5 oil prices 30, 33, 89–90, 95–7 ‘omitted variable’ bias 209–10 operational risk 158, 176 opinion shopping 47 options 9, 21–2, 25–6, 32, 42, 90, 98, 124, 197, 229 pricing 185, 189–98, 202 Orange County 16, 44, 50, 124–57, 212–17, 232–3 orphan subsidiaries 234 over-the-counter (OTC) market 26, 34, 53, 95, 124, 126 overvaluation 64 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 332 332 Index ‘overwhelming force’ strategy 134–5 Owen, Martin 145 ownership, ‘legal’ and ‘economic’ 247 parallel loans 35 pari-mutuel auction system 319 Parkinson’s Law 136 Parmalat 250, 298–9 Partnoy, Frank 87 pension funds 43, 108–10, 115, 204–5, 255 People’s Bank of China (PBOC) 276–7 Peters’ Principle 71 petrodollars 71 Pétrus (restaurant) 121 Philippines, the 9 phobophobia 177 Piga, Gustavo 106 PIMCO 19 Plaza Accord 38, 94, 99, 220 plutophobia 177 pollution quotas 320 ‘portable alpha’ strategy 115 portfolio insurance 112, 202–3, 294 power reverse dual currency (PRDC) bonds 226–30 PowerPoint 75 preferred exchangeable resettable listed shares (PERLS) 255 presentations of business models 75 to clients 57, 185 prime brokerage 309 Prince, Charles 238 privatization 205 privity of contract 273 Proctor & Gamble (P&G) 44, 101–4, 155, 298, 301 product disclosure statements (PDSs) 48–9 profit smoothing 140 ‘programme’ issuers 234–5 proprietary (‘prop’) trading 60, 62, 64, 130, 174, 254 publicly available information (PAI) 277 ‘puff’ effect 148 purchasing power parity theory 92 ‘put’ options 90, 131, 256 ‘quants’ 183–9, 198, 208, 294 Raabe, Matthew 217 Ramsay, Gordon 121 range notes 225 real estate 91, 219 regulatory arbitrage 33 reinsurance companies 288–9 ‘relative value’ trading 131, 170–1, 310 Reliance Insurance 91–2 repackaging (‘repack’) business 230–6, 282, 290 replication in option pricing 195–9, 202 dynamic 200 research provided to clients 58, 62–4, 184 reserves, use of 140 reset preference shares 254–7 restructuring of loans 279–81 retail equity products 258–9 reverse convertibles 258–9 reverse dual currency bonds 223–30 ‘revolver’ loans 284–5 risk, financial, types of 158 risk adjusted return on capital (RAROC) 268, 290 risk conservation principle 229–30 risk management 65, 153–79, 184, 187, 201, 267 risk models 163–4, 173–5 riskless portfolios 196–7 RJ Reynolds (company) 220–1 rogue traders 176, 313–16 Rosenfield, Eric 168 Ross, Stephen 196–7, 202 Roth, Don 38 Rothschild, Mayer Amshel 267 Royal Bank of Scotland 298 Rubinstein, Mark 42, 196–7 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 333 Index Rumsfeld, Donald 12, 134, 306 Rusnak, John 143 Russia 45, 80, 166, 172–3, 274, 302 sales staff 55–60, 64–5, 125, 129, 217 Salomon Brothers 20, 36, 54, 62, 167–9, 174, 184 Sandor, Richard 34 Sanford, Charles 72, 269 Sanford, Eugene 269 Schieffelin, Allison 76 Scholes, Myron 22, 42, 168–71, 175, 185, 189–90, 193–7, 263–4 Seagram Group 247 Securities and Exchange Commission, US 64, 304 Securities and Futures Authority, UK 249 securitization 282–90 ‘security design’ 254–7 self-regulation 155 sex discrimination 76 share options 250–1 Sharpe, William 111 short selling 30–1, 114 Singapore 9 single-tranche CDOs 293–4, 299 ‘Sisters of Perpetual Ecstasy’ 234 SITCOMs 313 Six Continents (6C) 275–6 ‘smile’ effect 145 ‘snake’ currency system 203 ‘softing’ arrangements 117 Solon 137 Soros, George 44, 130, 253, 318–19 South Sea Bubble 210 special purpose asset repackaging companies (SPARCs) 233 special purpose vehicles (SPVs) 231–4, 282–6, 290, 293 speculation 29–31, 42, 67, 87, 108, 130 ‘spinning’ 64 333 Spitzer, Eliot 64 spread 41, 103; see also credit spreads stack hedges 96 Stamenson, Michael 124–5 standard deviation 161, 193, 195, 199 Steinberg, Sol 91 stock market booms 258, 260 stock market crashes 42–3, 168, 203, 257, 259, 319 straddles or strangles 131 strategy in banking 70 stress testing 164–6 stripping of convertible bonds 253–4 structured investment products 44, 112, 115, 118, 128, 211–39, 298 structured note asset packages (SNAPs) 233 Stuart SC 18, 307, 316–18 Styblo Bleder, Tanya 153 Suharto, Thojib 81–2 Sumitomo Corporation 100, 142 Sun Tzu 61 Svensk Exportkredit (SEK) 38–9 swaps 5–10, 26, 35–40, 107, 188, 211; see also equity swaps ‘swaptions’ 205–6 Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC) 248–9 Swiss banks 108, 305 ‘Swiss cheese theory’ 176 synthetic securitization 284–5, 288–90 systemic risk 151 Takeover Panel 248–9 Taleb, Nassim 130, 136, 167 target redemption notes 225–6 tax and tax credits 171, 242–7, 260–3 Taylor, Frederick 98, 101 team-building exercises 76 team moves 149 technical analysis 60–1, 135 television programmes about money 53, 62–3 Thailand 9, 80, 302–5 13_INDEX.QXD 17/2/06 4:44 pm Page 334 334 Index Thatcher, Margaret 205 Thorp, Edward 253 tobashi trades 105–7 Tokyo Disneyland 92, 212 top managers 72–3 total return swaps 246–8, 269 tracking error 138 traders in financial products 59–65, 129–31, 135–6, 140, 148, 151, 168, 185–6, 198; see also dealers trading limits 42, 157, 201 trading rooms 53–4, 64, 68, 75–7, 184–7, 208 Trafalgar House 248 tranching 286–9, 292, 296 transparency 26, 117, 126, 129–30, 310 Treynor, Jack 111 trust investment enhanced return securities (TIERS) 216, 233 trust obligation participating securities (TOPS) 232 TXU Europe 279 UBS Global Asset Management 110, 150, 263–4, 274 uncertainty principle 122–3 unique selling propositions 118 unit trusts 109 university education 187 unspecified fund obligations (UFOs) 292 ‘upfronting’ of income 139, 151 Valéry, Paul 163 valuation 64, 142–6 value at risk (VAR) concept 160–7, 173 value investing 111 Vanguard 116 vanity bonds 230 variance 161 Vietnam War 182, 195 Virgin Islands 233–4 Vivendi 247–8 volatility of bond prices 197 of interest rates 144–5 of share prices 161–8, 172–5, 192–3, 199 Volcker, Paul 20, 33 ‘warehouses’ 40–2, 139 warrants arbitrage 99–101 weather, bonds linked to 212, 320 Weatherstone, Dennis 72, 268 Weil, Gotscal & Manges 298 Weill, Sandy 174 Westdeutsche Genosenschafts Zentralbank 143 Westminster Group 34–5 Westpac 261–2 Wheat, Allen 70, 72, 106, 167 Wojniflower, Albert 62 World Bank 4, 36, 38 World Food Programme 320 Worldcom 250, 298 Wriston, Walter 71 WTI (West Texas Intermediate) contracts 28–30 yield curves 103, 188–9, 213, 215 yield enhancement 112, 213, 269 ‘yield hogs’ 43 zaiteku 98–101, 104–5 zero coupon bonds 221–2, 257–8


pages: 504 words: 129,087

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America by Charlotte Alter

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, ending welfare as we know it, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Hangouts, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job-hopping, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microaggression, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive income, pre–internet, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, TaskRabbit, tech bro, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, We are the 99%, white picket fence, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Boomers shored up Social Security for just long enough so that they’ll have it when they retire—the Social Security Trust Fund is expected to be exhausted by 2035, when the youngest boomers will be in their seventies and the average millennial is still hard at work. Meanwhile, by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and a few other forms of financial regulation, Clinton and later George W. Bush (also a boomer) built on Reagan-era policies that favored finance capital over labor. At least Clinton balanced the budget; with massive tax cuts and trillions for his “War on Terror,” President George W. Bush exploded both the annual budget deficit and the cumulative national debt, which more than doubled since the 1970s.

See War on Terror for-profit colleges, 52 4chan, 61 Fox News, 222, 265, 266, 272, 273 Foy, Jennifer Carroll, 212 Francis, Lotoya, 120 Franklin, Danquirs, 137 Frelinghuysen, Rodney, 206 Frey, Jacob, 135 Fukuyama, Francis, 213 Full House (tv show), 33 Gaetz, Matt, 158, 252, 255 Gallagher, Mike, 67, 158 Garner, Eric, 118 Garza, Alicia, 118, 119–20 Geithner, Tim, 106, 108 Gelman, Andrew, 151–52, 153 Generation Me (Twenge), 34 Generation Opportunity, 149 Generations (Strauss & Howe), xiv Generation X, xviii self-esteem and, 34 student debt of, 46 technological shift and, 55–56 turnout, in 2018 elections, 244 Generation Z, 55, 244, 293–94 gerrymandering, 152–53 Ghitza, Yair, 151–52, 153 GI Bill, 52 Gibson, Chris, 158 Gierzynski, Anthony, 40–41 gig economy, 98–99 Gilded Age, 216–17, 219 Gillespie, Ed, 211 Gillum, Andrew, 171, 172 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, xiii Glass-Steagall Act, 31 Glezman, Chasten, 146, 282 Global Climate Strike, 190–191, 293–94 globalism, 177 GM, 102–4, 105 Golden, Jared, 270 González, Emma, 247 Good Morning Vietnam (film), 188 Google, 55, 197 Google Docs, 204 Goolsbee, Austan, 104 Gore, Al, 27, 31 Granholm, Jennifer, 84 Gray, Freddie, 121 Great Depression, 217 Greatest Generation, xiv, xviii, 29 Greatest Hoax, The (Inhofe), 159 Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald), 93 Great Recession, 50, 92–100 black and Hispanic families, impact on, 97–98 college graduates, impact on, 95–96 gig economy and, 98–99 long-term financial impact on millennials of, 98–99 poverty rates for millennials with high school diploma and, 96–97 renting versus ownership and, 99 risk, attitudes toward, 99 student debt and, 96 underemployment and, 96 unemployment rates during, 96 wealth of millennial households versus boomer households at same age, 97 Greenberg, Leah, 124, 125 Indivisible resistance and, 180, 204–5 Muslim travel ban protests and, 202 2012 presidential election and, 170–71, 172–73, 176, 178–80 Greenfield, Jerry, 115 Green New Deal, 191, 273–75, 278–79 Greimel, Tim, 236, 237 Grubb, W.


pages: 454 words: 134,482

Money Free and Unfree by George A. Selgin

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, disintermediation, Dutch auction, fear of failure, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, financial repression, foreign exchange controls, Fractional reserve banking, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, large denomination, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market microstructure, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, Network effects, Northern Rock, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, plutocrats, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, seigniorage, special drawing rights, The Great Moderation, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, Y2K

Finally, anti-branching laws have indirectly weakened the financial system by providing a rationale for other legal restrictions—patchwork remedies that the supervisory authorities have embraced as a substitute for needed structural reform, many of which have ultimately served to further weaken the banking system. Activity Restrictions. Just as anti-branching laws have subjected banks to increased risks by limiting their geographical diversification, other legal restrictions have done the same by limiting activity diversification. Laws like the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933—designed to prevent banks from holding high-risk, high-return assets—actually serve (in an otherwise deregulated setting) to increase the probability of bank failures.6 As Roger Blair and Arnold Heggestad (1978: 92) explain, even the taking on of intrinsically riskier assets by a bank reduces the overall variance of returns on the bank’s portfolio if fluctuations in the earnings of the riskier assets are negatively correlated to fluctuations in the earnings of the less-risky assets.

Instead, the problem was the requirement—inspired by the real-bills doctrine—calling for the Fed to back the other 60 percent of its notes with either gold or “commercial paper.” It was this artificial constraint on the Fed’s nongold assets that was chiefly responsible for its having stood by while the U.S. money stock collapsed. Although the Federal Reserve Act’s commercial paper requirement was relaxed somewhat by Glass-Steagall Act of February 27, 1932, which made U.S. bonds substitutable for gold, the Fed failed to take full advantage of the legislation. See Timberlake (2007). 15. See Gregory (1935: 119). Later Fed and Treasury actions, however, more than offset the boost devaluation had given to the U.S. money stock, helping to bring about the “recession within the Depression” of 1937–38 (Timberlake 1993: 288–99). 16.


pages: 689 words: 134,457

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alistair Cooke, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, asset light, asset-backed security, Atul Gawande, Bear Stearns, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Citizen Lab, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Corrections Corporation of America, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, data science, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, full employment, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, illegal immigration, income inequality, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, job satisfaction, job-hopping, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, load shedding, Mark Zuckerberg, megaproject, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, mortgage debt, Multics, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, profit maximization, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Rutger Bregman, scientific management, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, tech worker, The future is already here, The Nature of the Firm, too big to fail, urban planning, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Banks, highly regulated after their central role in exacerbating the Great Depression, were years away from reclaiming their role as a central driver in McKinsey’s revenue stream. American banks were hobbled by myriad state and federal laws that effectively meant that their business ended at state lines. In 1933, a new law, the Glass-Steagall Act, split commercial banks and investment banks. Congress and the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wanted to make sure that panics on Wall Street never again led to runs on banks across the nation. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation protected savers’ accounts from bank failures.

See also banks; credit securitization; insurance industry; mortgages bailouts and, 178, 188 deregulation of, 171–74, 178, 180 financialization, 180, 194, 196–97 financial planning services, 43 Financial Times, 185 Fine, David, 224, 227–29, 231, 234–35, 237–38 First Auto Works, 108 First Boston, 184 First National City Bank (later Citibank), 175 Fisher, Meg, 189 Fishman, Charles, 45–47 Florida, 154, 193 Floyd, George, protests, 107 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 22, 66–71, 281 Alzheimer’s drug and, 67–69 conflicts of interest and, 66–70, 120, 122, 125–29, 137, 141, 145–47 drug approval process and, 68, 132 e-cigarettes and, 122–29 medical products and, 128–29 nicotine steering committee, 125 opioids and, 132, 134, 137, 141, 144–47 proactive identification of health risks and, 121–22 risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS), 145 tobacco regulation and, 120–29 track and trace system and, 146 warning letters and, 66 Forbes, 42 Fording River, 165 Ford Motor Company, 32, 40 Foreign Agents Registration Act, 246 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 230 Forsythe, Mike, 92n, 243n Fortune, 25, 33, 115 Fort Wayne, Indiana, 138 Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, 128 Fox News, 46, 106 France, 101 Francona, Terry, 216 Freddie Mac, 182, 187 freedom of assembly, 107 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 79 freedom of religion, 107 freedom of speech, 101 freedom of the press, 100, 107 free trade, 41, 46 From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves (Berardinelli), 193–94 frontline empowerment plan, 210 funnel analysis, 117 G Galbraith, John Kenneth, 35–36 Galilee Basin, 158 Gama, Siyabonga, 227–28, 230 gambling, 18, 129, 209–11, 213 Gap stores, 15 Garbus, Martin, 82 Gardner, Nora, 30–31, 86, 88 Gary, Elbert “Judge,” 3–4 Gary, Indiana, 1–5, 8 Gary Works, 5 Gasdia, Russell, 141 Gattis, Evan, 215 Gawande, Atul, 147 Gazprom, 163, 257 Geiser, Nell, 49 Geithner, Tim, 188 GEM industries, 167 General Electric (GE), 40, 176–77, 208, 226, 260 General Motors (GM), 32–33, 37, 95, 98, 174, 176, 184, 260 General Services Administration (GSA), 70–71 gene therapies, 68 genocide, 100, 105 Georgetown University, 85, 106 Germany, 113, 117–18 Gerstner, Lou, 18, 117 Ghatak, Arnab, 131, 135, 141, 143, 146–47 Giridharadas, Anand, 26, 49–50, 154 Giuliani, Rudy, 136 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 174 global health treaty, 118 globalization, 39, 41, 43, 50, 117–18, 147, 189 GoFundMe, 6 gold, 162, 224 Goldman Sachs, 19–20, 31, 172–73, 175, 242 Gomes, Yan, 217 Gonzalez, Guillermo, 189 Good Morning America (TV show), 68 Goodson, Bianca, 223, 234 Goodwin, Mike, 11 Google, 19, 21, 79–80 Gordian, Maria, 137, 142 Gore, Al, 156 Gorman, James P., 18, 175 Gottleib, Scott, 144 Government Accountability Office (GAO), 188 Goza, Dr.


pages: 172 words: 54,066

The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive by Dean Baker

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, business cycle, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, corporate governance, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Doha Development Round, financial innovation, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, medical residency, patent troll, pets.com, pirate software, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Silicon Valley, too big to fail, transaction costs

The potential for extending homeownership to more moderate-income families was an afterthought added for public relations. Remarkably, as the housing bubble was growing ever larger and the quality of mortgages continued to deteriorate, the government responded by loosening regulation. There had been several important moves toward deregulation in the Clinton years, most importantly the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which allowed for the merger of investment banks and commercial banks, and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which restricted the regulation of derivatives. In the same vein, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2004 changed its rules on valuing assets (its “net capital rule”) by allowing investment banks to value assets using their own modeling methods rather than standardized procedures.


pages: 182 words: 53,802

The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Banks by Ann Pettifor

Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , borderless world, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, clean water, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land bank, Leo Hollis, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mobile money, Money creation, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Satyajit Das, savings glut, secular stagnation, The Chicago School, the market place, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, too big to fail

Remember, most licensed banks have their customer deposits – up to a specified limit – guaranteed by the state, so deposits are on the whole, protected. Until recently, commercial banks were prohibited from mixing their lending and deposit (commercial banking) arms with their more speculative investment arms. Then in 1999, President Clinton repealed the US Glass–Steagall Act (1933), on the advice of prominent economists like Professor Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Other finance ministers and central bankers around the world soon followed President Clinton’s example. Commercial bankers in global institutions were then freed up to link their own borrowing (often for speculative purposes) to the government-guaranteed retail deposits held in their banks.


pages: 173 words: 54,729

Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America by Writers For The 99%

Bay Area Rapid Transit, citizen journalism, collective bargaining, Day of the Dead, desegregation, feminist movement, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, independent contractor, intentional community, it's over 9,000, McMansion, microaggression, Mohammed Bouazizi, Occupy movement, Port of Oakland, We are the 99%, young professional

Various messages were at odds with each other: next to Ron Paul-supporting sworn enemies of the Federal Reserve, who were highly visible holding their “End the Fed” signs along the Broadway side of Liberty Plaza, were others who instead maintained that the Federal Reserve certainly needs reform, but should not be abolished. Zuccotti Park is home to both proponents of specific reforms such as reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, as well as revolutionaries calling for the complete overthrow of capitalism, or indeed an anarchistic abolition of all hierarchies in American government and society. As the encampment established itself and evolved in Liberty Plaza, these differences—and eventually, divisions—mapped themselves out on the surface of the square and in the lived experience of those sleeping in the park, particularly after tents began to spring up in late October and early November.


pages: 632 words: 159,454

War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt by Kwasi Kwarteng

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Atahualpa, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, California gold rush, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, income inequality, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, land bank, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, market bubble, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shock, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, quantitative easing, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, War on Poverty, Yom Kippur War

It would remain fixed at this rate of 360 yen to the dollar for twenty-two years, until 1971, and it formed the basis of Japan’s extraordinary export-led economic growth in that period.23 Along with currency reform, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers issued a series of directives establishing new institutions which would shape Japan’s economic development, including the People’s Finance Corporation (established 1949), the Export-Import Bank of Japan (1950) and the Japan Development Bank (1951).24 One significant institutional reform was the revised Securities and Exchange Law which was based on the Glass–Steagall Act in the United States. This law prohibited commercial banks from underwriting securities, except for bonds. The underwriting of shares, which had been dominated by commercial banks before the war, was now taken over by securities firms. In 1949, the Bank of Japan, the Japanese central bank, was reorganized and put under the control of a Policy Board, reflecting the structure and function of the Federal Reserve System of the United States.

., 98 Fort Knox, 4, 213, 219 France challenge to dollar primacy, 209–11 continuation of gold standard, 129–31 credit system, 99–100 Deng Xiaoping visit, 283 departure from gold standard, 132 First World War finance, 99–100 gold reserves, 85, 100, 227 Napoleonic, 48 national debt, 342, 352 overseas investments, 101 and single currency, 275–6 see also French Revolution Francis, King, 11 Franco-Prussian War, 101 Frankfurt Gazette, 101 Frankfurt Stock Exchange, 101 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 90–1 French Revolution, 3, 5–6, 43–50, 54, 109, 135, 192 Friedensburg, Ferdinand, 185 Friedman, Milton, 21, 126–30, 233–5, 241–2, 247, 249, 303–4 Fry, Roger, 82 Fuggers bank, 19–20 Fuld, Richard, 329 full employment, 143, 159–60, 235 Furnese, Sir Henry, 25–7 Gaddafi, Colonel Muammar, 225 Gaitskell, Hugh, 155–6 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 7, 125 Galsworthy, John, 81, 105 Geithner, Tim, 343 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 200 General Motors, 117, 153–4 Genoese bankers, 19–20 George I, King, 35 Germany currency reform, 183–8, 193 dependence on American capital, 119–24, 126 elimination of unemployment, 149 First World War finance, 99–103 gold reserves, 227 and Greek debt crisis, 338, 347–8 hyperinflation, 4, 120 inflation, 101–2, 110 issue of paper money, 98, 100–1 national debt, 352, 355 Nazi Germany, 132–6, 149 overseas investments, 101 post-war, 181–8 rearmament, 134 reunification, 266, 268 and single currency, 274–8, 280, 334 tax policy, 102–3 unconditional surrender, 182 war economy, 135–6 war loans, 100–1 war reparations, 119, 123 Weimar Republic, 120–1 see also East Germany; West Germany Gettysburg Address, 66 Gilbert, Seymour Parker, 122–3 Gilmour, Ian, 243, 245–6 gilts, see government bonds Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 209 Gladstone, William, 7, 93, 148, 234 Gladwell, Malcolm, 74 Glass–Steagall Act, 195 Goebbels, Joseph, 132 gold break with dollar, 214, 218–20, 223, 225 Bretton Woods and dollar link, 140–4, 149–50, 167–70 as commodity, 76, 112–13 global stocks of, 358–9 revaluation of, 223, 225–7 rising price of, 226–7, 238, 320–1, 341 two-tier market in, 212, 227 value of, 53, 130–1, 140, 148, 158, 167, 209, 211–12, 219, 223, 320, 359 gold bloc, 131–2 gold payments, suspension of, 3–4 Gold Pool, 212, 227 gold standard, 2–4 abandonment of, 129–32 de Gaulle and return to, 210–11 establishment of, 52–3, 59–62, 64–5, 234 and European monetary union, 263, 273 return to, 109, 111–15, 118–19, 123, 142–3 suspension of, 92–3, 98 US adoption of, 77–8, 80 ‘Golden Rule’, de Gaulle’s, 211 Goldman Sachs, 164, 329–30 goldsmiths, 25, 357, 359 Goodman, Benny, 304 Goschen, George, 84–5 Gould, Jay, 75–6 government bonds (gilts), 55, 81–4, 90, 313 Greek, 347 and quantitative easing, 342–3 US, 71–3 government debt conversion of, 34, 84 investment in, 37–8, 73 and lessons of Greek crisis, 356 means of reduction, 357–8 government spending and collapse of Keynesian consensus, 241, 244 cuts under Thatcher and Reagan, 242, 244–6, 260–1 and democracy, 2–3, 93, 279 and financial crisis, 339–40, 352–3 monetarist critique of, 233–4 post-war cuts in, 179–80 Graham, Benjamin, 161 Great Contraction, 127 Great Depression, 4, 115, 123–30, 134, 177, 191, 193, 219, 240 Bernanke and, 343 and commodity prices, 127–30 Keynes’s view of, 128–9 monetarist explanation of, 126–9 see also Wall Street, crash of 1929 ‘Great Recession’, 228, 235 Great Society programme, 204–5, 212–13, 215, 234, 249, 323–4 Greece austerity, 343, 345, 348 debt crisis, 334–9, 345–8, 356 general election, 345–6 and single currency, 280–1, 335–7 tax evasion, 335–6 greenbacks, 71–2, 74, 76 Greenspan, Alan, 250, 258–9, 297, 343 and financial crisis, 301–4, 307–10, 312–14, 322, 326–7, 339–42, 352 Gregory, Judd, 309 Grenville, George, 39–40 Grey, Sir Edward, 107 Groener, General, 100 Guardian, 245, 351 Gulf states, 224–5, 231 Guterres, António, 277 Gutfreund, John, 339 Gutt, Camille, 150 Guy, Thomas, 36 Habsburg imperialism, 18–19 Haldeman, H.


pages: 549 words: 147,112

The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual-The Biggest Bank Failure in American History by Kirsten Grind

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, big-box store, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, financial engineering, fixed income, fulfillment center, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, junk bonds, low interest rates, Maui Hawaii, money market fund, mortgage debt, naked short selling, NetJets, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Shoshana Zuboff, Skype, too big to fail, Y2K

Not only was the giant investment bank buying securities and loans from WaMu; it was also helping to package some of the bank’s securities (about 6.5 percent of WaMu’s total issuance between 2004 and 2008). Later, Goldman provided investment banking advice. Historically, investment banks were supposed to help advise companies on mergers and acquisitions, or help them find new capital. But that relationship had grown tenuous, in part because of the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. Before it was repealed, the act limited the conflicts of interest at banks because it prevented them from running too many types of businesses. WaMu executives harbored suspicion that Goldman was taking advantage of the bank. “I don’t trust Goldy on this,” Killinger later wrote in an e-mail, debating whether to hire the investment bank as an adviser.

., 84 Flores, Jose, 72 Forbes magazine, 88, 329 foreclosures decline of housing prices and, 153 increase in, 152, 170, 185 Long Beach Mortgage reputation and, 176 moratorium on, 332 off-loading of risky loans and, 157, 158 Pepper’s concerns about, 134 and problems associated with subprime mortgages, 77 See also type of mortgage or loan Fortune magazine, 44, 90, 91, 102 Foster Pepper & Riviera, 10, 10n, 16, 22, 182 Fragoso, Luis, 145, 146n Frank, Steve, 163–64, 166, 192–93, 202, 239, 252, 254, 255, 257, 269, 295–96 Franklin, Ben, 274 fraud Cathcart and, 151 at Community Fulfillment Centers, 144–45, 144n, 166 decline in housing prices and, 154 at Downey and Montebello offices, 166 increase in, 260 Killinger’s congressional testimony about, 331 Long Beach Mortgage and, 71–73, 76, 93, 154, 166 Rotella’s congressional testimony about, 144n subprime loans/mortgages and, 71–73, 76, 164 underwriting guidelines and, 137 WaMu board reactions to findings about, 164 Warehouse Lending Division and, 130–31 Frazier, Raymond, 212 Freddie Mac, 64, 120–21, 130, 187, 248, 254, 257, 261, 285 free checking, 54, 85, 106, 325 Freedom of Information Act, 316 Freilinger, Peter, 210–11, 286 Friedlander, Lindy, 19, 38 “Friend of the Family,” WaMu, 24–25, 25n, 60 Frontier Bank, 38 Frost, Robert, 216 Fuld, Dick, 174, 265 Funaro, Steve, 226–27 Gaspard, Scott, 284 Gates, Bill, 46, 328 Geithner, Tim, 219, 269 General Electric, 96 Glass-Steagall Act, 121 Glaze, Iris, 176–78, 187, 206, 268, 307, 322–23 “Go It Alone” proposal, 294 Golden West Financial, 119, 120n, 138, 139, 265 Goldman Sachs as advisor to WaMu, 3, 121, 228, 269, 271, 283, 288 bank holding company filing of, 288 bundling of mortgage-backed securities by, 120, 121, 157 as buyer of WaMu securities and loans, 121, 157 compensation for board members of, 164 Countrywide Financial and, 121 criminal investigation of trader at, 333 Great Western acquisition and, 32, 33, 40, 42 Killinger’s views about, 121 Long Beach Mortgage and, 121, 131, 157 Golon, Tom, 196–97, 197n good bank/bad bank scenario, 228 Great Depression bank failures during, 13–14 FDIC founding during, 219 2008 events compared with, 185, 191, 199, 209, 211–12 WaMu during, 134, 211–12 WaMu as survivor of, 6 Great Western Savings and Loan Bank, 32, 33, 40–48, 49, 51, 58, 60, 61, 183 Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, 84 Greenspan, Alan, 119, 119n, 174 H&R Block, 153 Hamm, Charles, 255 Hawaii: WaMu promise to developers in, 12, 134 hedge funds, 167, 173 hedging, 17, 101–2, 104, 121–22 Henderson, Nevada: FDIC seizure of WaMu in, 302 high-margin products, 150, 151 See also “higher-risk lending strategy,” WaMu “higher-risk lending strategy,” WaMu, 122–24, 133, 135, 150, 151, 164, 166, 179, 180, 224, 262, 330–31 home equity loans compensation and, 128 delinquencies and, 171 fraud and, 260 as high-margin product, 150 at JPM, 325 JPM-WaMu merger proposal and, 235 Killinger’s views about, 122, 137–38, 241 lack of documentation for, 126 Longbrake’s warnings about housing and, 162 McMurray’s report about, 187 off-loading of, 158 plans to save WaMu and, 228 Rotella and, 331 underwriting guidelines and, 126 WaMu assets and, 232 Home Loans Group, WaMu appraisal issue and, 180, 181n Cathcart and, 151, 201 Chapman (Craig) as head of, 101 Chapman-Killinger relationship and, 181 Chapman’s (Fay) concerns about housing market and, 179, 179n commitment to sale of high risk loans by, 158–59 compensation for loan consultants and, 128–29 Dark Side nickname of, 111 Davis as head of, 67–68, 69, 101, 111 Downey Community Fulfillment Center and, 143 expansion of, 93 Feltgren as risk officer with, 150–51 five emissaries–Killinger discussion about, 204–5 goal of, 68 guidelines for, 125–26, 151, 167, 192 hidden problems in, 110 “higher-risk lending strategy” and, 122 increase in volume of home loans and, 111 influence on Killinger of, 67 Jenne’s homeowner delinquency video and, 172 Jenne’s meeting with, 167–68 Jenne’s Option ARMs assignment and, 112–13 Killinger’s apologies to stockholders concerning, 102 lack of leadership in, 101 Long Beach Mortgage and, 75–76, 167 naming of, 67n off-loading of risky loans and, 158 Option ARMs and, 112–18, 186, 196 Optis software program and, 100–101 OTS concerns about, 223–24 power and influence of, 96, 97 “The Power of Yes” campaign and, 68–69, 125 President’s Club and, 68–69, 140 Rotella and, 109–10, 128, 137, 180, 192, 255 run on WaMu and, 213 shareholder relations and, 186 tracking of complex data by, 165 “2007 Product Strategy” report of, 158–59, 160 Vanasek and, 123 volume of mortgages and, 100 Home Savings of America.


pages: 586 words: 159,901

Wall Street: How It Works And for Whom by Doug Henwood

accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bond market vigilante , book value, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Carl Icahn, central bank independence, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, disinformation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, equity premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental subject, facts on the ground, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Irwin Jacobs, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, kremlinology, labor-force participation, late capitalism, law of one price, liberal capitalism, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, London Interbank Offered Rate, long and variable lags, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, microcredit, minimum wage unemployment, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, pension reform, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Post-Keynesian economics, price mechanism, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, proprietary trading, publication bias, Ralph Nader, random walk, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, selection bias, shareholder value, short selling, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, stock buybacks, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Predators' Ball, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, women in the workforce, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

In another irony for the antistatist Greenspan — who, by the way, has never repudiated Rand and who attended her funeral — also presided over the INSTRUMENTS great state bailout of the U.S. financial system that ran from roughly 1989-93- Other Greenspan contributions to the Randian collection in which his 1966 essay is reprinted include an attack on antitrust and consumer protection laws. Players Despite years of deregulation, mergers, internationalization, and other transformations, U.S. finance still bears traces of New Deal strictures and an ancient hatred of monopolistic big city finance. To 1933's Glass-Steagall Act we owe the distinction between investment and commercial banking. Commercial banks were forbidden to play in the stock market and similarly racy arenas; they were to use their depositors' money mainly to make business loans. Glass-Steagall also affirmed long-standing restrictions on bank branching, regulations that sprang from American suspicions of a centralizing money trust.

Germain Act of 1983, 87 General Motors, Jensen's estimate of overstaff- ing, 299 geography, investment clusters, 111-112 Germany, 8 Bundesbank, 307 financial structure and investment, 174 wealth tax, 3l6 Gertler, Mark, 152 Gesell, Silvio, 208, 214 Gilder. George, 2 Gingrich, Newt, 98 Gini index, 115 Glass-Steagall Act, 56 Glenn, R. Hubbard, 154 globalization, 4, 14, 106-114, 290 critique of, not progressive, 302-303 flows into U.S.. 1980s, 109 dismal returns from, 117 foreign assets (chart), 108 historical patterns, 106-107 ancientness of, 113 MNCs and financial markets, 112-113 portfolio vs. direct investment, 109 public sector role, 23 U.S.


pages: 507 words: 145,878

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the JunkBond Raiders by Connie Bruck

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Alvin Toffler, Bear Stearns, book value, Carl Icahn, corporate raider, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, financial independence, fixed income, Future Shock, Glass-Steagall Act, Irwin Jacobs, junk bonds, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, offshore financial centre, Oscar Wyatt, paper trading, profit maximization, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Predators' Ball, yield management, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond

The two firms epitomized the elite in investment banking, though Drexel was overshadowed—as was every firm and every financier—by the legendary J. P. Morgan, so formidable that he is credited with saving the United States Treasury from collapse in 1895 and averting a Wall Street panic in 1907. With the passage in 1934 of the Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated the separation of investment-banking activities from commercial banking, J. P. Morgan and Company and Drexel and Company became entirely separate organizations. The Morgan firm opted for commercial banking and is now known as Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. Drexel stayed in investment banking.

.), 206, 323 Gebauer, Antonio, 254–55 Gelson’s (Encino supermarket), 53 Geneen, Harold, 194–95, 220, 239 General Electric, 256 General Felt Industries, 79 General Foods, 48, 221 General Motors, 94, 96 Gentry, Grant, 202–3, 220 Germaine Monteil, 234 Getty, Ann, 236 Getty Oil, 164 Giant (movie), 271 Gibson Greetings deal, 99 Gillette Company, 234, 333 Gittis, Howard, 197, 202, 212, 214–215, 224, 232, 237 Glaser, Donald, 128–29 Glass-Steagall Act (1934), 26 Gleacher, Eric, 101, 208–9, 217 GLJ (Milken investment partnership), 81, 82 Gluck, Henry, 308 Glucksman, Lewis, 48 Gobhai, Cavas, 62–66, 100–101, 149, 163, 176, 245, 296, 299, 344 Goldberg, Arthur, 112–14, 118 Golden Nugget, 17, 58–60, 83, 168 Golding, Faith, 196, 198, 201, 202 Golding Family, 198 Goldman Sachs, 26, 30, 42, 49, 65, 69, 152, 248, 251, 252, 253, 318, 334, 335 earnings of, 247 in financial scandals, 254–55 mergers and acquisitions and, 95, 98, 200, 206, 231 Goldsmith, Jerry, 152, 153 Goldsmith, Sir James, 14, 17, 149, 205 Good, Daniel, 128, 140 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 251, 334 Goren, Alexander, 113, 160–61 Grant, James, 266–68 Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, 266 Great American, 36 Great American Management and Investment (GAMI), 305 great ideas, as “born bad,” 63 Great Lakes International, 118 Greenhill, Robert, 210, 220 greenmail, 18, 109, 118, 257, 263–264, 291 Icahn’s use of, 18, 109, 156, 157, 161–64, 169, 173–74 use of term, 155–56 Green Tree Acceptance, 290–91, 292, 326 Groupe Bruxelles Lambert S.A.


pages: 543 words: 147,357

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society by Will Hutton

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, centre right, choice architecture, cloud computing, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, debt deflation, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, discovery of the americas, discrete time, disinformation, diversification, double helix, Edward Glaeser, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, full employment, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Dyson, James Watt: steam engine, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, language acquisition, Large Hadron Collider, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, moral panic, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Neil Kinnock, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, plutocrats, power law, price discrimination, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, tail risk, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, too big to fail, unpaid internship, value at risk, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, work culture , working poor, world market for maybe five computers, zero-sum game, éminence grise

The cartel of stockbrokers and jobbers running the London Stock Exchange with fixed commissions and de facto bans on new entrants was indefensible as the controls came tumbling down, but the scrapping of the old system in the famous Big Bang of 1986 had huge side-effects. American banks were suddenly allowed to do in London what they had been prohibited from doing in New York under the provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act – an integral part of New Deal banking control. Under its provisions, commercial banks could not deal in securities, underwrite or lend against them as collateral. For decades, all of this was the preserve of investment banks and broker dealers. The idea was to make it impossible for a stock market crash to spread to the US commercial banking sector, something that had happened with catastrophic effects in 1929.

., 17, 36, 135, 177 Cabinet Office, 218–19, 336, 337 Cable, Vincent, 220 Cambridge University, 9, 363 Cameron, David, 20, 179, 233–4, 235, 318, 338, 342; ‘Big Society’ policy, 19–20, 234, 271, 280 Campbell, Alastair, 141, 142, 224, 312 Canada, 121, 354, 358–9, 383 capital controls, abolition of, 32, 161 capitalism: see also entrepreneurs; innovation; amorality of, 16–19; ‘arms race’ effects, 105; boom and bust cycle, 181–7, 392; deregulation (from 1970s), 159–63, 388; fairness and, ix, x, 23–7, 41, 106, 122–3, 206–7, 210, 249, 385, 386, 394; as immutable force of nature, ix, 23, 40–2; incumbent firms, 29–30, 31, 105, 106, 110, 111–12, 253–5, 257, 297; interconnectedness of markets, 200–2, 204; knowledge-entrepreneurship dynamic, 27–8, 31, 103, 110–11, 112–13; liquidity as totemic, 199, 200, 202, 240, 243; need for ‘circuit breakers’, 197, 199, 202, 203; network theory and, 199–204, 206; required reforms of, 205–9, 215–16; stakeholder, x, 148–9; undue influence of, 32–3 Carlaw, Kenneth, 108, 263 Carnegie, Andrew, 195, 303 cars, motor, 91, 108, 109, 134, 269 Castells, Manuel, 317 Cayne, Jimmy, 173–4 CCTV cameras, 10 celebrity culture, 282, 314 central banks, 154, 157, 158, 160, 182, 185, 187, 208; see also Bank of England; Federal Reserve, 169–70, 176, 177, 183 Cerberus Capital Management, 177 Cervantes, Miguel de, 274 Channel 4, 330, 350 Charles I, King of England, 124–5 Charter One Financial, 150 chavs, mockery of, 25, 83, 272, 286–8 child poverty, 12, 21, 74–5, 83, 278, 279, 288–90, 291 China, x, 101, 112, 140, 144, 160, 226, 230, 354–5, 385; consumption levels, 375–6, 379, 380, 381; economic conflict with USA, 376–7, 378–80, 381, 382, 383; export led growth, 36, 169, 208, 226, 355–6, 375–7, 379–81, 382–3; rigged exchange rates, 36, 169, 355, 377, 378–9; surpluses of capital and, 149, 154, 169, 171, 208, 226, 375; unfairness of world system and, 383, 385 Christianity, 53, 54, 352, 353 Church of England, 128 Churchill, Winston, 138, 273, 313 Churchill Insurance, 150 Cisco, 253 Citigroup, 152, 158, 172, 177, 184, 202, 203, 242, 247 city academies, 278, 307 City of London, 34, 137, 138, 178–9, 252, 359; as incumbent elite, 14, 26, 31, 32–3, 210, 249, 355; in late nineteenth-century, 128–30; light-touch regulation of, 5, 32, 138, 145, 146–7, 151, 162, 187, 198–9; New Labour and, x–xi, 5, 19, 22, 142, 144–5, 355; remuneration levels see pay of executives and bankers civic engagement, 86, 313 civil service, 13, 221, 273, 312, 343 Clasper, Mike, 178 Clayton Act (USA, 1914), 133 Clegg, Nick, 22, 218, 318, 327–8, 342, 391 Clifton, Pete, 321 Clinton, Bill, 140, 177, 183 coalition government (from May 2010), 14, 20, 22, 37, 307, 311, 343, 346, 390–2; abolition of child trust fund, 302; capital spending cuts, 370–1; deficit reduction programme, xi, 19, 34, 214, 227, 357, 360–1, 364, 369–71, 373, 390–2; emergency budget (June 2010), 369–70; market fundamentalism and, 370; political reform commitment, 35, 341, 343–4, 346, 350, 390, 391; proposed financial reforms, 208, 209, 245, 252, 371; repudiation of Keynesian economics, xi, 390–1 Cohan, William, 158–9 Cohen, Ronald, 12, 245 collapse/crash of financial system, x, xi, 4, 9, 41, 144, 146, 152–4, 158–9, 168; costs of, 7, 19, 138, 152–3, 172, 214–15; errors responsible for, 136, 187–96, 197–204; global interconnectedness, 375, 382–3; lessening of internationalism following, 376–83; need to learn from/understand, 36–7; predictions/warnings of, 148, 153, 180, 182–5; recommended policy responses, 215–16; results of previous credit crunches, 358, 359–60, 361–2 collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), 155, 167–8, 174 colonialism, 109, 124 Commodity Future Trading Commission, 182–3 communism, collapse of in Eastern Europe, 16, 19, 135, 140, 163 competition, 29, 30, 33, 51, 156, 185, 186, 207–8, 251; see also ‘open-access societies’; City of London and, 160, 178, 179, 198–9; deregulated banking and, 160, 161, 163, 164, 178, 179, 181; European Union and, 251, 258, 259; fairness and, 89–90, 99, 272; incumbent elites/oligarchs and, 104, 114, 129–30, 131–4, 257; innovation and, 40, 114, 257–60; national authorities/regimes, 201–2, 257–60, 316, 318; state facilitation of, 31 Competition Commission, 257–8 computer games, 233 Confederation of British Industry (CBI), 4, 6–7 Conservative Party, xi, 5, 11, 14, 97–8, 220, 343, 378; broken Britain claims, 16, 227, 271; budget deficit and, 19, 224, 357, 360–1, 368, 379; City/private sector funding of, 179, 257, 344; decline of class-based politics, 341; deregulation and, 32, 160, 161; fairness and, 83, 302, 374, 390; general election (1992) and, 140–1; general election (2010) and, 20, 97, 227, 234, 271, 357, 374, 379, 390; Conservative Party – continued government policies (1979-97), 32, 81, 275–6, 290; inheritance/wealth taxes and, 74, 302–3; market fundamentalism and, 5, 17, 138, 147, 160, 161; poverty and, 21, 279; reduced/small state policy, 20, 22, 233–4, 235 construction industry, 5, 33, 268 consumer goods, types of, 266–7 Continental Illinois collapse, 152, 162 Convention on Modern Liberty, 340 Cook, Robin, 142 Cootner, Paul, 194–5 Copenhagen climate change talks (2009), 226, 231, 385 Corporate Leadership Council, US, 93 Corzine, Jon, 177 county markets, pre-twentieth-century, 90 Coutts, Ken, 363 Cowell, Simon, 314, 315 ‘creative destruction’ process, 111, 112, 134 creative industries, 11, 71, 355 credit cards, 64, 354 credit crunch: see collapse/crash of financial system credit default swaps, 151, 152, 166–8, 170, 171, 175, 176, 191, 203, 207 Crédit Lyonnais collapse, 152 credit-rating agencies, 151, 165, 175, 196, 197, 248, 269, 362, 388; funding of, 151, 196, 207 criminal activity/allegations, 7, 101, 103, 104–5, 138, 167–8 Crosby, James, 178 Cuba, 61 culture, British, 12, 187, 282, 314 Dacre, Paul, 324, 326, 329 Daily Mail, 218, 286, 288, 315, 324, 325–7, 339, 342 Daily Telegraph, 288, 317, 319, 327 Darling, Alistair, 149, 204, 252 Darwin, Charles, 31 Data Monitor, 186 Davies, Howard, 198 Davies, Nick, Flat Earth News, 319, 321, 323–4, 326, 331–2 de Gaulle, Charles, 65 debt, 33, 155, 209, 351–63; corporate/commercial, 8, 29, 181, 245, 248, 352, 354, 359, 363, 374; moral attitudes towards, 351–4, 357, 360–1; necessity of, 155, 351, 353, 354; private, 5, 186, 187, 210, 226, 279–80, 354–7, 359, 363, 373; public, 9, 34, 164, 166, 167, 182, 203, 214, 224–6, 356–7, 362–3, 375, 388, 393; sustainable level of, 356–7, 368–9 Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 265 defence and armed forces, 34, 372 deficit, public, 4, 34, 213, 224–6, 335, 364–74; coalition’s reduction programme, xi, 19, 34, 214, 227, 357, 360–1, 364, 369–71, 373, 390–2, 393; need for fiscal policy, 224–5, 226, 357–8, 364, 365–9, 370, 374; speed of reduction of, 213, 224–5, 360–1, 368, 371 Delingpole, James, 287 Delong, Brad, 27, 106 democracy, 13–15, 235, 310–16, 333–48; centralisation of power and, 14–15, 35, 217, 313, 334, 337, 342; fair process and, 86, 89, 96–9; incumbent elites and, 35, 99; industrial revolution and, 128; media undermining of, 315–16, 317–18, 321–9, 333, 350; ‘open-access societies’ and, 136, 314 Democratic Party, US, 18, 140, 183, 379 Demos, 289 Deng Xiao Ping, 140 Denham, John, 21 deprivation and disadvantage, 10, 34, 288–93, 307–8, 393; low-earning households, 11–12, 13, 291, 361; weight of babies and, 13; young children and, 74–5, 83, 288–90 derivatives, 140, 145, 150–1, 164–8, 171, 175, 188, 207, 209; City of London and, 32, 137, 150–1, 157, 199; mathematical models (‘quants’) and, 188, 191; regulation and, 183, 197–8, 199 desert, due, concept of, 4, 24, 38–43, 45–7, 50–63, 64–8, 73–7, 80–2, 223, 395; see also effort, discretionary; proportionality; big finance and, 40–2, 82, 167, 174, 176, 210; debt and, 351–2; diplomacy/international relations and, 385–6; Enlightenment notions of, 53–6, 58–9, 112; luck and, 70, 73–7, 273; poverty relief systems and, 80–2, 277–8; productive entrepreneurship and, 102–3, 105–6, 112, 222, 392–3; taxation and, 40, 220, 266 Deutsche Bank, 170 developing countries, 71–2, 160, 354–5, 375, 376, 385 Diamond, Bob, 24 Dickens, Charles, 353 digitalisation, 34, 231, 320, 349, 350 Doepke, Matthias, 115–16 dot.com bubble, 9, 193 Drugs Advisory Panel, 11 Duffy, Gillian, 394 Durham University, 263 Dworkin, Ronald, 70 Dyson, James, 28, 33 East India Company, 130 Easyjet, 28, 233 eBay, 136 economic theory, 43–4, 188–9, 366; see also Keynesian economics; market fundamentalism economies of scale, 130–1, 254–5, 258 The Economist, 326, 330, 349 economy, British: see also capitalism; financial system, British; annual consumption levels, 375; balance of payments, 363–4; as ‘big firm’ economy, 254; change in landscape of trading partners, 230–1; coalition capital spending cuts, 370–1; collapse of tax base, 224, 368; cumulative loss of output caused by crash, 138, 153, 172, 214–15; desired level of state involvement, 234–5; domination of market fundamentalism, 16–17; economic boom, 3–4, 5–6, 12, 143, 173, 181–7, 244–5; fall in volatility, 365; fiscal deficit, 368; fiscal policy, 208, 224–5, 226, 357–8, 364–9, 370, 374; growth and, 9–10, 214–15, 218–19, 224, 359, 363; inefficient public spending, 335; investment in ‘intangibles’, 232–3; in late nineteenth-century, 128–30; ‘leading-edge’ sectors, 218–19; need for engaged long term ownership, 240–4, 249–51; as non-saver, 36, 354; potential new markets/opportunities, 231–3; public-private sector interdependence and, 219–22, 229–30, 261, 265–6, 391, 392; required reforms of, 20, 239–44, 249–52, 264–6, 371–4 see also national ecosystem of innovation; ‘specialising sectors’, 219; urgent need for reform, 36–7; volatility of, 297–8; vulnerability of after credit crunch, 358–64 economy, world: acute shortfall of demand, 375–6; Asian and/or OPEC capital surpluses and, 149, 153–4, 169, 171, 208, 226, 354, 375; conflicts of interest and, 137, 138; deregulation (from 1970s), 159–63; emerging powers’ attitudes to, 226; entrenched elites and, 137–8, 210; fall in volatility, 365; international institutions as unfair, 383, 385; London/New York axis, 149, 150–1, 157–8, 160, 187, 202; need for international cooperation, 357–8, 379–80, 381–3, 384, 385–6; post-crunch deleverage pressures, 359–60, 374–5; protectionism dangers, 36, 358, 376–7, 378, 379, 382, 386; savers/non-savers imbalance, 36, 169, 208, 222, 355, 356, 375–6, 378–83; shift of wealth from West to East, 36, 383–4; sovereign debt crises, 167, 203, 214; unheeded warnings, 182–5; wrecking of European ERM, 140, 144 Edinburgh University, 145 education, 10, 20–1, 128, 131, 272–4, 276, 278, 292–5, 304–8, 343; Building Schools for the Future programme, 371; cognitive and mental skills, 288–90, 304–6; private, 13, 114, 264–5, 272–3, 276, 283–4, 293–5, 304, 306 effort, discretionary, 50, 53, 54–5, 58–60, 80, 90–1, 114, 134; see also desert, due, concept of; fair process and, 91–4; indispensability and, 65–7; innovation and invention, 62, 65, 102–3, 105–6, 112, 117, 131, 223, 262–3, 392–3; luck and, 26–7, 65, 67, 70, 71, 73–4, 75–7; productive/unproductive, 43, 46–7, 51–2, 62, 64–5, 102–3, 392–3; proportionate reward for, 26, 39–40, 44, 47, 61, 74, 76–7, 84, 122, 272, 273, 2 84 egalitarianism, 27, 53–4, 55–6, 61, 75, 78–80, 144, 341, 343; Enlightenment equal worth concept, 53, 55, 59–60 Ehrenfeld, Rachel, 333 Eisman, Steve, 207 electoral politics: see also general election (6 May 2010); general elections, 97, 138, 277, 315; fair process and, 96–9; franchise, 128; general election (1992), x, 138, 140–1, 144, 148, 277; general election (1997), x, 138, 141 electricity, 134, 228, 256 electronic trading, 105 elites, incumbent, 23, 31–3, 99, 131; City of London, 14, 26, 31, 32–3, 210, 249, 355; competition and, 104, 113, 114, 129–30, 131–4, 257; democracy and, 35, 99; Enlightenment and, 122; history of (from 1880s), 131–4; history of in Britain (to 1900), 124–30; innovation and, 29–30, 110, 111–12, 113, 114, 115, 116; modern big finance and, 135, 137–8, 180, 210, 387–9; in ‘natural states’, 111, 113, 114–15, 116, 123–4, 127; New Labour’s failure to challenge, x–xi, 14, 22, 388, 389–90; world economy and, 137–8, 210 EMI, 28, 247, 248 employment and unemployment, 6, 75, 291–3, 295, 300, 373, 393; employment insurance concept, 298–9, 301, 374; lifelong learning schemes, 300, 301; lifelong savings plans, 300; unemployment benefit, 81, 281 Engels, Friedrich, 121–2 English language as lingua franca, 124 Enlightenment, European, 22, 30–1, 146, 261, 314–15; economics and, 104, 108–9, 116–17, 121–3; notions of fairness/desert, 53–6, 58–9, 112, 122–3, 394; science and technology and, 31, 108–9, 112–13, 116–17, 121, 126–7 Enron affair, 147 entrepreneurs: see also innovation; productive entrepreneurship; capitalist knowledge dynamic, 27–8, 31, 110–11, 112–13; challenges of the status quo, 29–30; Conservative reforms (1979-97) and, 275; private capital and, 241; public-private sector interdependence and, 219–22, 229–30, 261, 265–6, 391, 392; rent-seeking and, 61–2, 63, 78, 84, 101, 105, 112, 113–14, 116, 129, 135, 180; unproductive, 28–9, 33, 61–2, 63, 78, 84, 101–2, 103–5, 180 environmental issues, 35–6, 71–2, 102, 226, 228, 231, 236, 385, 390, 394; due desert and, 68; German Greens and, 269 Erie Railroad Company, 133 Essex County Council, 325, 332 European Commission, 298 European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), 140, 144, 166 European Union (EU), 11, 82, 179, 379–80, 383–4, 385; British media and, 15, 328, 378; Competition Commissioner, 251, 258, 259; scepticism towards, 15, 36, 328, 377, 378, 386 eurozone, 377 Fabian Society, 302–3 factory system, 126 fairness: see also desert, due, concept of; proportionality; abuse/playing of system and, 24–5, 27; asset fairness proposals, 301–3, 304; behavioural psychology and, 44, 47–50, 59–61; Blair’s conservative view of, 143; Britishness and, 15–16, 392–3, 395; capitalism and, ix, x, 23–7, 41, 106, 122–3, 206–7, 210, 249, 385, 386, 394; challenges to political left, 78–83; coalition government (from May 2010) and, 22, 37; commonly held attitudes, 44, 45–7; deficit reduction and, 226, 227, 374; economic and social determinism and, 56–8; Enlightenment notions of, 53–6, 58–9, 112, 122–3, 394; fair process, 84–94, 96, 98–9, 272; as foundation of morality, 24, 26, 45, 50; individual responsibility and, 39, 78–9; inequality in Britain, 78, 80, 275–6, 277–8, 342; international relations and, 226, 385–6; ‘Just World Delusion’, 83; luck and, 72–7; management-employee relationships, 90–2; models/frameworks of, 43–58; need for shared understanding of, 25, 37, 43; partisanship about, 42–3; politicians/political parties and, 22, 83, 271–2, 302–3, 374, 391–2; popular support for NHS and, 75, 77, 283; pre-Enlightenment notions, 52–3; shared capitalism and, 66, 92–3; state facilitation of, ix–x, 391–2, 394–5; welfare benefits to migrants and, 81–2, 282, 283, 284 Farnborough Sixth Form College, 294 Federal Reserve, 169–70, 176, 177, 183 Fees Act (1891), 128 Fertile Crescent, 106 feudalism, European, 53–4, 74, 104, 105 financial instruments, 103, 148, 157, 167–8 Financial Services and Markets Act (2001), 198 Financial Services Authority (FSA), 24, 147, 162, 178, 198–9, 208 financial system, British: see also capitalism; economy, British; Asian and/or OPEC capital surpluses and, 149, 154, 354; big finance as entrenched elite, 136, 137–8, 176, 178–80, 210, 387–9; declining support for entrepreneurship, 241; deregulation (1971), 161; fees and commissions, 33; importance of liquidity, 240, 243; lack of data on, 241; London/New York axis, 149, 150–1, 157–8, 160, 187, 202; massive growth of, 137, 138, 209, 219; need for tax reform, 209–10; regulation and see regulation; required reforms to companies, 249–50; savings institutions’ share holdings, 240–1; short termism of markets, 241, 242–3; unfairness of, 138, 210 Financial Times, 12, 149, 294, 330, 349, 361 Fink, Stanley, 179 fiscal policy, 208, 224–5, 226, 357–8, 364–9, 374; coalition rejection of, 370 fish stocks, conservation of, 394 Fitch (credit-rating agencies), 248 flexicurity social system, 299–301, 304, 374 Forbes’ annual list, 30 Ford, Henry, 195, 302 foreign exchange markets, 32, 161, 164, 165, 168, 363, 367; China’s rigged exchange rate, 36, 169, 355, 377, 378–9; currency options, 166, 191; eurozone, 377 foreign takeovers of British firms, 8, 388 Fortune magazine, 94 Foster, Sir Christopher, 313 foundation schools, 307 France, 51–2, 123–4, 163, 372, 375, 377 free trade, 163, 334, 379 Frey, Bruno, 60, 86 Friedman, Benjamin, 282–3 Fukuyama, Francis, 140 Fuld, Dick, 192 Future Jobs Fund, 373 G20 countries, 209, 358, 368, 374 Galliano, John, 143 Gardner, Howard, 274, 305–6 gated communities, 13 Gates, Bill, 71 Gates, Bill (Senior), 222 Gaussian distribution, 190–1, 194 ‘gearing’, 6 general election (6 May 2010), 97, 142, 179, 214, 217, 227, 234, 271, 314, 318, 327–8, 334, 378; Gillian Duffy incident, 394; result of, xi, 20, 345–6, 390 ‘generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasicity’ (GARCH), 194 genetically modified crops, 232 Germany, 36, 63, 244, 262, 269, 375–6, 379, 380; export led growth, 355–6, 375, 381–2; Fraunhofer Institutes, 252, 264; Greek bail-out and, 377; pre-1945 period, 128, 129, 134, 382, 383 Gieve, Sir John, 339–40 Gilligan, Andrew, 329 Gladwell, Malcolm, 76–7 Glasgow University, 323 Glass-Steagall Act, 162, 170, 202–3 Glastonbury festival, 143 globalisation, 32, 98, 140, 143, 144, 153–4, 163, 182, 297, 363, 366, 380 Goldman Sachs, 42, 63, 103, 150, 167–8, 174, 176, 177, 205 Goodwin, Sir Fred, 7, 150, 176, 340 Google, 131, 136, 253, 255, 258, 262 Goolsbee, Austin, 52 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 140 Gough, Ian, 79 Gould, Jay, 133 Gould, Philip, 142 government: see also democracy; political system, British; cabinet government, 312, 334, 337; centralisation of power, 14–15, 35, 217, 313, 334, 337, 341, 342; control of news agenda, 14, 224, 313; disregard of House of Commons, 14–15, 223, 339, 345; Number 10 Downing Street as new royal court, 14, 337, 338, 346, 347; press officers/secretaries, 14, 180, 224, 312; Prime Ministerial power, 337, 344, 345, 346 GPS navigation systems, 233, 265 Gray, Elisha, 221 Great Depression, 159, 162, 205, 362 Greece: classical, 25, 26, 38, 39, 44–5, 52–3, 59, 96, 107, 108; crisis and bail-out (2010), 167, 371, 377, 378 Green, Sir Philip, 12, 29, 33 Green Investment Bank, proposed, 252, 371 Greenhead College, Huddersfield, 294 Greenspan, Alan, 145–6, 165, 177, 183, 184, 197–8 Gregory, James, 277 growth, economic: Britain and, 9–10, 214–15, 219, 221, 359, 364; education and, 305–6; export led growth, 36, 169, 208, 226, 355–6, 375–7, 378–83; social investment and, 280–1 GSK, 219, 254 the Guardian, 319, 330, 349 Gupta, Sanjeev, 367 Gutenberg, Johannes, 110–11 Habsburg Empire, 127 Haines, Joe, 312 Haji-Ioannous, Stelios, 28 Haldane, Andrew, 8, 151, 153, 193, 214, 215 the Halifax, 186, 251 Hamilton, Lewis, 64, 65 Hammersmith and Fulham, Borough of, 167 Hampton, Sir Philip, 173 Hands, Guy, 28, 178, 246–8 Hanley, Lynsey, 291, 293, 302 Hanushek, Eric, 305–6 Hart, Betty, 289 Harvard University, 47, 62, 198 Hashimoto administration in Japan, 362 Hastings, Max, 217–18 Hauser, Marc, 47–50 Hawley, Michael, 65–6 Hayward, Tony, 216–17 HBOS, 157, 158, 178, 251 health and well-being, 9, 75, 77, 106, 232, 233, 290–1; see also National Health Service (NHS) Heckman, James, 290 hedge funds, 6, 21, 103, 157–8, 167–8, 172, 203, 205, 206, 240; collapses of, 152, 173–4, 187, 202; as destabilisers, 166–7, 168; destruction of ERM, 140, 144, 166; near collapse of LTCM, 169–70, 183, 193, 200–1 hedging, 164, 165–6 Heinz, Henry John, 302 Hermes fund management company, 242 Herrman, Edwina, 179 Herstatt Bank collapse, 152 Hetherington, Mark, 84 Hewitt, Patricia, 180 Hewlett-Packard, 30 Hills Report on social housing, 290 Hilton, Paris, 304 Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 146 Hirst, Damien, 12 history, economic, 121–36, 166, 285–6, 353–4 Hobhouse, Leonard, 220, 222, 234, 235, 261, 266 Hobsbawm, Eric, 100 Hoffman, Elizabeth, 60 Holland, 113, 124, 230 Honda, 91, 269 Hong Kong, 168 Hopkins, Harry, 300 Horton, Tim, 277 House of Commons, 14–15, 223, 312–13, 337–9, 345 House of Lords, 15, 128, 129, 312, 334, 344, 346–7 housing, social, 10, 289, 290–1, 292, 308–9 housing cost credits, 308–9 HSBC, 181, 251 Huhne, Chris, 346 Hunt family, sale of cattle herds, 201 Hurka, Thomas, 45–6 Hutton, Will, works of, x; The State We’re In, x, 148–9 IBM, 29, 164, 254 Iceland, 7, 138 ICT industry, 9, 29–30, 109, 134, 135–6, 182, 229 immigration, 11, 143, 326, 328, 342, 343, 386, 394; from Eastern Europe, 82, 281–2, 283; welfare state and, 81–2, 281–2, 283, 284 incapacity benefit, 27 the Independent, 93, 330 Independent Safeguarding Authority, 339 India, 144, 226, 230, 254, 354–5 individual responsibility, 17, 38, 39, 78–9 individualism, 54, 57, 66, 111, 221, 281, 341, 366; capitalism/free market theories and, ix, 17, 19, 27, 40, 145, 221, 234–5 Indonesia, 168 Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation (now 3i), 250 industrial revolution, 28, 112, 115, 121–3, 124, 126–8, 130, 315 inflation, 6, 32, 355, 364, 365; targets, 163, 165, 208, 359 Ingham, Bernard, 312 innovation: see also entrepreneurs; national ecosystem of innovation; as collective and social, 40, 131, 219–22, 261, 265–6, 388; comparisons between countries, 67; competition and, 40, 114, 257–60; development times, 240, 243; discretionary effort and, 62, 65, 102–3, 105–6, 131, 222, 392–3; dissemination of knowledge and, 110–11, 112–13, 219–22, 265–6; due desert and, 40, 62, 67, 112, 117; ‘financial innovation’, 63–4, 138, 147, 149, 153–4, 182; general-purpose technologies (GPTs), 107–11, 112, 117, 126–7, 134, 228–9, 256, 261, 384; high taxation as deterrent, 104, 105; history of, 107–17, 121–7, 131–4, 221; increased pace of advance, 228–9, 230, 266–7; incremental, 108, 254, 256; incumbent elites and, 29–30, 104, 106, 109, 111–12, 113, 114, 115, 116, 257; large firms and, 251–2, 254–5; as natural to humans, 106–7, 274; need for network of specialist banks, 251–2, 265, 371; in ‘open-access societies’, 109–13, 114, 116–17, 122–3, 126–7, 131, 136, 315; patents and copyright, 102, 103, 105, 110, 260–1, 263; private enterprise and, 100–1; regulation and, 268–70; risk-taking and, 6, 103, 111, 189; short term investment culture and, 33, 242–3, 244; small firms and, 252, 253–4, 255–6; universities and, 261–5 Innovation Fund, 21, 251, 252 Institute of Fiscal Studies, 275–6, 363, 368–9, 372 Institute of Government, 334, 335, 337, 343 insurance, 165–6, 187, 240, 242 Intel, 255, 256 intellectual property, 260–1 interest rates, 164, 191, 352–3, 354, 357, 359, 360, 361, 362, 367, 380 internal combustion engine, 28, 109, 134 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 9, 152–3, 177–8, 187, 207, 226, 383, 384; Asian currency crisis (1997) and, 168–9; proposed bank levy and financial activities tax, 209; support for fiscal policy, 367 internet, 11, 28, 52, 109, 134, 227, 256, 265; news and politics on, 316–17, 321, 349; pay-walls, 316, 349; as threat to print media, 324, 331, 349 iPods, 105, 143 Iraq War, 14–15, 18, 36, 144, 329 Ireland, 138 iron steamships, 126 Islam, 352, 353 Islamic fundamentalism, 283, 384 Israel, 251, 322–3 Italy, 101, 103, 317, 328 ITN, 330, 331 James, Howell, 180 Japan, 36, 67, 140, 163, 168, 244, 369, 375, 376, 385, 386; credit crunch (1989-92), 359–60, 361–2, 382; debt levels, 356, 362, 363; incumbent elites in early twentieth-century, 134; Tokyo Bay, 254; Top Runner programme, 269 Jenkins, Roger, 296 Jobcentre Plus, 300 Jobs, Steve, 29–30, 65–6, 71 John Lewis Group, 66, 67, 93, 246 Johnson, Boris, 179 Johnson, Simon, 177 Jones, Tom, 242 Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 21, 278–9 journalism, 318–21, 323–4, 326–7 Jovanovic, Boyan, 256 JP Morgan, 169, 191–2, 195–6 judges, 15 justice systems, 30–1, 44–5, 49; symbolised by pair of scales, 4, 40 Kahneman, Daniel, 94–5 Kant, Immanuel, 73, 112, 274 Kay, John, 175 Kennedy, Helena, 340 Keynesian economics, x, xi, 184, 190, 196–7, 354, 362, 390–1 Kindleberger, Charles, 184 King, Mervyn, 213 Kinnock, Neil, 142 kitemarking, need for, 267 Klenow, Peter, 52 Knetsch, Jack, 94–5 Knight, Frank, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), 189, 191, 196–7 knowledge: capitalist advance of, 27–8, 31, 110–11, 112–13; public investment in learning, 28, 31, 40, 131, 220, 235, 261, 265 knowledge economy, 8, 11–12, 34, 135–6, 229–33, 258, 273–4, 341, 366; credit growth and, 355; graduate entry to, 295; large firms and, 251–2, 254–5; small firms and, 252, 253–4, 255–6, 261; state facilitation of, 219–22, 229–30 Koizumi administration in Japan, 362 Koo, Richard, 360, 361–2 Kuper, Simon, 352 Kwak, James, 64, 177 labour market, 52, 62, 83, 95; flexibility, 5, 275, 276, 299, 364–5, 387 laissez-faire ideology, 153, 198–9, 259 Laker, Freddie, 30 Lambert, Richard, 6–7 language acquisition and cognitive development, 288, 289 Large Hadron Collider, 263 Latin American debt crisis, 164 Lavoisier, Antoine, 31 Lazarus, Edmund, 179 Leahy, Sir Terry, 295 Learning and Skills Council, 282, 300 left wing politics, modern, 17, 38, 78–83 Lehman Brothers, 150, 152, 165, 170, 181, 192, 204 lender-of-last-resort function, 155, 158, 160, 187 Lerner, Melvin, 83 leverage, 6, 29, 154–6, 157, 158, 172, 179, 180, 198, 204, 209–10, 254, 363; disguised on balance sheet, 181, 195; effect on of credit crunches, 358, 359, 360, 361, 374–5; excess/massive levels, 7, 147–8, 149, 150–1, 158, 168, 170, 187, 192, 197, 203; need for reform of, 206, 207, 208; private equity and, 245–6, 247 Lewis, Jemima, 282, 287 Lewis, Joe, 12 libel laws, 332–3, 348–9 Liberal Democrats, xi, 11, 98, 141, 343, 360–1, 368; general election (2010) and, 97, 142, 179, 271, 390 libertarianism, 234 Likierman, Sir Andrew, 180 limited liability (introduced 1855), 353–4, 363 Lind, Allan, 85 Lindert, Peter, 280–1 Lipsey, Richard, 108, 263 Lisbon earthquake (1755), 54 Lisbon Treaty Constitution, 328 literacy and numeracy, 20–1 livestock fairs, pre-twentieth-century, 90 Lloyds Bank, 176, 178, 186, 202, 204, 251, 259 Lo, Andrew, 195 loan sharks, illegal, 291 local government, 307, 347–8 Locke, John, 54–5, 59 London School of Economics (LSE), 246 London Stock Exchange, 90, 162 London Underground, financing of, 336, 389 lone parent families, 292 Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), 169–70, 183, 193, 194, 200–1 long-term incentive plans (LTIPs), 6 Loomes, Graham, 59 luck, 23, 26–7, 38, 39, 40, 41, 67, 68, 69–77, 222, 273, 393–4; diplomacy/international relations and, 385–6; disadvantaged children and, 74–5, 83, 288–90; executive pay and, 138; taxation and, 73–4, 75, 78, 303 Luxembourg, 138 MacDonald, Ramsey, 315 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 62 Machin, Steve, 283–4 Macmillan Committee into City (1931), 179 Madoff, Bernie, 7 mafia, Italian, 101, 104–5 Major, John, 138, 180, 279, 334 Malaysia, 168 malls, out-of-town, 143 Mandelbrot, Benoit, 194, 195 Mandelson, Peter, 21, 24, 142, 148, 220 manufacturing sector, decline of, 5, 8, 219, 272, 292, 341, 363 Manza, Jeff, 281, 282 Marconi, 142–3 market fundamentalism, 9–19, 32–3, 40–2, 366; belief in efficiency of markets, 188–9, 190, 193, 194, 235–9, 366; coalition government (from May 2010) and, 370; collapse of, 3–4, 7–9, 19, 20, 219–20, 235, 392; Conservative Party and, 5, 17, 138, 147, 160, 161; domination of, 5–6, 14, 16–17, 163, 364–5, 387–90; likely resurgence of, 5, 8; New Labour and, x–xi, 5, 19, 144–9, 388, 389–90; post-communist fiasco in Russia, 135; rejection of fiscal policy, 224–5, 364–5, 367 mark-to-market accounting convention, 175 Marland, Lord Jonathan, 179 Marquand, David, 328 Marsh, Jodie, 64, 65 Marx, Karl, 56–8, 121–2 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 232, 274–5 mass production, 109, 134, 182 Masters, Blythe, 196 mathematical models (‘quants’), 105, 149, 151, 152, 165, 169, 188, 190–6, 203; extensions and elaborations, 194; Gaussian distribution, 190–1, 194; JP Morgan and, 195–6 Matthewson, Sir George (former chair of RBS), 25 Maude, Francis, 180 Mayhew, Henry, 285–6 McCartney, Paul, 247 McGoldrick, Mark, 174 McKinsey Global Institute, 253, 358–9, 360, 363 McQueen, Alexander, 143 media, mainstream, 6, 35, 312, 315–20, 321–32, 348–50; commoditisation of information, 318–20, 321; communications technology and, 316, 320, 349; domination of state by, 14, 16, 223–4, 338, 339, 343; fanatical anti-Europeanism, 15, 328, 378; foreign/tax exile ownership of, 218; hysterical tabloid campaigns, 10–11, 298, 319–20; ‘info-capitalism’, 317–18, 327, 328, 342; lauding of celebrity, 281, 314; modern 24/7 news agenda, 13, 224, 321, 343; regional newspapers, 331; as setter of agenda/narrative, 327–31, 342; television news, 330–1; undermining of democracy, 315–16, 317–18, 321–9, 333, 350; urgent need for reform, 35, 218, 344, 348–50, 391; view of poverty as deserved, 25, 53, 83, 281, 286; weakness of foreign coverage, 322, 323, 330 Mencken, H.L., 311 mergers and takeovers, 8, 21, 33, 92, 245, 251, 258, 259, 388 Merkel, Angela, 381–2 Merrill Lynch, 150, 170, 175, 192 Merton, Robert, 169, 191 Meucci, Antonnio, 221 Mexico, 30, 385 Meyer, Christopher, 332 Michalek, Richard, 175 Microsoft, 71, 114, 136, 253, 254, 258–9 Milburn, Alan, 273 Miles, David, 186–7 Milgram, Stanley, 200 millennium bug, 319 Miller, David, 70, 76, 77 minimum wage, 142, 278 Minsky, Hyman, 183, 185 Mirror newspapers, 319, 329 Mlodinow, Leonard, 72–3 MMR vaccine, 327 mobile phones, 30, 134, 143, 229, 349 modernity, 54–5, 104 Mokyr, Joel, 112 monarchy, 15, 312, 336 Mondragon, 94 monetary policy, 154, 182, 184, 185, 208, 362, 367 monopolies, 74, 102, 103, 160, 314; history of, 104, 113, 124, 125–6, 130–4; in the media, 30, 317, 318, 331, 350; modern new wave of, 35, 135–6, 137–8, 201–2, 258–9; ‘oligarchs’, 30, 65, 104 Monopolies and Mergers Commission, 258, 318 Moody’s (credit-ratings agency), 151, 175 morality, 16–27, 37, 44–54, 70, 73; see also desert, due, concept of; fairness; proportionality; debt and, 351–4, 357, 360–1 Morgan, JP, 67 Morgan, Piers, 329 Morgan Stanley, 150 Mulas-Granados, Carlos, 367 Murdoch, James, 389 Murdoch, Rupert, 317–18, 320, 327 Murphy, Kevin, 62, 63 Murray, Jim ‘Mad Dog’, 321 Myners, Paul, 340 Nash bargaining solution, 60 National Audit Office, 340 National Child Development Study, 289–90 national ecosystem of innovation, 33–4, 65, 103, 206, 218, 221, 239–44, 255–9, 374; state facilitation of, 102, 219–22, 229–30, 233, 251–2, 258–66, 269–70, 392 National Health Service (NHS), 21, 27, 34, 92, 265, 277, 336, 371–2; popular support for, 75, 77, 283 national insurance system, 81, 277, 302 national strategy for neighbourhood renewal, 278 Navigation Acts, abolition of, 126 Neiman, Susan, 18–19 neo-conservatism, 17–18, 144–9, 387–90 network theory, 199–201, 202–4, 206; Pareto curve and, 201–2 New Economics Foundation, 62 New Industry New Jobs strategy, 21 New Labour: budget deficit and, 224, 335, 360, 368, 369; business friendly/promarket policies, x–xi, 139–40, 142, 145, 146–7, 162, 198–9, 382; City of London and, x–xi, 5, 19, 22, 142–3, 144–5, 355; decline of class-based politics, 341; failure to challenge elites, x–xi, 14, 22, 388, 389–90; general election (1992) and, 138, 140–1, 144, 148, 277; general election (2005) and, 97; general election (2010) and, 20, 271, 334, 374, 378; light-touch regulation and, 138, 145, 146–7, 162, 198–9; New Industry New Jobs strategy, 21; one-off tax on bank bonuses, 26, 179, 249; record in government, 10–11, 19, 20–2, 220, 276–80, 302, 306, 334–6, 366–7, 389–90; reforms to by ‘modernisers’, 141; responses to newspaper campaigns, 11 New York markets, 140, 152, 162; Asian and/or OPEC capital surpluses and, 169, 171, 354; London/New York axis, 149, 150–1, 157–8, 160, 188, 202 Newsweek, 174 Newton, Isaac, 31, 127, 190 NHS Direct, 372 Nicoli, Eric, 13 non-executive directors (NEDs), 249–50 Nordhaus, William, 260 Nordic countries, 262; Iceland, 7, 138; Norway, 281; Sweden, 264, 281 North, Douglas, 113, 116, 129–30 Northern Rock, 9, 156, 157, 158, 186, 187–8, 202, 204, 251, 340–1 Norton Publishing, 93 Nozick, Robert, 234, 235 nuclear non-proliferation, 226, 384, 394 Nussbaum, Martha, 79 Obama, Barack, 18, 183, 380, 382–3, 394–5 the Observer, 141, 294, 327 Office for Budget Responsibility, 360 Office of Fair Trading (OFT), 257, 258 OFSTED, 276 oil production, 322; BP Gulf of Mexico disaster (2010), 216–17, 392; finite stocks and, 230, 384; OPEC, 149, 161, 171; price increase (early 1970s), 161; in USA, 130, 131, 132 Olsen, Ken, 29 Olympics (2012), 114 open markets, 29, 30, 31, 40, 89, 92, 100–1, 366, 377, 379, 382, 384; see also ‘open-access societies’; as determinants of value, 51–2, 62; fairness and, 60–1, 89–91, 94–6; ‘reference prices’ and, 94–6 ‘open-access societies’, 134, 135, 258, 272, 273, 275, 276, 280–1, 394; Britain as ‘open-access society’ (to 1850), 124, 126–7; democracy and, 136, 314; Enlightenment and, 30–1, 314–15, 394; innovation and invention in, 109–13, 114, 116–17, 122–3, 126–7, 131, 136, 315; partial political opening in, 129–30; US New Freedom programme, 132–3 opium production, 102 options, 166, 188, 191 Orange County derivatives losses, 167 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 180, 337, 373 Orwell, George, 37 Osborne, George, 147, 208, 224, 245, 302, 338 Overend, Gurney and Co., 156–7 Oxbridge/top university entry, 293–4, 306 Oxford University, 261 Page, Scott, 204 Paine, Tom, 347 Pareto, Vilfredo, 201–2 Paribas, 152, 187 Parkinson, Lance-Bombardier Ben, 13 participation, political, 35, 86, 96, 99 Paulson, Henry, 177 Paulson, John, 103, 167–8 pay of executives and bankers, 3–4, 5, 6–7, 22, 66–7, 138, 387; bonuses, 6, 25–6, 41, 174–5, 176, 179, 208, 242, 249, 388; high levels/rises of, 6–7, 13, 25, 82–3, 94, 172–6, 216, 296, 387, 393; Peter Mandelson on, 24; post-crash/bail-outs, 176, 216; in private equity houses, 248; remuneration committees, 6, 82, 83, 176; shared capitalism and, 66, 93; spurious justifications for, 42, 78, 82–3, 94, 176, 216 pension, state, 81, 372, 373 pension funds, 240, 242 Pettis, Michael, 379–80 pharmaceutical industry, 219, 255, 263, 265, 267–8 Phelps, Edmund, 275 philanthropy and charitable giving, 13, 25, 280 Philippines, 168 Philippon, Thomas, 172–3 Philips Electronics, Royal, 256 Pimco, 177 piracy, 101–2 Plato, 39, 44 Player, Gary, 76 pluralist state/society, x, 35, 99, 113, 233, 331, 350, 394 Poland, 67, 254 political parties, 13–14, 340, 341, 345, 390; see also under entries for individual parties political system, British: see also democracy; centralised constitution, 14–15, 35, 217, 334; coalitions as a good thing, 345–6; decline of class-based politics, 341; devolving of power to Cardiff and Edinburgh, 15, 334; expenses scandal, 3, 14, 217, 313, 341; history of (to late nineteenth-century), 124–30; lack of departmental coordination, 335, 336, 337; long-term policy making and, 217; monarchy and, 15, 312, 336; politicians’ lack of experience outside politics, 338; required reforms of, 344–8; select committee system, 339–40; settlement (of 1689), 125; sovereignty and, 223, 346, 347, 378; urgent need for reform, 35, 36–7, 218, 344; voter-politician disengagement, 217–18, 310, 311, 313–14, 340 Pommerehne, Werner, 60 population levels, world, 36 Portsmouth Football Club, 352 Portugal, 108, 109, 121, 377 poverty, 278–9; child development and, 288–90; circumstantial causes of, 26, 283–4; Conservative Party and, 279; ‘deserving’/’undeserving’ poor, 276, 277–8, 280, 284, 297, 301; Enlightenment views on, 53, 55–6; need for asset ownership, 301–3, 304; political left and, 78–83; the poor viewed as a race apart, 285–7; as relative not absolute, 55, 84; Adam Smith on, 55, 84; structure of market economy and, 78–9, 83; view that the poor deserve to be poor, 25, 52–3, 80, 83, 281, 285–8, 297, 301, 387; worldwide, 383, 384 Power2010 website, 340–1 PR companies and media, 322, 323 Press Complaints Commission (PCC), 325, 327, 331–2, 348 preventative medicine, 371 Price, Lance, 328, 340 Price, Mark, 93 Prince, Chuck, 184 printing press, 109, 110–11 prisoners, early release of, 11 private-equity firms, 6, 28–9, 158, 172, 177, 179, 205, 244–9, 374 Procter & Gamble, 167, 255 productive entrepreneurship, 6, 22–3, 28, 29–30, 33, 61–2, 63, 78, 84, 136, 298; in British history (to 1850), 28, 124, 126–7, 129; due desert/fairness and, 102–3, 105–6, 112, 223, 272, 393; general-purpose technologies (GPTs) and, 107–11, 112, 117, 126–7, 134, 228–9, 256, 261, 384 property market: baby boomer generation and, 372–3; Barker Review, 185; boom in, 5, 143, 161, 183–4, 185–7, 221; bust (1989-91), 161, 163; buy-to-let market, 186; commercial property, 7, 356, 359, 363; demutualisation of building societies, 156, 186; deregulation (1971) and, 161; Japanese crunch (1989-92) and, 361–2; need for tax on profits from home ownership, 308–9, 373–4; property as national obsession, 187; residential mortgages, 7, 183–4, 186, 356, 359, 363; securitised loans based mortgages, 171, 186, 188; shadow banking system and, 171, 172; ‘subprime’ mortgages, 64, 152, 161, 186, 203 proportionality, 4, 24, 26, 35, 38, 39–40, 44–6, 51, 84, 218; see also desert, due, concept of; contributory/discretionary benefits and, 63; diplomacy/ international relations and, 385–6; job seeker’s allowance as transgression of, 81; left wing politics and, 80; luck and, 73–7, 273; policy responses to crash and, 215–16; poverty relief systems and, 80–1; profit and, 40, 388; types of entrepreneurship and, 61–2, 63 protectionism, 36, 358, 376–7, 378, 379, 382, 386 Prussia, 128 Public Accounts Committee, 340 Purnell, James, 338 quantitative easing, 176 Quayle, Dan, 177 race, disadvantage and, 290 railways, 9, 28, 105, 109–10, 126 Rand, Ayn, 145, 234 Rawls, John, 57, 58, 63, 73, 78 Reagan, Ronald, 135, 163 recession, xi, 3, 8, 9, 138, 153, 210, 223, 335; of 1979-81 period, 161; efficacy of fiscal policy, 367–8; VAT decrease (2009) and, 366–7 reciprocity, 43, 45, 82, 86, 90, 143, 271, 304, 382; see also desert, due, concept of; proportionality Reckitt Benckiser, 82–3 Regional Development Agencies, 21 regulation: see also Bank of England; Financial Services Authority (FSA); Bank of International Settlements (BIS), 169, 182; Basel system, 158, 160, 163, 169, 170–1, 196, 385; big as beautiful in global banking, 201–2; Big Bang (1986), 90, 162; by-passing of, 137, 187; capital requirements/ratios, 162–3, 170–1, 208; dismantling of post-war system, 149, 158, 159–63; economists’ doubts over deregulation, 163; example of China, 160; failure to prevent crash, 154, 197, 198–9; Glass-Steagall abolition (1999), 170, 202–3; light-touch, 5, 32, 138, 151, 162, 198–9; New Deal rules (1930s), 159, 162; in pharmaceutical industry, 267–8; as pro-business tool, 268–70; proposed Financial Policy Committee, 208; required reforms of, 267, 269–70, 376, 377, 384, 392; reserve requirements scrapped (1979), 208; task of banking authorities, 157; Top Runner programme in Japan, 269 Reinhart, Carmen, 214, 356 Repo 105 technique, 181 Reshef, Ariell, 172–3 Reuters, 322, 331 riches and wealth, 11–13, 272–3, 283–4, 387–8; see also pay of executives and bankers; the rich as deserving of their wealth, 25–6, 52, 278, 296–7 Rickards, James, 194 risk, 149, 158, 165, 298–302, 352–3; credit default swaps and, 151, 152, 166–8, 170, 171, 175, 176, 191, 203, 207; derivatives and see derivatives; distinction between uncertainty and, 189–90, 191, 192–3, 196–7; employment insurance concept, 298–9, 301, 374; management, 165, 170, 171, 189, 191–2, 193–4, 195–6, 202, 203, 210, 354; securitisation and, 32, 147, 165, 169, 171, 186, 188, 196; structured investment vehicles and, 151, 165, 169, 171, 188; value at risk (VaR), 171, 192, 195, 196 Risley, Todd, 289 Ritchie, Andrew, 103 Ritter, Scott, 329 Robinson, Sir Gerry, 295 Rogoff, Ken, 214, 356 rogue states, 36 Rolling Stones, 247 Rolls-Royce, 219, 231 Rome, classical, 45, 74, 108, 116 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 133, 300 Rothermere, Viscount, 327 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 56, 58, 112 Rousseau, Peter, 256 Rowling, J.K., 64, 65 Rowthorn, Robert, 292, 363 Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), 25, 150, 152, 157, 173, 181, 199, 251, 259; collapse of, 7, 137, 150, 158, 175–6, 202, 203, 204; Sir Fred Goodwin and, 7, 150, 176, 340 Rubin, Robert, 174, 177, 183 rule of law, x, 4, 220, 235 Russell, Bertrand, 189 Russia, 127, 134–5, 169, 201, 354–5, 385; fall of communism, 135, 140; oligarchs, 30, 65, 135 Rwandan genocide, 71 Ryanair, 233 sailing ships, three-masted, 108 Sandbrook, Dominic, 22 Sands, Peter (CEO of Standard Chartered Bank), 26 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 51, 377 Sassoon, Sir James, 178 Scholes, Myron, 169, 191, 193 Schumpeter, Joseph, 62, 67, 111 science and technology: capitalist dynamism and, 27–8, 31, 112–13; digitalisation, 34, 231, 320, 349, 350; the Enlightenment and, 31, 108–9, 112–13, 116–17, 121, 126–7; general-purpose technologies (GPTs), 107–11, 112, 117, 126–7, 134, 228–9, 256, 261, 384; increased pace of advance, 228–9, 253, 297; nanotechnology, 232; New Labour improvements, 21; new opportunities and, 33–4, 228–9, 231–3; new technologies, 232, 233, 240; universities and, 261–5 Scotland, devolving of power to, 15, 334 Scott, James, 114–15 Scott Bader, 93 Scott Trust, 327 Second World War, 134, 313 Securities and Exchanges Commission, 151, 167–8 securitisation, 32, 147, 165, 169, 171, 186, 187, 196 self-determination, 85–6 self-employment, 86 self-interest, 59, 60, 78 Sen, Amartya, 51, 232, 275 service sector, 8, 291, 341, 355 shadow banking system, 148, 153, 157–8, 170, 171, 172, 187 Shakespeare, William, 39, 274, 351 shareholders, 156, 197, 216–17, 240–4, 250 Sher, George, 46, 50, 51 Sherman Act (USA, 1890), 133 Sherraden, Michael, 301 Shiller, Robert, 43, 298, 299 Shimer, Robert, 299 Shleifer, Andrei, 62, 63, 92 short selling, 103 Sicilian mafia, 101, 105 Simon, Herbert, 222 Simpson, George, 142–3 single mothers, 17, 53, 287 sixth form education, 306 Sky (broadcasting company), 30, 318, 330, 389 Skype, 253 Slim, Carlos, 30 Sloan School of Management, 195 Slumdog Millionaire, 283 Smith, Adam, 55, 84, 104, 112, 121, 122, 126, 145–6 Smith, John, 148 Snoddy, Ray, 322 Snow, John, 177 social capital, 88–9, 92 social class, 78, 130, 230, 304, 343, 388; childcare and, 278, 288–90; continued importance of, 271, 283–96; decline of class-based politics, 341; education and, 13, 17, 223, 264–5, 272–3, 274, 276, 292–5, 304, 308; historical development of, 56–8, 109, 115–16, 122, 123–5, 127–8, 199; New Labour and, 271, 277–9; working-class opinion, 16, 143 social investment, 10, 19, 20–1, 279, 280–1 social polarisation, 9–16, 34–5, 223, 271–4, 282–5, 286–97, 342; Conservative reforms (1979-97) and, 275–6; New Labour and, 277–9; private education and, 13, 223, 264–5, 272–3, 276, 283–4, 293–5, 304; required reforms for reduction of, 297–309 social security benefits, 277, 278, 299–301, 328; contributory, 63, 81, 283; flexicurity social system, 299–301, 304, 374; to immigrants, 81–2, 282, 283, 284; job seeker’s allowance, 81, 281, 298, 301; New Labour and ‘undeserving’ claimants, 143, 277–8; non-contributory, 63, 79, 81, 82; targeting of/two-tier system, 277, 281 socialism, 22, 32, 38, 75, 138, 144, 145, 394 Soham murder case, 10, 339 Solomon Brothers, 173 Sony, 254–5 Soros, George, 166 Sorrell, Martin, 349 Soskice, David, 342–3 South Korea, 168, 358–9 South Sea Bubble, 125–6 Spain, 123–4, 207, 358–9, 371, 377 Spamann, Holger, 198 special purpose vehicles, 181 Spitzer, Matthew, 60 sport, cheating in, 23 stakeholder capitalism, x, 148–9 Standard Oil, 130–1, 132 state, British: anti-statism, 20, 22, 233–4, 235, 311; big finance’s penetration of, 176, 178–80; ‘choice architecture’ and, 238, 252; desired level of involvement, 234–5; domination of by media, 14, 16, 221, 338, 339, 343; facilitation of fairness, ix–x, 391–2, 394–5; investment in knowledge, 28, 31, 40, 220, 235, 261, 265; need for government as employer of last resort, 300; need for hybrid financial system, 244, 249–52; need for intervention in markets, 219–22, 229–30, 235–9, 252, 392; need for reshaping of, 34; pluralism, x, 35, 99, 113, 233, 331, 350, 394; public ownership, 32, 240; target-setting in, 91–2; threats to civil liberty and, 340 steam engine, 110, 126 Steinmueller, W.


pages: 566 words: 155,428

After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead by Alan S. Blinder

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, book value, break the buck, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Detroit bankruptcy, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, friendly fire, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, McMansion, Minsky moment, money market fund, moral hazard, naked short selling, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, price mechanism, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, the payments system, time value of money, too big to fail, vertical integration, working-age population, yield curve, Yogi Berra

They separated banking, investment banking, and commerce, thereby changing the face of finance in America. The first-order question after the 2007–2009 financial crisis was, Should we take such a root-and-branch approach again? Case in point: Quite a few people claimed—and still do—that repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act was among the chief causes of the financial crisis. Glass-Steagall had separated commercial banking from investment banking in 1933, thereby pushing the high-stakes gambling on Wall Street away from the staid and stodgy banking system. Sixty-six years later, in 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB) allowed those two businesses to get back together again, allegedly spoiling American banking and precipitating the crisis.

See Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Free-market fundamentalism, 65 Free-riding, 285–86 Friedman, Milton, 110 Friedman, Thomas, 440 Fromer, Kevin, 184 Frum, David, 432 Fuld, Richard “Dick,” on Lehman collapse, 120 Fundamentals, defined, 29 Fundamental value bubble as deviation from, 29–31, 39 of home, 30 of stock/dividends, 29 Geanakopolos, John, 329 Geithner, Timothy and AIG bailout, 134–35, 138, 140 and bailouts, 110 housing plan of, 334, 338 and Lehman collapse, 123–24 on stress tests, 257–59 and TARP, 191–92, 200–201 as Treasury secretary, 165, 205, 214, 216–17 on Volcker Rule, 311–12 and Wachovia/Wells merger, 158–61 on Washington Mutual decision, 156–57 General Motors (GM), 212–13 General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC), 259 Germany and European crisis, 169–70, 410–11 as finance leader, 417–19 Gingrich, Newt, 439 Glass-Steagall Act (1933) Dodd-Frank on, 307 repeal of, 266–67, 294 Global financial crisis. See European financial crisis Golden parachutes excess, O’Neal (Stan) example, 152 TARP restrictions, 191 Golden West Financial, 157 Goldman Sachs asset size, 111 as bank holding company, 129, 154 as derivatives dealer, 61 fines paid by, 78n leverage ratio of, 52 PDCF loan to, 154 post-collapse reorganization, 52 TARP funds forced on, 201, 202 Goolsbee, Austan, 215, 225 Gorton, Gary, 70 Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs).


pages: 524 words: 143,993

The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned--And Have Still to Learn--From the Financial Crisis by Martin Wolf

air freight, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, bonus culture, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global rebalancing, global reserve currency, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market fragmentation, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, vertical integration, very high income, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

Traditional retail banks participated fully in the latter, via conduits and special-purpose vehicles and, more fundamentally, via the integration of investment and commercial banking, the former historically focused on trading in securities and the latter focused on lending. Changes in the law happened along the way in the US, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which had previously separated investment from commercial banking. The arguments for repeal were that the law had become either irrelevant or inefficient: irrelevant to the extent that it increasingly failed to prevent the entry of commercial banks into investment banking, and inefficient to the extent that it still posed an obstacle to the entry of commercial banks into such activities.

In a brilliant paper, Andrew Haldane and Vasileios Madouros of the Bank of England note the increasing demands of regulation on many dimensions. Among the most striking is the sheer volume of rule-making: Contrast the legislative responses in the US to the two largest financial crises of the past century – the Great Depression and the Great Recession. The single most important legislative response to the Great Depression was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Indeed, this may have been the single most influential piece of financial legislation of the 20th century. Yet it ran to a mere 37 pages. The legislative response to this time’s crisis, culminating in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, could not have been more different. On its own, the Act runs to 848 pages – more than 20 Glass-Steagalls.


pages: 524 words: 155,947

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, Apollo 11, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bletchley Park, Bob Noyce, Boeing 747, bond market vigilante , Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, Columbine, Corn Laws, cotton gin, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, driverless car, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global value chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydroponic farming, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Jon Ronson, Kenneth Arrow, Kula ring, labour market flexibility, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Blériot, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, M-Pesa, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, Murano, Venice glass, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, popular capitalism, popular electronics, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, TaskRabbit, techlash, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, V2 rocket, Veblen good, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, world market for maybe five computers, Yom Kippur War, you are the product, zero-sum game

But Roosevelt proclaimed that “We put those payroll contributions there so as to give contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”80 History has proved him right. Among Roosevelt’s other important reforms were the introduction of deposit insurance, which reduced the temptation for bank runs, the Glass–Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, and the creation of the Securities Exchange Commission to regulate the finance sector. The idea was to make sure that the riskiest parts of banking, linked to asset trading, did not pull down the conventional business of taking deposits and making loans.

There were scandals, such as the attempts by traders to manipulate a benchmark interest rate called Libor, which affected some $350trn of financial contracts.16 Banks were also penalised for mis-selling mortgage-backed bonds, money laundering, mis-selling of payment protection insurance, and, at Wells Fargo, for creating 2 million bogus accounts, without the permission of customers, in order to meet sales targets.17 In the decade after the crisis, global banks paid $321bn in fines to national regulators, according to the Boston Consulting Group, with $204bn of those penalties imposed in North America.18 As well as imposing fines, regulators tried other ways of reforming the finance sector. In America, Congress passed the Dodd–Frank Act, which ran to a mammoth 848 pages; by contrast, the Glass–Steagall Act, passed during the Great Depression, was just 37 pages long.19 By creating such complex legislation, the regulators may only have created more loopholes for banks to exploit, and pushed up the costs of the system by requiring banks to hire a great many more lawyers and compliance people. A more effective change was to force banks to hold more capital, in the hope that such a cushion would reduce the extent of the next financial crisis.


How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Liberalism and the Fight for Its Life by Ian Dunt

4chan, Alan Greenspan, Alfred Russel Wallace, bank run, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, bounce rate, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Brixton riot, Cambridge Analytica, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, classic study, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, experimental subject, fake news, feminist movement, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Growth in a Time of Debt, illegal immigration, invisible hand, John Bercow, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal world order, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Mohammed Bouazizi, Northern Rock, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, price mechanism, profit motive, quantitative easing, recommendation engine, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Steve Bannon, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, upwardly mobile, Winter of Discontent, working poor, zero-sum game

This had provided direct relief to the jobless, old age pensions, employment insurance and a public works programme, building everything from dams to aircraft carriers, schools to bridges. Millions entered the government’s payroll. Banks were brought under control. Many had gone bust after the Wall Street Crash. But in 1933, Congress had passed the historic Glass-Steagall Act. Banks were able to borrow from the Federal Reserve, an organisation created as a lender of last resort, which would prevent them collapsing if they ran out of ready cash. But there was a stick as well as a carrot. They were barred from engaging in risky activity. Commercial banks for ordinary citizens were separated from investment banks, which typically dealt with businesses.

See European Union (EU) EU referendum campaign and result 1 government response and May 1 Johnson as prime minister 1 Trump and nationalism 1 euro 1 European Central Bank (ECB) 1, 2, 3, 4 European Coal and Steel Community 1 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 1, 2 European Court of Justice 1, 2, 3 European Economic Community 1 European Parliament 1 European Union (EU) Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 1 EU citizens 1 EU referendum 1 Greece financial crisis 1 Hungary and Orbán 1, 2 institutions 1 migrants and refugees 1 origins 1 post-war cooperation 1, 2 Russia and Ukraine 1 Troika programmes 1, 2 UK leaves 1 eurozone 1, 2, 3 Evergreen State College 1 Exclusion Crisis 1, 2, 3, 4 executive power 1, 2, 3, 4 Exhibit B show 1 experts 1, 2, 3 Facebook 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Fairfax, Thomas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 A Remonstrance from his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax 1 fake news 1 family separation policy 1 Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) 1 Farage, Nigel 1, 2, 3, 4 far right 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 fascism Carlyle 1 emergence of 1 Germany 1, 2 identity and belonging 1 Orwell on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 post-war economics 1, 2, 3 Fawcett, Millicent 1 Federal Housing Administration 1 Federal Reserve 1, 2, 3 female genital mutilation 1 female priests 1 female suffrage 1 feminism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Ferdinand, Archduke Franz 1 feudalism 1, 2 Fidesz 1, 2, 3, 4 Figes, Orlando 1 financial crisis 1, 2, 3, 4 Financial Services Authority (FSA) 1 financial services deregulation 1 first generation rights 1, 2 First World War 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 fiscal policy 1 Five Star Movement 1 Five Year Plan 1 Flower, Eliza 1 forced marriage 1 Forster, EM 1 Maurice 1 4chan 1 Fox, Liam 1 Fox News 1, 2 France American independence 1, 2 anti-semitism 1 Austria war 1 Dreyfus Affair 1 Estates General 1 Greece financial crisis 1 Napoleon rule 1 National Convention 1 origins of revolution 1 post-war cooperation 1 revolution aftermath 1, 2 Seven Years’ War 1 the Terror 1 Franco, General Francisco 1 freedom American independence 1 Berlin on 1, 2 England history 1 French Revolution aftermath 1, 2 Levellers Agreement 1 liberalism struggle 1 Locke on 1, 2, 3, 4 Mill and Taylor on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Puritans 1, 2 Rousseau on 1, 2 freedom of conscience 1, 2 freedom to publish 1, 2 free market 1, 2, 3 free movement 1, 2, 3 free press 1, 2, 3 free speech 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 free trade 1, 2, 3 French Revolution aftermath 1, 2 anti-semitism 1 Carlyle history 1 development of liberal values 1 events of 1 Rights of Man 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Rousseau and general will 1, 2 Frenkel, Naftaly Aronovich 1 Friedman, Milton 1, 2 FSA (Financial Services Authority) 1 Fukuyama, Francis 1 full employment 1, 2 G20 1, 2 Gaddafi, Colonel Muammar 1 Galbraith, John 1, 2 Galileo 1, 2, 3, 4 gas chambers 1, 2 gatekeepers 1 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) 1, 2, 3 gay identity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Geithner, Timothy 1, 2 gender, and sex 1 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1, 2, 3 general will 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Generation Identity 1 generation snowflake 1 German Workers’ Party 1 Germany Austria-Hungary alliance 1 First World War 1 Greece financial crisis 1 interwar economy 1 migrants and refugees 1 Nazi rule 1, 2 post-war cooperation 1 Second World War 1 welfare state 1 Gestapo 1, 2 Gingrich, Newt 1, 2 Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association) 1 Girondins 1, 2, 3 Glass-Steagall Act 1, 2, 3 gleichschaltung 1 Glorious Revolution 1, 2, 3, 4 Google 1, 2, 3 Gove, Michael 1, 2, 3 government American independence 1 debt and austerity 1 financial crisis measures 1 and institutions 1 legitimate government 1 Locke on 1, 2, 3, 4 post-war Keynesianism 1, 2, 3 Smith on 1, 2 Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) 1 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act 1 Great Depression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Greater London Council 1, 2, 3 Great Terror, Russia 1 Greece 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Greenspan, Alan 1, 2 group identity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Guatemala 1 Guérin, Jules 1 guillotine 1, 2, 3, 4 gulags 1, 2, 3, 4 Gyurcsány, Ferenc 1 haircuts (finance) 1, 2 Haiti earthquake 1 half-truth 1, 2 Hall, Stuart 1 Hamilton, Gene 1 Handsworth riots 1 Hannity, Sean 1, 2 Hardenberg, Charlotte von 1 Hardy, Henry 1 harm principle 1, 2, 3, 4 Hayek, Friedrich Capital Consumption 1 on communism end 1 Constitution of Liberty 1 death of 1 economic thought 1 and Keynes 1 on Mill and Taylor 1, 2 Nobel Prize 1 post-war economics 1, 2, 3 The Road to Serfdom 1 state intervention 1, 2, 3 Hayek, Laurence 1 Heads of Proposals 1, 2, 3 health care 1, 2, 3, 4 health tourism 1 Heart of Texas 1 Hébert, Jacques 1, 2, 3 Hébertists 1, 2 Henry, Major Hubert-Joseph 1, 2 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 1 heresy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 higher and lower pleasures 1, 2 higher self 1 Himmler, Heinrich 1, 2 Hitler, Adolf 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Hobbes, Thomas 1 Leviathan 1 Holdheim, William 1 Hollander, Jacob Harry 1 Holocaust 1, 2 Holodomor 1 home ownership 1 homophobia 1, 2 homosexuality 1, 2 Hostile Environment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 House of Commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 House of Lords 1, 2, 3 House of Representatives 1 housing 1, 2, 3 Howard, Michael 1 Huber, Ernst Rudolf 1 human rights 1, 2, 3 Hume, David 1 Hungary 1, 2 hyperinflation 1, 2, 3 hypertext 1 hypotheses 1 identity cultural appropriation 1 cultural identity 1, 2 cultural relativism 1 group identity 1, 2 identity and belonging 1 national identity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 nationalism 1, 2 Orwell on patriotism 1, 2 identity cards 1 identity politics cultural appropriation 1 culture war 1 difference 1 disagreement 1 group identity 1, 2 intersectionality 1, 2 marginalised groups 1, 2 origins 1 right-wing identity politics 1 social media 1 identity war 1, 2 Ignatieff, Michael 1 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 1, 2 immigration EU referendum 1, 2 France anti-semitism 1 Hungary and Orbán 1 liberalism of the future 1 nationalism 1, 2, 3 right-wing identity politics 1, 2, 3 UK policy 1 US policy 1, 2 imperialism 1, 2, 3 incommensurable goods 1, 2 Independents (English Civil War) 1, 2 individual Berlin on 1, 2 communism and fascism 1, 2, 3, 4 Constant 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Descartes 1, 2, 3, 4 identity 1, 2, 3 invention of teenager 1 Keynesianism 1 Levellers 1 liberalism 1, 2, 3 Locke 1, 2, 3 Marxism 1, 2 Mill 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 nationalism 1 Orwell 1, 2 Overton 1 Puritans 1 and reason 1 Smith 1 individualism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 individual rights 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 industrial revolution 1, 2 inflation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 information flow 1, 2, 3 Instagram 1, 2, 3 institutions 1 Intellectual Dark Web 1 intellectual property 1 interest rates 1, 2, 3 internal emigration 1 International Brigades 1 international law 1 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 1, 2 international relations 1 internet 1, 2, 3 intersectionality 1 investment banks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 invisible hand 1, 2, 3, 4 Iraq 1, 2, 3 Ireland 1, 2 Ireton, Henry 1, 2, 3, 4 Islam 1 Italy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Jacobins 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 James II 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Japan 1 Javid, Sajid 1, 2 Jehovah’s Witnesses 1 Jews anti-semitism 1, 2, 3 Berlin’s identity 1, 2 Dreyfus Affair 1, 2 Germany 1, 2, 3 group identity 1 Levellers 1 right-wing identity politics 1 Second World War and Holocaust 1 St Louis ship 1 Johannot, Marie-Charlotte 1 Johnson, Boris 1, 2, 3, 4 Johnson, Lyndon 1 journalism 1, 2, 3, 4 Joyce, George 1 JP Morgan 1, 2 judiciary 1, 2 Juncker, Jean-Claude 1 justice 1, 2 Kant, Immanuel 1 Kennedy, John F 1 Keynes, John Maynard The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money 1 and Hayek 1, 2, 3 post-war economics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 state intervention 1 Time Man of the Year 1 death of 1 Keynesianism 1, 2, 3, 4 Khader, Naser 1 knowledge 1, 2 Kogon, Eugen 1 Komsomol 1 Kosinski, Michal 1 Krugman, Paul 1 Kruks, Sonia 1 Kukathas, Chandran 1 kulaks 1, 2 Kurdi, Alan 1, 2 Kymlicka, Will 1 labour 1, 2, 3 Lagarde, Christine 1, 2 laissez-faire austerity measures 1 communism 1 Constant 1, 2 financial crisis 1 Hayek 1, 2 inflation policy 1 liberalism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Mill 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 post-war economics 1, 2, 3 right-wing identity politics 1 Soviet Union collapse 1 land 1, 2, 3 language 1, 2, 3 Laski, Harold 1 Latvia 1 Laud, William 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service 1 law of nature 1, 2, 3 Law of Suspects 1 League Party 1 Leave.EU 1, 2.


Global Financial Crisis by Noah Berlatsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, centre right, circulation of elites, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, energy security, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, God and Mammon, Gordon Gekko, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Money creation, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, social contagion, South China Sea, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, working poor

A less drastic way of dealing with overgrown banks would be to split off the investment banking arms of the main global banks—what Mervyn King calls the “casinos”—and to confine government protection to the remaining “traditional” banking wings. These would then operate as regulated utilities: the model that broadly prevailed in the United States before the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act a decade ago. The urgent need to change our system is highlighted by the ambition of Barclays Capital to become “the premier global investment bank”: it is madness for the British taxpayer to be a last-resort guarantor for this kind of business. To be sure, the demarcation is 47 The Global Financial Crisis not clear-cut: there is high-risk “traditional” banking and lowrisk investment banking, and the separation of roles would not be straightforward.


pages: 258 words: 63,367

Making the Future: The Unipolar Imperial Moment by Noam Chomsky

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Frank Gehry, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Howard Zinn, Joseph Schumpeter, kremlinology, liberation theology, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, precariat, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, working poor

Two other Clinton veterans, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, are among the leading figures in his economic team. Rubin and Summers were both enthusiasts for the deregulation that was a major factor in the current financial crisis. As Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Rubin worked hard to abolish the Glass-Steagall act, which had separated commercial banks from financial institutions that incur high risks. Financial economist Tim Canova writes that Rubin had “a personal interest in the demise of Glass-Steagall.” Soon after leaving his position as Treasury Secretary, Rubin became “chair of Citigroup, a financial-services conglomerate that was facing the possibility of having to sell off its insurance underwriting subsidiary . . . the Clinton administration never brought charges against him for his obvious violations of the Ethics in Government Act.”


pages: 319 words: 64,307

The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith

Alan Greenspan, Bernie Madoff, business cycle, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Ford Model T, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, invention of the wheel, joint-stock company, low interest rates, margin call, market fundamentalism, short selling, South Sea Bubble, the market place

There will be Phil Gramm, of whom in April 2008 the Washington Post wrote that he was "the sorcerers apprentice of financial instability and disaster." (The Post was quoting me. Reached on the phone, Gramm denied it.) There will be Lawrence Summers, impassioned advocate of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, bounced from Harvard's presidency to Obama's White House—a man whose reputation remains to be rebuilt or buried by events. And Bernard Madoff. The wreckage of bloated reputations is part of the fun of a crash, at least in deep retrospect. And in the renewed prosperity of the 1950s and later years, my father and history were generally content to leave matters there.


pages: 585 words: 165,304

Trust: The Social Virtue and the Creation of Prosperity by Francis Fukuyama

Alvin Toffler, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, classic study, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, double entry bookkeeping, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, industrial robot, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kanban, Kenneth Arrow, land reform, liberal capitalism, liberation theology, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, mittelstand, price mechanism, profit maximization, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, transfer pricing, traveling salesman, union organizing, vertical integration, W. E. B. Du Bois

This kind of bank-centered group was not nearly as common in other advanced societies. Some of the late-nineteenth-century trusts in the United States included financial institutions that were used to capitalize the trust’s industrial firms. Many were broken up during the antitrust movement at the turn of the century and finally made illegal with the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933 that separated commercial from investment banking. The French Crédit Mobilier, established as an investment bank in 1852 by Emile and Isaac Pereire, collapsed in 1867 in an infamous scandal. British banks turned away from the long-term financing of industry, particularly after the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank in Britain in 1878.

L, 21, 65, 204 Durkheim, Emile, 6, 27 Duty, sense of, 43, 46 Eastern Europe, 356, 360-361 Eastman Kodak, 31, 65, 79, 275, 278 Edo period, 167, 172 Education, 336 in France, 240 in Germany, 219, 237-241 in Great Britain, 248, 249 inJapan, 54, 187-189, 240 Electrical industry, 212-214 ELF, 123 Emergency Decree of 1972 (South Korea), 138 End of History and the Last Man, The (Fukuyama), 6, 358, 359 Engels, Friedrich, 47 Enlightenment, 287 Equity markets, 330-331 Erhard, Ludwig, 216, 218 Ethical habits, 34-40, 150 European Commission, 104 Extended family, 66, 90, 106, 107 Factor mobility, 186 Fallows, James, 14, 344 Familism, 16, 28-30, 48-50, 77-78 in Chinese societies, 56-57, 62, 65, 66, 70, 73-95, 97-98, 107, 111, 114, 115, 345 in France, 56, 63, 114-118 in Hong Kong, 74, 75, 81, 329, 331 in Italy, 62, 63, 67, 98, 99, 102-111, 115 in South Korea, 63, 128, 131, 133, 134, 137, 145, 331-332 in Taiwan, 67, 74, 86-87, 329, 331 Family, breakdown of, 308-309, 314, 353 Family planning, 83-84 Family structure, 4-5, 10, 11, 51, 61-62, 66 in Chinese societies, 90-91, 106, 336 in Italy, 105-106,336,337 in Japan, 151, 171-173 in South Korea, 130-132, 336 Family values, 61, 62, 67 Fascism, 3, 5 Fashion industry, 102-103, 109 Ferguson, Adam, 360 Feudal aristocracy, 107-108 FIAT group, 101 Finke, Roger, 289 Firm size, 29-31, 62, 102-105 in Chinese societies, 79, 345 in France, 29, 30, 162, 163, 212, 326, 327 in Germany, 29, 30, 162, 163, 211-212,327,328,332 in Great Britain, 162, 163, 212 in Hong Kong, 29, 30, 71-72, 326, 327, 330-332 in Italy, 29, 30, 212, 326, 327, 329 in Japan, 29, 30, 162-163, 327, 332 in South Korea, 29, 71, 327, 329, 332, 333 in Taiwan, 29, 30, 71, 326, 327, 329, 332, 333 Fisher Body, 201 Ford, Henry, 48, 225, 231, 232, 256-257 Ford Motor Company, 8, 31, 225, 226, 263, 278 Foreign direct investment, 14, 81, 203, 338, 339 Formosa Plastics, 71 France, 9, 28, 29,50,52, 55-56, 113-125 adoption in, 118 authority attitude toward, 119, 121 bureaucracy in, 115, 118-122 education in, 240 familism in, 56, 63, 114-118 Fifth Republic, 39-40 firm size in, 29, 30, 162, 163, 212, 326, 327 guild system in, 246, 248 industrial policy and structure in, 113-114 inheritance in, 115, 116 job classification system in, 234-235, 237 labor relations in, 121, 125 management style in, 119, 235, 236 monarchy in, 39, 119-120 pay differentials in, 236-237 social class in, 120-121 state, role of, 122-125, 338, 339 Francis I, King of France, 120 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, 107 Free riding, 155-156, 186, 188, 189, 238, 239 French Revolution, 116, 352 Frenz, Gustav, 232 Friedman, David, 164 Friedman, Milton, 13 Frugality, 45, 46 Fujian Province, 81, 91, 92 Fujitsu, 165 Fundamentalism, 289-290, 319 Gates, Bill, 280 Geertz, Clifford, 34 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 353 General Electric, 213, 275 General Motors, 128, 163, 164, 199, 201, 204, 262, 263, 265 Germany, 7-9, 24, 28, 150, 209-219, 231-243, 245-253 apprenticeship system in, 237-238, 240-242, 245, 247, 248, 250 attitudes toward World War II in, 252, 253 bank-centered groups in, 213-214, 330, 331 cartels in, 214-215 education in, 219, 237-241 family businesses in, 215-216 firm size in, 29, 30, 162, 163, 211-212, 327, 328, 332 guild system in, 245-248, 336 labor relations in, 216-218, 234 management style in, 221, 232-237, 251 network organizations in, 197, 204, 207 pay differentials in, 236-237 Taylorism and, 231-232 trade associations in, 204, 216 traditional communal organizations in, 151, 210 welfare benefits in, 242, 243 work teams in, 234-236 workweek in, 253 Gerschenkron, Alexander, 52, 66 Gilder, George, 23 Gingrich, Newt, 23 Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, 214 Glendon, Mary Ann, 315 Global economy, 4, 5, 318 Gore, Albert, 23 Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Friedrich von, 232 Gould, Jay, 276 Gouldner, Alvin, 226 Grace, doctrine of, 36 Granovetter, Mark, 21 Great Britain, 28, 57, 344 bank financing in, 214 economic decline in, 158 education in, 248, 249 firm size in, 162, 163, 212 guild system in, 246, 248 labor relations in, 159, 190 monarchy in, 39 social class in, 158-159, 249-251 Grove, Andrew, 308 Guangdong Province, 72, 81, 91, 92 Guatemala, 45 Guild system, 115, 122, 157, 191, 245-248, 336 Gulf and Western, 197 Gun control, 316 Habits, 34-41 HAL Computer Systems, 165 Han industries, 182 Harrison, Lawrence, 56 Hattori, Yoshihiro, 310 Hawthorne experiments, 230 Hayek, Friedrich von, 24 Headhunting, 193 Health care reform, 4 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 359 Hewlett-Packard, 109 Hideyoshi, Toyotomi, 173 Hierarchical organizations, 24, 25, 30, 48, 51, 65, 199-200, 270-271 Hinduism, 35 Hirshman, Albert, 360 Hispanics, 299, 314 Hitachi, 31, 80, 128, 165, 170 Hobbes, Thomas, 284, 285, 287, 351, 360 Hoechst, 211 Hoffman, Stanley, 121 Holland, 29, 162, 163, 212, 328 Honda, Sochiro, 167, 182 Honda Motor Company, 165 Honesty, 36, 37, 43, 46, 151, 152 Hong Kong, 29, 50, 57, 70, 344 familism in, 74, 75, 81, 329, 331 firm size in, 29, 30, 71-72, 326, 327, 330-332 lineage in, 91, 92 network organizations in, 197 Hsu, Francis, 176 Human capital, 10, 17, 26-27, 45, 308 Human relations movement, 230, 232 Hungary, 356, 361 Huntington, Samuel, 5 Hyundai Motor Company, 71, 73, 128, 135-137, 265 IBM, 24, 165, 170, 277, 278, 340, 341 Ideology, 38, 39 Iemoto groups, 53-54, 131, 176-177, 206, 249 IG Farbenindustrie, 211, 215 IGs (Interessengemeinschaften), 211, 215, 216 Immigrants to U.S., 62, 296-306, 308, 318-319, 350 Imperial examination system, 84, 87 Individualism, 10, 28, 49-52, 150, 270-275, 277-281, 283, 286, 290, 292, 293, 296, 303, 306-308, 311, 313-317 Indonesia, 71, 92 Industrial policy and structure, 14-17.


pages: 526 words: 158,913

Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America by Greg Farrell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbus A320, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bonus culture, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, compensation consultant, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, Long Term Capital Management, mass affluent, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Nelson Mandela, plutocrats, Ronald Reagan, six sigma, sovereign wealth fund, technology bubble, too big to fail, US Airways Flight 1549, yield curve

They owed their success—indeed, their existence—to the stock market crash of 1929 and the financial reform laws that were passed during the Great Depression. One of the lessons learned from the crash was the danger posed by banks that invested their own capital in companies. Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933, which separated commercial banking activies—such as making loans to businesses—from investment banking activities, which were inherently riskier. The law created a bifurcated banking system consisting of depository institutions, which were supervised by a range of regulators, including the Federal Reserve, and investment banks, which enjoyed less onerous oversight.

The ability to manage that risk, to discern the fine line between a loan worth making and the one that might blow up, distinguishes successful bankers from the foolhardy. For investment banks, risk management is an even more important discipline, since they are allowed to make investments with their own funds. Until the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, depository banks were not allowed to invest directly in businesses they advised. They could only make loans, which generated lower returns on capital. Investment banks, like venture capital firms, could deploy their capital in businesses they supported, with the prospect of hefty returns.


pages: 596 words: 163,682

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind by Raghuram Rajan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, central bank independence, computer vision, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, data acquisition, David Brooks, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, facts on the ground, financial innovation, financial repression, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, household responsibility system, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Money creation, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Conscious that the nation’s financial system had become overly dependent on one banker, and aware of the potential for abuse, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. It brought the monetary system of the United States under the aegis of the Federal Reserve Board. The Populist anger with large Eastern banks was, however, only fully propitiated in 1933, with the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act, breaking up the large banks and forcing them to divest their investment banking arms. The third element of the package to contain big business was taxation. This was perhaps the least-important piece, for there was really no desire to tax big business out of existence—after all, scale might be a source of efficiency and could reduce costs of production.

., 281, 298 Gao, Xiaohui, 201 Gaud, Malinil, 336, 339 GDP, 163, 164 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 146, 150, 353 gentry, 54–58, 64–66, 71, 72 Gentzkow, Matt, 332–33 Germany, 73, 74, 162, 236, 238, 241 Elberfeld system of assistance in, 129–31, 320 in European Union, 169–71 income in, 191, 192 migrants and foreign workers in, 159, 242 Nazi, 112, 157, 380 in postwar period, 150, 153, 154 social insurance in, 132, 156 state and industry linked in, 111–12 Giersch, Herbert, 167 Giving Pledge, 396 Glaeser, Edward, 98, 137 Glass-Steagall Act, 104 Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008, xiii, xxvi, xxviii, 88, 144, 199, 204, 213, 236–43, 353–54, 358, 370, 393 China and, 258, 259 global governance, 245–46, 367–70 globalization, 371–72 gold, 100, 101 Goldin, Claudia, 98 Goldstein, Amy, 186 Google, 201, 203, 350, 386 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 251 Gordon, Robert, 161 government, governance, xv, 107, 139, 394 centralization of, 51 deficits, 162–64, 324 federal, xiii–xiv, xvi; see also state global, 245–46, 367–70 local, xiv, xv, xvi, 11–12, 286, 305, 311–13; see also community promises made by, 145–73, 324–25 promotion of views in, 107 Grant, Ulysses S., 98, 337 Great Britain, see England; United Kingdom Great Depression, xxvii, 88, 119, 134–38, 139, 145–47, 151, 157, 210, 237, 364 safety nets in the U.S. before, 133–34 Great Recession, xiii, 238, 334 Great Society, 158 Greece, 145, 170, 237, 238, 359 Gregory VII, Pope, 38, 54 guilds, 58–62, 64, 81 gunpowder, 41–42 Gutenberg, Johannes, 46 Habermas, Jurgen, 298 Hampton, Keith, 331 handloom weavers, 18–19, 116, 188 Hanson, Gordon, 185 Harrington, James, 58 Hart, Oliver, 11 Harvard University, 98, 137, 197, 233, 242, 293, 362, 364, 371, 389 Hayek, Friedrich, 91, 164 health care, 156, 162–63, 318–19, 324 Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), 144, 214, 239–41 drugs, 183, 184, 204, 354, 362–63 training and wages in, 388 in U.K., 156 in U.S., 158, 203 Heckman, James, 6, 223, 225, 226 Hendren, Nathaniel, xvi Henry VII, King, 53–54 Henry VIII, King, 54, 57 Hicks, John, 99 Hillbilly Elegy (Vance), 300–301 Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 239–40 Holland, 65 housing, 237, 307–9 Hsieh, Chang-Tai, 220, 253, 258 Huang, Yasheng, 251 Hume, David, 63 Hurst, Erik, 333–34 Icahn, Carl, 197 ICT, see Information and Communications Technology revolution Idea of India, The (Khilnani), 298 Ignatieff, Michael, 299 immigration, immigrants, xvi, xviii, 121, 134, 137, 147, 148, 159–60, 173, 218, 219, 245, 284, 286, 289, 297, 302, 348 benefits of, 290–95 distressed communities and, 342 in Europe, 144, 159, 167, 210, 241–43 Harvard study on, 242, 293 Japan and, 292–93 Muslim, 241, 242 population aging and, 260, 284, 286, 292–93, 396 residential sorting and, 229–31 talent and, 290–91 in U.S., 137, 159–60, 292 inclusive civic nationalism, 297–99, 302 inclusive localism, xxii, 22, 285–87, 289–302, 327, 351, 394 income and wages, 90, 127, 152, 213, 388, 395, 396 dispersion across US cities, 220 of doctors, 388 Earned Income Tax Credit and, 345–46 economic segregation and, 307–9 effects of technology and trade on, 188–94 median wage, 189–91 occupational licensing and, 207 top one percent, 102, 191–94 universal basic income, 322–23 India, xxvi, xxviii, 19–20, 31, 113–15, 139, 144, 245, 246, 267–74, 287, 298, 317, 350, 391 affirmative action in, 300–302 bribery in, 312 China compared with, 247–48, 267, 269, 270, 275–76 corruption in, 272 cronyism in, 268, 269 decentralization in, 270, 272 democracy in, 268–70, 272–74 economic growth of villages in, 275 Finance Ministry in, 274 Indore, 335–37, 339, 344 land acquisition for public projects in, 275–76 liberalization in, 269–71, 273, 276 populism in, 272, 276–78 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in, xix, 277 socialism in, 267–69, 391 state, markets, and democracy in, 272–74 individualism, 194–96, 201, 284 Indore, 335–37, 339, 344 industrialization, 75, 88, 127, 275 Industrial Revolution(s), 16, 18, 26, 70, 74, 78, 84, 87, 91, 230 First, 116–17 Fourth, 117 handloom weavers and, 18–19, 116, 188 Second, 117–19, 122, 146, 147, 152, 153, 160–61 Third, 117 in U.S., 121 see also Information and Communications Technology (ICT) revolution inflation, 56–57, 163, 164, 366 Information and Communications Technology (ICT) revolution, xii–xiii, xxi, xxviii, 117, 148, 161, 162, 175–211, 213, 313, 321–22, 338, 340, 382, 393, 394 automation in, xii, xviii, 3, 143–44, 175, 178, 185–87, 314 communities and, xviii–xx, 176, 184–88 decentralization and, 312–13 interconnected world and, 350–51 jobs and, 143–44, 173, 175, 177–88, 395 trade and, 143–44, 173, 181–88 inheritance, 37, 45, 105 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, An (Smith), 80 intellectual property, 73, 183, 278, 351, 362–63, 382–84 patents, 204–6, 362, 382–84 International Monetary Fund (IMF), xxvi, 146, 151, 270, 367, 368–69 international responsibilities, 363–67, 372, 397 internet, 117, 310 China and, 266, 350 community and, 330–35 political views and, 332–33 Ireland, 237, 238, 353–54 Italy, 145, 162, 303–4, 359 in European Union, 169 Montegrano, 12–14, 113, 227 in postwar period, 149, 152 Jackson, Andrew, 93 James I, King, 66–67 Jams II, King, 70 Janesville, Wisc., 341 Janesville (Goldstein), 186 Japan, 157, 160, 302, 368, 380 aging population in, 292–93 currency in, 366 immigration and, 292–93 income in, 191 in postwar period, 148, 153 protectionism in, 354 Jeffers, Jessica, 205 Jefferson, Thomas, 58 Jensen, Michael, 196 Jiang Zemin, 251 jobs, xii, xviii, 163, 164, 224, 343, 389, 395 African Americans and, 230–31 credentials and, 233–34, 317, 393 ICT revolution and, 143–44, 173, 175, 177–88, 395 and lump of labor fallacy, 180 mercantilism and, 62–63 occupational licensing and, 206–7, 387–88, 393 Second Industrial Revolution and, 122 see also income and wages; workers Johnson, Lyndon, 157–58, 229 Juncker, Jean-Claude, 172 Jungle, The (Sinclair), 104 Justice, US Department of, 202 Kahn, Alfred, 165 Kalanick, Travis, 196 Kaplan, Steve, 192 Katz, Bruce, 303 Kautilya, 31 Keynes, John Maynard, 154, 163, 395 Khan, Khizr, xxi Khilnani, Sunil, 298 Khodorkovsky, Mikhail, 111 Kim, Han, 220 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 157, 158, 397 Kleiner, Morris, 207 knowledge, diffusion of, 204–6 Krueger, Alan, 207 Kyoto Protocol, 365 laissez-faire, 77–78, 81, 83 landowners, 37, 58, 72, 74 gentry, 54–58, 64–66, 71, 72 Lasch, Christopher, 227 Latin America, 72, 93, 96 Lee Kuan Yew, 247 LEGO, 391 lending, see loans Le Pen, Marine, 236 Lerner, Josh, 362 Levine, David, 382–83 liberal democracy, 74–75 liberalism, 83, 160 liberalization, 206 in China, 248–67, 276 in India, 269–71, 273, 276 private sector’s reaction to, 194–201, 207–8 liberal market democracies, xiii, xx, xxvii libertarianism, 115 limited-access societies, 97–98 Lindsey, Brink, 205 loans, 44–45, 48 contract in, 29–31 see also usury lobbying, 378, 389 localism, xxi, xxviii, 285, 286, 303 inclusive, xxii, 22, 285–87, 289–302, 327, 351, 394 long-term benefits of, 303 location, importance of, 219–21 Long, Huey, 136 looms, 18–19, 116, 188 Louis XIV, King, 60, 65, 66 Luce, Edward, 227 Luther, Martin, 46 Madison, James, 97, 218 magnates, decline of, 53–54 Mahajan, Vijay, 337 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 83 Mann, Horace, 121 manufacturing, 152, 184–85, 206 Mao Zedong, 247–50 markets, xiii, xv, xvii–xviii, xx, xxii, xxvii–xxviii, 25–27, 50, 56, 77–106, 145, 154, 172, 173, 243–44, 283, 184, 285–87, 304, 393, 394 community adjustment to, 388–92 community and state buffers against volatility in, 127–38 community loss of faith in, 115–19 community values and, 390–92 competition in, see competition data in, 384–86 definition of, xiv democracy and, 106, 110 emerging, 245, 271; see also China; India fairness in, 115–16 freeing, 80–81 laissez-faire and, 77–78, 81, 83 liberalization of, see liberalization liberal market democracies, xiii, xx, xxvii perceived legitimacy of players in, 110–12 philosophy for, 81–84 reforming, 373–92 separation from community, xiv–xv state and, 304 transactions in, 3, 4 unbridled, 84–87 see also trade marriage, 231, 235 Marshall Plan, 149–51, 365 marshmallow test, 222–23 Marx, Karl, 49, 78, 87–91 Marxism, 87–91, 112, 115, 249, 287 Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (Moynihan), 158 McClure’s Magazine, 103 McKinley, William, 106 McLean, Malcolm, 181 meatpacking industry, 104, 107–8 Medicare, 241, 324 mercantilism, 62–65, 80 Merchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare), 30 meritocracy, 390, 393 children and, 224–25, 228 in China, 257, 265 Merkel, Angela, 241 military technologies, 42–44, 51, 53 Mill, Harriet, 81 Mill, John Stuart, 81–83 minorities, 218, 219, 289, 296–97 affirmative action and, 300–302 see also African Americans; immigration, immigrants Mischel, Walter, 223 misery index, 163 Mitterand, François, 168 Mokyr, Joel, 20, 21 monarchy, 51–53, 56–59, 61–63, 65, 73 monasteries, 54, 57, 72 moneylending, see loans Monnet, Jean, 154 monopolies, 58–62, 64, 80, 81, 87, 91, 97, 99, 105, 106, 108, 109, 112, 201–7, 283, 379–82 antitrust laws and, 101, 103–4, 381–82 Montegrano, 12–14, 113, 227 Moore, Barrington, 73 Moretti, Enrico, 220 Morgan, John Pierpont, 99, 104 Morse, Adair, 220 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 158, 340 multilateral institutions, 367–70 Murphy, Kevin, 196 Murray, Charles, 227 muskets, 42–43 Muslims, 21, 35, 36, 241, 242, 272, 277 Napoleon I, 126 nationalism, xvii, 64, 184, 330, 397 civic, 297–99, 302 ethnic, 215–17; see also populist nationalism mercantilism and, 63 populist, see populist nationalism Nation at Risk, A, 232–33 nation-states, 26, 42, 50, 51–52, 61–62 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 267, 270, 287, 298 neighborhoods, 297 isolation index and, 333 sorting and, see residential sorting see also community Netville, 331–32 Neumann, Franz, 112 New Deal, 134–35 New Localism, The (Katz and Nowak), 303 news consumption, and diversity of opinions, 332–33 New York Times, 19, 98, 218, 387 Nixon, Richard, 98, 108 North, Douglass, 70, 97 Nowak, Jeremy, 303 Obama, Barack, xvii, 158, 235, 240 India visited by, 273 Obama, Michelle, 240 Obamacare, 144, 214, 239–41 Oceana (Harrington), 58 oil industry, 84–86, 99, 103, 107, 111 Oliver, Douglas, 9 one percent, 102, 191–94 On Liberty (Mill), 81–83 open-access societies, 98 Opium Wars, 349–50 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 189–90 Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America (Fallows and Fallows), 344 Owen, Robert, 88 Owens, Ann, 226 Papal Revolution, 38, 40 parents, 222–31, 343 Paris Agreement, 365 parliaments, 77, 78–79 English, 57, 60–62, 65–70, 74, 77, 84, 105 patents, 204–6, 362, 382–84 patriotism, 298 peasants, 37–38, 73, 74, 78 see also feudalism, feudal communities Peltzman, Sam, 202 Perez, Carlotta, 118 Petersen, Mitchell, 15, 219 pharmaceutical drugs and companies, 183, 184, 204, 354, 362–63, 384 Physiocrats, 77 Piketty, Thomas, 191 Pilsen community, xxii–xxvi, 12, 298, 344, 381 Pirenne, Henri, 45 plague (Black Death), 40, 41–42 Polanyi, Karl, 84 police officers, 312 politics: conflict over, 234–36 isolation index and, 332–33 left-wing, xiii, xix, xxvii, 214, 217, 394 right-wing, xiii, xix, 214–17, 394 Polybius, 118 population aging, 260, 284, 286, 292–93, 324, 342–43, 348, 396 population diversity, see diversity population growth, 83, 152, 162–63 populism, xiii, xix, xxviii, 63, 136, 137, 211, 213–44, 284 in China, 276–79 and conflict over values and politics, 234–36 in Europe, 241–43 Global Financial Crisis and, 236–43 growing divide and, 218–19 in India, 272, 276–78 left-wing, 214, 217 Obamacare and, 239–41 Populist movement at turn of nineteenth century, 23, 26, 79, 98–101, 102, 105–6, 112, 244, 265 reemergence in the industrial West, 213–44 right-wing, 214–17 types of, 214–18 populist nationalism, xiii, xix–xx, xxi, xxvii, 144, 216–17, 241–44, 246, 276–79, 286, 289, 295–300, 302, 352, 353 in China, 276–79 in Europe, 241–43 in India, 276–78 why it cannot work, 296–97 Populist Revolt, The (Hicks), 99 Portugal, 148, 238 Poterba, James, 140 poultry farms, 354–55, 357 poverty, 396 African Americans and, 157 Elberfeld system of assistance, 129–31, 320 War on, 158, 160, 229 Powell, Enoch, 159 presidential election of 2016, 235, 236, 333, 354 Price, Brendan, 185 Princeton University, 125 printing press, 41–42, 46 private sector, 107–8, 111, 139, 147, 283, 284, 352, 371 liberalization and, 194–201, 207–8 Progressives, 26, 79, 98–99, 102–6, 112, 124, 134, 137, 244, 265 property, 26, 52, 57, 58, 74, 79, 83, 103, 115, 352, 362, 374, 394 competition and, 286 intellectual, see intellectual property land, see landowners taxes on, 121, 123 as theft, 110–11 protectionism, 108, 258–59, 278, 306, 353–56, 364 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The (Weber), 47 Protestant Reformation, 40–41, 47, 49 Protestants, 48, 49 public hearings, 389–90 Putnam, Robert, 227, 334 Quakers, 16–17, 230 race, see ethnicity and race race to the bottom, 358–60 railroad industry, 85, 87, 99, 101 Ramanathan, Swati, 312 Ramcharan, Rodney, 72 ranchers, 9–10, 11 Rand, Ayn, 80, 391 R&D, 183–84 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), xix, 277 Rauh, Joshua, 192 Rawls, John, 115 Raymundo, Raul, xxiii, xxvi Reagan, Ronald, 165, 194, 232 Reeves, Richard, 224 Reformation, 40–41, 47, 49 regulation(s), 103–5, 107–8, 165, 172 antitrust, 202 of banks, 358–60 communities and, 285, 304, 306–7, 341, 357 competition and, 165, 387–88 deregulation, 165–67, 194, 197 harmonization of, 354–63, 365, 371 relief efforts, 131–33, 135 see also safety nets religion, 49, 51, 64 Protestant Reformation, 40–41, 47, 49 Protestants, 48, 49 see also Catholic Church Republicans, 235–36 residential sorting, 144, 177, 222, 227, 314 by income, 307–9 race and immigration and, 229–31 resources, policies on, 365 Resurrection Project, xxiii–xxvi Ritter, Jay, 201 Robinson, James, 94 Rockefeller, John D., 84–91, 98, 103, 104, 108, 200 Rodgers, Daniel, 334 Rodrik, Dani, 364–65, 371 Roman Republic, 58 Romney, Mitt, 235 Roosevelt, Franklin, 134–37, 156 Roosevelt, Theodore, 106 Rosen, Sherwin, 193 Russell, John, 95 Russia, 97, 287, 292, 354, 369 wealthy in, 111 Saez, Emmanuel, 191 safety nets, 139, 173, 290 caregivers and, 319–20 community and, 127–38, 318–25 in Europe, 156 government support in, 322–24 health care, see health care paying for, 324–25 for peasants, 37–38 in U.K., 155–56 in U.S., 133–34, 156, 157–58, 320–21, 324 welfare, 129, 137, 148, 158, 230 Salam, Reihan, 235 Sandel, Michael, 389–90 Sanders, Bernie, 214 Satyanath, Shaker, 112 schools, see education and schools Schumpeter, Joseph, 203, 379 Schwartz, Heather, 225–26 science, 21 “Second Coming, The” (Yeats), 141 Second Federal Bank, xxv SeeClickFix, 311–12 Sen, Amartya, 287 Shakespeare, William, 30 Shapiro, Jesse, 332–33 Share Our Wealth Society plan, 136 Shleifer, Andrei, 197 Sinclair, Upton, 104 Singapore, 247, 291, 318 Singh, Manish, 336 Singh, Manmohan, 270 Siuai people, 9 smartphones, 175, 178, 182–83 Smith, Adam, 17, 64, 77, 80–81, 83, 84, 87, 91, 105, 200 Smoot Hawley Act, 138 socialism, 132, 138, 145–47, 168, 250 in India, 267–69, 391 socializing the young, 5–7 social media, 330, 354, 386 social relationships, 7–8 social safety nets, see safety nets Social Security, 134–38, 187, 241, 324 Sokoloff, Kenneth, 72, 96 sorting, see residential sorting South Sea Company, 68, 69–70 sovereignty, 349–72 and controlling flows, 351–54 and harmonization of regulation, 354–63 Soviet Union, 91, 145–47, 153–54, 250, 251, 267, 287, 367 Spain, 148, 162, 169, 237, 238, 353–54 Spence, Michael, 234 stagflation, 163 Standard Oil, 86, 99, 103, 107 Stanford marshmallow test, 222–23 state, xiii, xv, xvii–xviii, xx–xxi, xxvii–xxviii, 25–27, 50, 139, 140, 172, 283–86, 304, 393 anti-state ideology and, 176 buffers against market volatility, 127–38 Church and, 45–46 community and, 303–25, 345–46 constitutionally limited, 52–74, 83 definition of, xiii–xiv growth of, 145 international responsibilities and, 363–67, 372, 397 laissez-faire and, 77–78, 81, 83 markets and, 304 relief efforts from, 131–33 separation from community, xiv–xv strong but limited, rise of, 51–75 sustainable financing for, 65–71 steel industries, 87, 99, 122, 185, 186, 253, 261, 338, 364, 366 European Coal and Steel Community, 150 student loans, 317–18 suffrage, see voting, suffrage Summers, Larry, 197 Supreme Court, U.S., 103, 384 Sweden, 138 Swift, Taylor, 193 Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 66 Tarbell, Ida, 103, 200 tariffs, 61, 63–64, 80–81, 100, 108, 138, 150–51, 164, 181–83, 217, 242, 258–59, 271, 277, 352–53, 356, 363, 364, 366, 371 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 146, 150, 353 Tawney, Richard, 34–35, 46 taxes, 59, 61–62, 102–5, 156–57, 163–64, 206, 308–9, 364 for education, 121, 123 property, 121, 123 tax holidays, 341 tax incentives, 345 on towns, 59–60 universal basic income and, 322–23 tax preparation, 179, 180 Tea Party movement, 239–41, 242, 333 technology, xii, xxviii, 117, 160–62, 175–76, 283, 284, 286, 287 automation in, 18, 84, 179, 180, 284 China and, 261–62, 278 community and, 119, 335, 344–45 disruptive change from, xii–xiii, xix education and, 122–23 feudal community and, 41–42 financial crises and, 118 incomes and, 188–94 job losses from, xii, xviii public anxiety about, 116–18 winner-take-most effects of, 191–94 see also Industrial Revolution; Information and Communications Technology revolution Teles, Steven, 205 Thatcher, Margaret, 165–66, 194 three pillars, xiii, 25–27, 393, 394 balance between, xvii–xviii, 175, 394 see also community; markets; state Tiananmen Square protests, 250–51 Tiv people, 7–8 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 3–4 totalitarian regimes, 97 trade, 62–64, 80–81, 143, 146, 149–51, 154, 160, 164–65, 172, 181, 245, 271, 283, 307, 352–53, 363, 371 “beggar thy neighbor” policies and, 364 communications costs and, 181, 182 communities and, xviii–xx, 335, 352 European, with Muslim lands, 36 ICT revolution and, 143–44, 173, 181–88 incomes and, 188–94 protectionism and, 108, 258–59, 278, 306, 353–56, 364 tariffs and, see tariffs transportation costs and, 181–82 Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS), 362 training and socializing the young, 5–7 transactions: in communities, 3, 8–9, 10–11 market, 3, 4 Trotsky, Leon, 90 Trump, Donald, 235 Truly Disadvantaged, The (Wilson), 230 Turkey, xix, 97, 167, 190, 245 Uber, 196 Unified Payments Interface (UPI), 386 unions, 165, 198, 206, 360, 361 United Kingdom, 173 Companies Act in, 377 health care in, 156 income in, 191, 192 in Opium Wars, 349–50 safety net in, 155–56 United Nations, 367 United States, 143, 145, 149, 246, 298 African Americans in, see African Americans agriculture in, 184 China and, 278 Civil War in, 74, 93, 133–34 competitive market in, 98–105 Constitution of, 71 diversity in population of, 134 financial crises in, 87–88, 118 GI Bill in, 156, 157 Gilded Age in, 87 gold standard in, 100 government debt in, 324 growth of, 148, 162 health care in, 158, 203 hegemony of, 148, 367–69 immigration and, 137, 159–60, 292 Industrial Revolution in, 121 manufacturing in, 184–85 Marshall Plan of, 149–51, 365 in postwar period, 148 presidential election of 2016, 235, 236, 333, 354 safety net in, 133–34, 157–58, 320–21, 324 schools in, 119–25, 127, 190–91, 233–34, 317 South of, 72, 74 Supreme Court, 103, 384 voting rights in, 92–93, 96 Western settlers in, 72, 99–100 universal basic income (UBI), 322–23 universities, see colleges and universities University of Chicago, xxiii, xxvi, 87, 124–25, 164, 290–91 University of Rochester, 223 usury: Catholic Church and, 34–42, 44–46, 49 favorable public attitudes toward, 44 intellectual support for ban on, 39–40 prohibition on, 31–32 rationale for proscribing, 32–34 values: community, and tolerance for markets, 390–92 conflict over, 234–36 Virginia, 58 Voigtländer, Nico, 112 Volcker, Paul, 163 Voth, Hans-Joachim, 112 voting and suffrage, xxvii, 26, 79, 105 extension of franchise, 91–98 wages, see income and wages Wallis, John, 97 Washington Post, 108 wealth, 111, 395–96 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 80 weavers, 18–19, 116, 188 Weber, Max, 47, 38 Weingast, Barry, 70, 97–98 welfare, 129, 137, 148, 158, 230 Wellman, Andrew, 331 Whigs, 67, 95 William of Orange, 67 Wilson, William Junius, 230, 231 Wilson, Woodrow, 125 Wolf, Martin, 355 workers, 75, 78, 79, 87, 89, 97, 127–28 education and capabilities of, 313–18 insurance plans for, 132 rights of, 360–61 strikes by, 102 unions for, 165, 198, 206, 360, 361 see also income and wages; jobs working at a distance, 219, 220 World Bank, 151, 253–54 World Trade Organization (WTO), 353, 356, 362 World Values Survey, 297 World War I, 103, 112, 124 World War II, xxvii, 138, 139, 140, 143, 145, 146, 155–57, 210, 243, 367 Marshall Plan and, 149–51, 365 postwar period, 148–54 Wulf, Julie, 193 Xi Jinping, 261, 278 Xiushui Market, 255 Yeats, W.


pages: 543 words: 157,991

All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McLean

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, break the buck, buy and hold, call centre, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, diversification, Dr. Strangelove, Exxon Valdez, fear of failure, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, Home mortgage interest deduction, interest rate swap, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, laissez-faire capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Maui Hawaii, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Northern Rock, Own Your Own Home, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, stock buybacks, tail risk, Tax Reform Act of 1986, telemarketer, the long tail, too big to fail, value at risk, zero-sum game

James Bothwell Author of two key General Accounting Office reports, one criticizing Fannie and Freddie and the other calling for regulation of derivatives. Charles Bowsher Head of the GAO from 1981 to 1996. Bothwell’s ally. Phil Gramm Chairman of the Senate banking committee from 1989 to 2003. Opposed regulation of derivatives. The “Gramm” in Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the law that abolished the Glass-Steagall Act. Jim Leach Chair of the House banking committee from 1995 to 2001. Criticized Fannie and Freddie. The “Leach” in Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Department of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo HUD secretary from 1997 to 2001. Crossed swords with Jim Johnson. Increased Fannie and Freddie’s affordable housing goals.

See Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fink, Larry CMOs developed by Congressional testimony by MBSs developed by First Allance Mortgage Company (FAMCO) First Boston First Franklin First-lien mortgages First Magnus FirstPlus Financial First Union Fitch Ratings Fleming, Greg and Kronthal Merrill CDO exposure, researching FM Watch Fons, Jerome Foreclosures, defaults, rise in Forster, Andrew AIG subprime exposure, knowledge of CDOs, multisector Frank, Barney Freddie Mac Bush war against conforming mortgage market creation/functions of Paulson approach to crisis restatement of earnings subprime portfolio of See also Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fremont Investment & Loan Friedman, Steve Froba, Mark Frost, Al AIG subprime exposure, knowledge of multisector CDOs Fuld, Dick Full Spectrum Gamboa, John Gauss, Carl Fredrich Gaussian distribution Geissinger, John Geithner, Timothy during collapse derivatives regulatory efforts as N.Y. Fed president pro-derivatives position subprimes, concerns about General Re, AIG deal investigation Gensler, Gary Gibson, Lang Gibson Greetings Gilleran, James Ginnie Mae, creation/functions of Gissinger, Drew Glass-Steagall Act (1933) Global economy Basel Committee rules economic crises (1994-1998) economic crises (2007) Gnaizda, Robert Goddard, Tom Goldfarb, David Goldman Sachs Abacus CDOs ABS index under Blankfein CEO compensation collateral calls to AIG Corzine ouster establishment of going public honesty, belief in Hudson Mezzanine Internet crash, impact on Long Beach deals mortgage department operations New Century deals under Paulson post-bailout scandal profitability of risk management Rubin at SEC fraud charges Senate Subcommittee hearing survival tactics synthetic CDO deals TARP payback Goldschmid, Harvey Goldstein, Matthew Gonzalez, Henry Gorelick, Jamie Gorton, Gary Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) crisis of 2007 critics of federal subsidy to government bailout investor trust in losses (2007) losses (2008) MBSs outstanding volume (1989) MBSs guaranteed by Paulson approach to crisis and post-bailout legislation Wall St. competition with See also Fannie Mae; Freddie Mac; Ginnie Mae Gramlich, Edward Gramm, Phil Gramm, Wendy Gramm-Leach-Bliley Law Grasso, Richard Greenberg, Alan “Ace,” Greenberg, Jeffrey Greenberg, Maurice R.


pages: 505 words: 161,581

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Ada Lovelace, AltaVista, Apple Newton, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, book value, business logic, butterfly effect, call centre, Carl Icahn, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, COVID-19, crack epidemic, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, digital map, disinformation, disintermediation, drop ship, dumpster diving, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, fixed income, General Magic , general-purpose programming language, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global pandemic, income inequality, index card, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet Archive, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, Kwajalein Atoll, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, money market fund, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Potemkin village, public intellectual, publish or perish, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, rolodex, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, SoftBank, software as a service, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, technoutopianism, the payments system, transaction costs, Turing test, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Y2K

The team hired the law firm Dechert Price & Rhoads to take on these regulatory issues, but even with that support, the team was up against regulatory headwinds. The fact that X.com’s CEO had committed to a revolution in finance—integrating all types of financial services under one roof—made matters more difficult. Revolution and regulations didn’t mix well. Musk wanted to fuse retail banking with investment banking, for example, which the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 expressly forbade. Only in April 1999 was legislation introduced to allow the two entities to mix, and it would still be months before President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law. To Musk and others, laws made during the Great Depression’s bust didn’t suit the digital economy’s boom.

In one sense, Musk was attempting a higher dive with X.com than Bezos had with Amazon.com. Amazon.com wasn’t barred by law from selling books and CDs side by side. But the government stood in the way of X.com simultaneously selling banking and brokerage products, at least until late 1999 when Congress repealed much of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. Outside of those specific rules, each of X.com’s finance offerings was heavily regulated—and to a regulator, Musk’s financial superstore sounded like a nightmare. To Musk, money merely represented “[entries] in a database.” X.com was just uniting the world’s “entries” into one database—and cutting out the profit-seeking intermediaries.


pages: 193 words: 11,060

Ethics in Investment Banking by John N. Reynolds, Edmund Newell

accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, discounted cash flows, financial independence, Glass-Steagall Act, index fund, invisible hand, junk bonds, light touch regulation, margin call, Michael Milken, moral hazard, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, stem cell, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, two and twenty, zero-sum game

., 107 deontological ethics, 34–6 stockholders, 41–2 trust, 40–1 derivative, 27, 30 dharma, 63–4 Dharma Indexes, 57 discounted cash flow (DCF), 27 discount rate, 27 discriminatory behaviour, 129–31 distribution, 15, 35, 66 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 25 dotcom crisis, 94 dotcom stocks, 17 Dow Jones, 55–6 downgrade credit, 17, 76 defined, 76 multi-notch, 17, 76 duties, see rights vs. duties duty-based ethics, 66–8 duty of care, 105 Dynegy, 8 Earnings Before Interest Tax Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA), 27 economic free-ride, 5, 21 economic reality, 137 effective tax rate (ETR), 140 emissions trading, 14 employees, compensation for, 135 Encyclical, 52 engagement letters, 122–3, 159 Enron, 8, 12, 17, 20, 76 enterprise value (EV), 27 entertainment adult, 56 corporate, 128–9, 159 sexist, 159 equity deferred, 5 private, 2–3, 12, 110 equity research, 88–9, 113–15 insider dealing and, 83–4 ethical behaviour, 38–9 Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG), 53, 58 ethical investment banking, 145–7 ethical standards, 47 Index ethics consequentialist, 36–7, 42 deontological, 34–6 duty-based, 66–8 exceptions and, effects of, 89–90 financial crisis and, 4–8 in investment banking, 1 in moral philosophy, 1 performance and, 8–10 rights-based, 66–8 virtue, 37–8, 43–4 see also business ethics; Code of Ethics Ethics Helpline, 48 Ethics of Executive Remuneration: a Guide for Christian Investors, The, 135 European Commission, 89 European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), 17 exceptions, 89 external regulations, 19, 31 fair dealing, 45 Fannie Mae, 43 Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, 43 Federal National Mortgage Association, 43 fees, 115–18 advisory, 107, 116 restructuring of, 121–2 2 and 20, 13 fiduciary duties, 27–8 financial advisers, 109 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), 26 financial crisis, business ethics during CDOs during, 90 CDSs during, 90 ethics during, 4–8, 12–34 investment banking and, necessity of, 14–15 market capitalism, 12–14 necessity of, 14–15 non-failure of, 21 positive impact of, 18 problems with, 15–17 reality of, 16 speculation in, 91 173 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 76 Financial Policy Committee (FPC), 25 financial restructuring, 119–20 Financial Services Modernization Act, 19 Financial Stability Oversight Council, 25 firm price, 67 Four Noble Truths, 57 Freddie Mac, 43 free-ride defined, 26 economic, 5, 21 in investment banking, 24 FTSE, 55 Fuhs, William, 8 General Board of Pension and Health Benefits, 54, 59 German FlowTex, 12 Gift Aid, 141 Glass–Steagall Act, 19 Global Settlement, 113 golden parachute arrangements, 133 Golden Rule, 35, 150 Goldman Sachs, 7, 16, 45, 63 Business Principles, 45–6 charges against, 78 Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, 45, 68 Code of Ethics for, 47–8 Goldsmith, Lord, 27 government, 59 business ethics within, 60 guarantees of, 24 intervention by, 22–3 government bonds, 23 greed, 4–5 Green, Stephen, 8–9 gross revenues, 59 Hedge fund behaviour of, 12 failure of, 21 funds for, raising, 2 investment fund, as type of, 3 rules for, 133 174 Index Hennessy, Peter, 42 Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), 140–1 high returns, 28, 110 Hinduism, 56–7 Hobbes, Thomas, 36 hold-out value, 120–1 honesty, see trust hospitality, 128–9 hot IPOs, 94 hot-stock IPOs, 94 HSBC, 9, 28, 152 Ijara, 55 implicit government guarantee, 22–3 Independent Commission on Banking, 25 inequitable rewards, 6 informal authorisation, 81, 98 Initial Public Offering (IPO), 7 of dotcom stocks, 17 hot, allocation of, 94 hot-stock, 94 insider dealings, 83–4, 155 equity research and, 83–4 ethics of, 66, 70 laws on, 84 legal prohibition on, 82 legal restrictions on, 10 legal status of, 82 legislation on, 74 restrictions on, 83 rules of, 82, 90 securities, 70 insider trading, 12 insolvency, 24–5 institutional greed, 4 integrated bank, 28 integrated investment banking, 2, 30, 67, 106, 108 interest payments, 59–60 interest rate, 60 internal ethical issues, 126–43 abuse of resources, 127–8 corporate entertainment, 128–9 discriminatory behaviour, 129–31 hospitality, 128–9 management behaviour, 131–2 remuneration, 132–9 tax, 139–41 internal review process, managing, 134 investment banking, 94 casino capitalism in, 3 Code of Ethics in, 47–9 commercial and, convergence of, 20–1 defined, 2 ethics in, 1 free-ride in, 24 integrated, 2, 30, 67, 108, 112 in market position, role of, 65–6 moral reasoning and, 38 necessity of, 14–15 non-failure of, 19–20 positive impact of, 18 recommendations in, 94–7 sector exclusions for, 58–9 investment banking adviser, 121 investment banking behaviours, 3 investment banking ethics committee, 151–3 investment bubbles, 95 investment fund, 3 investment grade bonds, 118 investment grade securities, 76 investment recommendations, 94 investments personal account, 128, 156 principal, 15, 28 proprietary, 29 IRS, 140 Islam, 54–5 Islamic banking, 6, 54–5 Jewish Scriptures, 34 Joint Advisory Committee on the Ethics of Investment (JACEI), 54 JP Morgan, 16 Judaism, 56 junior bankers, 139 junior debt, 118 junk bond, 118 “just war” approach, 38 Index Kant, Immanuel, 35, 69 karma, 57 Kerviel, Jérôme, 44, 80 Krishna, 57 Law Society, 19 Lazard International, 9 leading adviser, 41 Leeson, Nick, 12, 44, 81 legislative change, 25–6 Lehman Brothers, 5–6, 15, 21, 23, 31, 43, 76 lenders, 26, 131 lending, 59–60 leverage levels of, 25 over, 75, 80, 119 Levin, Carl, 17, 63–4, 68 light-touch regulations, 4 liquidity market, 95 orderly, 25 withdrawal of, 24 loan-to-own, 80 Locke, John, 34 London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR), 23 London School of Economics, 43 London Stock Exchange, 65, 71, 84 long-term values, 147 Lords Grand Committee, 27 LTCM, 23 lying, 101 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 38 management behaviour, 131–2 margin-calls, 121 market abuse, 14, 70, 75, 86–8, 155 market announcements, 88 market behaviours, 74 market capitalism, 12–14 market communications, 88 market liquidity, 95 market maker defined, 65–7 investment bank as, 66 primary activities of, 65 175 market manipulation, 75 market position, role of, 104 market rate, 117 markets advisory, 73 capital, 73, 117–18, 158 communication within, 88 duties to support, 71–2 primary, 103 qualifying, 70, 82 secondary, 103 market trading, 41 Maxwell, Robert, 12 Meir, Asher, 56 mergers and acquisitions (M&As), 41, 79 Merkel, Angela, 93 Merrill Lynch, 8, 16 Methodism, 53 Methodist Central Finance Board, 59 Methodist Church, 54 Midrash, 56 Milken, Michael, 12 Mill, John Stuart, 36 Mirror Newspaper Group, 12 misleading behaviours, 86, 105 mis-selling of goods and services, 77–9, 155 modern capitalism, 54 moral-free zones, 31 moral hazard, 22, 70 moral philosophy, 1 moral reasoning, 38 moral relativism, 38–9, 49, 68 Morgan Stanley, 47 multi-notch downgrade, 17, 79 natural law, 34, 37 natural virtues, 37 necessity of investment banking, 14–15 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 65, 71 New York Times, 8 Noble Eightfold Path, 57 Nomura Group Code of Ethics, 47 normal market trading, 71 Northern Rock, 43 176 Index offer price, 64 off-market trading, 71–3, 90, 155 Olis, Jamie, 8 on-market trading, 70–1 oppressive regimes, 61 option value, 121 Orderly Liquidation Authority, 25 orderly liquidity, 25 out-of-pocket expenses, 127–8 over-leverage, 75, 80, 119, 158 overvalued securities, 155 patronage culture, 131, 142 Paulson, Henry M., 86 Paulson & Co., 78 “people-based” activity, 67 P:E ratio, 27 performance, 8–10 personal abuse, 159 personal account investments, 128, 156 personal account trading, 128 personal conflicts of interest, 45 pitching, 102, 159 Plato, 37 practical issues, 110–15 competitors, relationships with, 113 equity research, 113–15 pitching, 111 sell-side advisers, 111–13 pre-IPO financing, 110 prescriptive regulations, 31, 145 price tension, 79, 113 primary market, 103 prime-brokerage, 2 principal investment, 15, 28 private equity, 2–3, 12, 110 private trading, 94 Project Merlin, 133, 141 promises, 100–1 proprietary investment, 29 proprietary trading, 15, 25, 66, 150, 155 Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), 26 public ownership, bonus pools in, 136–9 “pump and dump” strategy, 86 qualifying instruments, 70, 87 qualifying markets, 70, 82 quality-adjusted life year (QALY), 36 Quantitative Easing (QE), 23 Queen Elizabeth II, 42 Qu’ran, 54 rated debt, 77 rates attrition, 132 discount, 27 interest, 60 market, 117 tax, 140 rating agencies, 76 Rawls, John, 35, 136 recognised exchanges, 71 Regal Petroleum, 84 regulations banking, 16 compliance with, 28 external, 19, 31 light-touch, 4 prescriptive, 31, 145 regulatory changes and, 18–20 securities, 114 self, and impact on legislation, 19 regulatory compliance, 18 religion, business ethics in, 51–62 Buddhism, 56 Christianity, 52–4 Governments, 59 Hinduism, 56–7 interest payments, 59–60 Islam, 54–5 Judaism, 56 lending, 59–60 thresholds, 60 usury, 59–60 remuneration, 132–9 bonus pools in public ownership and, 136–9 claiming credit, 134 ethical issues with, 142–3 internal review process, managing, 134 1 Timothy 6:10, 135–6 Index research, 156 resources, abuse of, 127–8 restricted creditors, 120 restructuring of fees, 121–2 financial, 119–20 syndication and, 118–22 retail banks, 16 returns, 28, 156 Revised Code of Ethics, 47 right livelihood, 57 rights-based ethics, 66–8 rights vs. duties advisory vs. trading/capital markets, 73 conflict between, reconciling, 68–70 duty-based ethics, 66–8 off-market trading, ethical standards to, 71–2 on-market trading, ethical standards in, 70–1 opposing views of, 63–74 reconciling conflict between, 68–70 rights-based ethics, 66–8 Roman Catholic Church, 52 Royal Dutch Shell, 85 Sarbanes–Oxley Act, 20 Schwarzman, Stephen, 20 scope of ethical issues, 7–8 secondary market, 103 sector exclusions for investment banking, 58–9 securities investment grade, 76 issuing, 103–5 overvalued, 155 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 7, 16 Goldman Sachs, charges against, 78 rating agencies, review by, 77 short-selling, review of, 96–7 securities insider dealing, 70 securities mis-selling, 77–9 securities regulations, 114 self-regulation, 19 sell recommendation, 115 177 sell-side advisers, 107, 111–13 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 46 senior debt, 118 sexist entertainment, 159 shareholders, 27–9 shares, deferred, 133 Shariah finance, 55 short-selling, 94–7, 154–5 Smith, Adam, 14, 35–6 social cohesion, 53 socially responsible investment (SRI), 56 Société Générale, 44, 80 solidarity, 53 Soros, George, 17 South Sea Bubble, 90 sovereign debt, 17 speculation, 91–4, 155 in financial crisis, 93 traditional views of, 91–3 speculative casino capitalism, 16, 91 spread, 21 stabilisation, 89 stock allocation, 94–7 stockholders, 41–2 stocks, dotcom, 17 Strange, Susan, 43 strategic issues with business ethics, 30–1 syndication, 119 and restructuring, 118–22 systemic risk, 24–5 Takeover Panel, 109 Talmud, 56 taxes, 139–41 tax optimisation, 158 tax rates, 140 tax structuring, 140 Terra Firma Capital Partners, 79, 112 Theory of Moral Sentiments, The (Smith), 14 3iG FCI Practitioners’ Report, 51 thresholds, 60 1 Timothy 6:10, 135–6 178 Index too big to fail concept, 21–7 ethical duties, and implicit Government guarantee, 22–3 ethical implications of, 26–7 in government, 22–3 insolvency, systemic risk and, 24–5 legislative change, 25–6 Lehman, failure of, 23 systemic risk, 24–5 toxic financial products, 5 trading abusive, 93 emissions, 14 insider, 12 market, 41 normal market, 71 off-market, 71–83, 90, 155 on-market, 70–1 personal account, 128 private, 94 proprietary, 15, 25, 66, 150, 155 unauthorised, 7 “trash and cash” strategy, 86 Travellers, 19 Treasury Select Committee, 26 Trinity Church, 53 Trouble with Markets, The (Bootle), 4 trust, 40, 53 trusted adviser, 108–9, 125 truth, 101–5 bait and switch, 102–3 misleading vs. lying, 101 securities, issuing, 103–5 2 and 20 fee, 13 UBS Investment Bank, 9 unauthorised trading, 7, 80–1, 155 unethical behaviour, 68 UK Alternative Investment Market, 89 UK Business Growth Fund, 133 UK Code of Practice, 141 UK Independent Banking Commission, 4, 22 United Methodist Church, 54, 59 United Methodist Investment Strategy Statement, 59 US Federal Reserve, 24, 25 US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 4 US Open, 126 US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 64, 73 US Treasury Department, 132 universal banks, 2, 21, 28, 67 untoward movement, 85 usury, 59–60 utilitarian, 84 utilitarian ethics, 49, 84, 139 values, 9, 46, 119–21, 148 Vedanta, 57 victimless crime, 82 virtue ethics, 37–8, 43–4 virtues, 9, 34 virtuous behaviours, 37 Vishnu, 57 Volcker, Paul, 25 Volcker Rule, 2, 25 voting shareholders, 29 Wall Street, 12, 19, 53 Wall Street Journal, 20 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 14 Wesley, John, 53 Wharf, Canary, 18 Williams, Rowan, 53 Wimbledon, 127 WorldCom, 12, 17, 20, 76 write-off, 80 zakat, 55 zero-sum games, 118–22


pages: 305 words: 69,216

A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent Into Depression by Richard A. Posner

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, business cycle, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, debt deflation, diversified portfolio, equity premium, financial deregulation, financial intermediation, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, illegal immigration, laissez-faire capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, savings glut, shareholder value, short selling, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, transaction costs, very high income

It failed to take timely and coherent measures to check the downturn. The seeds of failure were sown in the movement to reduce the regulation of banking and credit, which began in the 1970s. They germinated during the Clinton Administration, when the housing bubble began and the deregulation of banking culminated in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (which had separated commercial banking from investment banking) and it was decided not to bring the new financial instruments, in particular credit-default swaps, under regulation even to the limited extent of moving trading in swaps to exchanges, which would have given the public information about the scope, risks, and value of these instruments.


pages: 199 words: 64,272

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

Alan Greenspan, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, back-to-the-land, bank run, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, break the buck, card file, central bank independence, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Edmond Halley, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index card, invention of movable type, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, life extension, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, side hustle, Silicon Valley, software is eating the world, Steven Levy, the new new thing, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs

Some details of the early growth of the Reserve Fund come from the Wall Street Journal obituary of Henry Brown, “Co-Inventor of Money-Market Account Helped Serve Small Investors’ Interest,” by Stephen Miller. Figures on the growth of money-market funds and their role in buying commercial paper come from “The Road to Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act,” by Arthur Wilmarth, published in the Wake Forest Journal of Business and Intellectual Property Law, and “The Evolution of the U.S. Commercial Paper Market Since 1980,” by Mitchell A. Post, published in the Federal Reserve Bulletin. Citi’s invention of asset-backed commercial paper is described in The Growth of Shadow Banking, by Matthias Thiemann.


pages: 603 words: 182,826

Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership by Andro Linklater

agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, British Empire, business cycle, colonial rule, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, electricity market, facts on the ground, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, light touch regulation, market clearing, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mortgage debt, Northern Rock, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, refrigerator car, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, three-masted sailing ship, too big to fail, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, ultimatum game, wage slave, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons, working poor

In the last ten years before the contraceptive pill was legalized in 1965, almost forty million babies were born, the most fertile decade in American history. The distinctive culture that these new Americans grew into was shaped by the force that Warren Harding had first identified in the 1920s, the industrial home. Regulation of the hybrid consumer economy, notably through the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated retail banking and mortgage lending from investment banking, kept house prices roughly in line with incomes from the 1940s to 1970s. But a notable change took place during the period. At the end of the Second World War, almost half of all Americans rented their homes; three decades later almost two thirds of them owned the place they lived in, either completely or with finance borrowed from one of more than three thousand savings and loans associations—cooperative financial institutions, equivalent to British building societies, that were dedicated to providing mortgages for their members.

Monetarism, which aimed to control inflation by regulating the supply of money, both cash and credit, gave rise to the austere banking policies pursued by Paul Volcker, Greenspan’s predecessor in charge of the Federal Reserve in the early 1980s. Volcker pushed interest rates to Himalayan heights in order to bring inflation under control. But this was accompanied by deregulation of a range of industries from airlines and telephones to natural gas and savings and loans associations until the finance industry, still regulated by the Glass-Steagall Act separating investment from commercial banking, was left as the last important holdout. The fate of the deregulated S&L associations, once famous as the safe “thrifts,” now trying to operate as credit-generating banks, might have given pause for thought. Caught in a competitive spiral of risky loans, poor management, and inadequate funds, almost a third of them became bankrupt, and rescuing the industry cost almost nine billion dollars of taxpayers’ money.


pages: 7,371 words: 186,208

The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times by Giovanni Arrighi

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business logic, business process, classic study, colonial rule, commoditize, Corn Laws, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, double entry bookkeeping, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial independence, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, informal economy, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, late capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, means of production, Meghnad Desai, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Peace of Westphalia, post-Fordism, profit maximization, Project for a New American Century, RAND corporation, reserve currency, scientific management, spice trade, Strategic Defense Initiative, Suez canal 1869, the market place, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, Yom Kippur War

One of his first decisions as president was the suspension of the dollars convertibility into gold, which destroyed what was left of the international gold standard. He then mobilized his government in the promotion and management of national economic recovery and overhauled the US banking system. One of the most important reforms — the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 — separated commercial and investment banking and thereby dealt a fatal blow to the House of Morgan’s domination of US financial markets (Frieden 1987: 54-5). 288 THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY The break with /mutefinance was all but finalized in July 1933 when Roosevelt lashed out at “old fetishes of so-called international bankers” and sabotaged the London Economic Conference, which was attempting to restore some order in the regulation of world money.

., 296-98 galore d2’ Fiandm, 150 galore d2’ mercato, 150 galore d2’ trafego, 150 Galiani, Abbé, 182 Gallagher, John, 53-54 Gang of Four, 344, 349, 358, 360 GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs), 73, 286, 353, 366 General Economic History (Weber), 12 General Motors, 355 Genoa: accumulation strategies, 129; Africa and, 124, 152; Age of Genoese, 128; alienation of, 93; Aragon and, 118-19; bourgeoisies in, 186; business networks, 218; capital in, 125, 226-27, 378; capitalism, 12, 84, 111-12, 114, 115-16,118,125,151-52,153,154, 340; Catalan and, 1 18-19; city states sub-systems in, 38; as city-state, 376; Compagnia delle Indie Orientali, 156; conspicuous consumption in, 139; economic freedom and, 252; fairs, 83; financial expansions, 129, 174; high finance in, 119, 155; Iberian peninsula and, 120, 122-24, 125, 128-29; Liguria and, 112-13; as marketplace, 131; Mediterranean routes of, 121f; mercantile expansion of, 1 13; monetary reform in, 115; nation of, 133; as non-territorial network, 83-84; overaccumulation in, 118; political life in, 114-15; production and, 183, 185; protection costs and, 148-49, 154, 155, 156; regime of accumulation, 149, 151, 153, 154-55, 160, 182, 183, 194, 222, 223-25; rule over European high finance, 128; sea trade in, 91-92; space-of flows, 136f, 217-18; state-making and, 149-50, 152, 153-54; stock markets, 142; surplus capital in, 1 13; system of accumulation, 83; systemic cycles of accumulation, 6-7, 111-29, 148, 153, 175-76; trade, 89, 1 16-18; wars and war-making, 92, 149-50, 152, 153-54; withdrawal from commerce, 6 Genoese-Iberian complex, 194, 213 Germany: banking in, 274; Britain and, 60; business communities in, 262-63, 275-76, 299, 303; capitalism in, 296, 298; England and, 17; Imperial Germany, 273-74, 276-77, 299, 303, 345, 346; industrialization, 62; nation of, 134; Nazi Germany, 66, 283, 346; territorial expansion, 63; territorialism, 61; trajectory of, 343; US and, 60, 295-96; as world power, 62 Gerstacher, Carl A., 83 Gillard, L., 83, 126, 131-32, 134 Gills, Barry, 8, 11 Gilpin, Robert, 74, 308, 316 Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 287 Glorious Revolution (1688), 254 Glyn, Andrew, 307 gold, 330-31 gold, Italian, 134 gold standard, 72, 73, 266, 279, 281, 287, 288, 308 Golden Age of Capitalism, 306-7 Goldstein, Joshua, 7-8 Gordon, David, 9 grain shipments, 135, 136f Gramsci, Antonio, 29-30 Great Depression (1873-96), 167-68, 176, 178, 277, 294, 296, 301 Great Discoveries, 110, 111, 125, 256, 259, 377 Great Mutiny (1857), 169 Great Rebellion (1857), 257 Grenada, 327 Gresham, Thomas, 134, 195, 196-97 410 THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY Großbanken, 274 Group of Seven, 342, 350, 365 Group of Ten, 322, 323 Gurr, T.


pages: 252 words: 72,473

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Bernie Madoff, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carried interest, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crowdsourcing, data science, disinformation, electronic logging device, Emanuel Derman, financial engineering, Financial Modelers Manifesto, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, Internet of things, late fees, low interest rates, machine readable, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price discrimination, quantitative hedge fund, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, real-name policy, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Sharpe ratio, statistical model, tech worker, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working poor

That made us feel safe, or at least safer. I remember a gala event to celebrate the architects of the system that would soon crash. The firm welcomed Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, and Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary and Goldman Sachs executive. Rubin had pushed for a 1999 revision of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. This removed the glass wall between banking and investment operations, which facilitated the orgy of speculation over the following decade. Banks were free to originate loans (many of them fraudulent) and sell them to their customers in the form of securities. That wasn’t so unusual and could be considered a service they did for their customers.


pages: 300 words: 78,475

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington

Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 13, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, call centre, carried interest, citizen journalism, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, David Brooks, do what you love, extreme commuting, Exxon Valdez, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, housing crisis, immigration reform, invisible hand, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, late fees, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Journalism, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, post-work, proprietary trading, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Savings and loan crisis, single-payer health, smart grid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, winner-take-all economy, working poor, Works Progress Administration

But on a nuts-and-bolts level, the three things we absolutely must do are: Regulate all derivatives and other exotic “financial instruments” that played such a big part in the meltdown and have turned Wall Street banks into much shadier versions of a Las Vegas casino (at least in Vegas, you know the odds going in). Create a Glass-Steagall Act for the twenty-first century, restoring the Chinese wall between commercial and investment banking. Follow the path of Teddy Roosevelt and break up the big banks. It’s essential to end “too big to fail” in order to ensure that taxpayers are not on the hook next time. Even Alan Greenspan, the oracle of free markets and a longtime cheerleader for banking deregulation, thinks the megabanks are too big.72 In October 2009, he said, “If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big.… So I mean, radical things—you know, break them up.


pages: 306 words: 78,893

After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won't Go Away by Doug Henwood

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, book value, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California energy crisis, capital controls, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital divide, electricity market, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, feminist movement, fulfillment center, full employment, gender pay gap, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, government statistician, greed is good, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Internet Archive, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Mary Meeker, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, Naomi Klein, new economy, occupational segregation, PalmPilot, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rewilding, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, statistical model, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, tech worker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, union organizing, War on Poverty, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

., 169 Ellwood, Wayne, 171 employment intensity of growth, 71 empowerment, 76,163 energy industry, 200—201; 5ee also Enron Enion, 33-36,200-201 Esping-Andersen, Gosta, 139 Esprit, 161,162 eToys, 201 Euro-envy, 7 Europe, slow growth rates, 69 European economic integration, 177 executive pay, 217 family vs. household, 237 fear, value of, 206-207,215-216 federal funds rate, 208 Federal Reserve and class war, 207-211 Survey of Consumer Finances, 118—119 fetishism, 46, 67 fmance economics on, 192—193 global, Americanization of, 217-225 and power, 202—207 stock- vs. bank-centered systems, 218 financialization of everything, 191 financial assets, growth in, 191 financial lifespans, household, 124—125 Financial Markets Center, 127 Fisher, George, 107 Food Stamps, 237 Forfce5 400,119-121 foreign competition, 153 foreign direct investment, 221—222; see also multinational corporations (MNCs) Foreign Policy, 153 Foreman, Dave, 161 Forrester, Viviane, 69 Foucault, Michel, 185 Foundation for Deep Ecology, 161—163 Frank, Tom, 8-9 Friedman, Thomas, 177 fiill employment, 206-207,220 Galbraith,John Kenneth, 213-214 Gates, Bill, 1,177-178 GDP growth, 4—5 distribution of, 88 employment intensity of, 71 and happiness, 168 and human welfare, 61 potential, 47 Gekko, Gordon, 214 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 219 Index General Electric, 164 Gilder, George, 232 as cheerleader, 196 faith in downfallen, 36 intellectual history, 9—14 Gini index, 84, 88-89 global, 131 Glass-Steagall Act, 200 globahzation, 37,145-186 bibliometrics, 145-146 common claims about, 148—154 definitions, 145-148 and inequality, 152—155 localist critiques of, 159-165 MNCs and, 155-159 novelty of, 148-150 place and, 147-148 vs. regionalization, 159 and retreat of state, 150-152 global assembly line, 158 Global Crossing, 197 global ruling class, 174—178 Golden Age myths, 164 Gordon, Robert, 53, 62—63 Gottschalk, Peter, 115 Gramm, Phil, 200-201 Gramm, Wendy, 200-201 Greenhouse, Steven, 38 Greenspan, Alan, 1,45,228 as bubble apologist, 193 on corporate raiders, 214 history of reign, 209 New Economy promoter, 7 on tininess, 14—16 on unemployment, 206,216 gross domestic product.


pages: 264 words: 76,643

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations by David Pilling

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Branko Milanovic, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, financial repression, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mortgage debt, off grid, old-boy network, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peak oil, performance metric, pez dispenser, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, science of happiness, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

For the most part, that meant getting out of the way. From the mid-1980s, states rolled back banking industry regulations, many of them put in place after the 1929 Wall Street crash. In America the separation of investment from commercial banking was steadily eroded until it was abandoned altogether with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. In the mid-1980s London had its Big Bang, which swept away regulations and paved the way for huge financial conglomerates. As in Iceland, banks that had once relied on steady retail depositors for their capital took to the wholesale markets, sucking up and recycling first petro-dollars from the Middle East and then the surplus savings of workers and peasants in booming China.13 A process now known by the hideously ugly term “financialization” took hold.


pages: 253 words: 79,214

The Money Machine: How the City Works by Philip Coggan

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, algorithmic trading, asset-backed security, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, call centre, capital controls, carried interest, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, endowment effect, financial deregulation, financial independence, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, Glass-Steagall Act, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, index fund, intangible asset, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", joint-stock company, junk bonds, labour market flexibility, large denomination, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, pattern recognition, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, technology bubble, time value of money, too big to fail, tulip mania, Washington Consensus, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

The markets proved to be ruthless in withdrawing their money from faltering institutions. That forced them into the arms of the big commercial banks, that had more stable sources of funds from retail depositors. The irony is that, after the crash of 1929, regulators decided it was too risky to let investment and commercial banks be part of the same group. The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 separated the two, so that the funds of ordinary Americans would not be put at risk. The response to the 2007–2008 crisis has been to push the two together again. One further point is worth exploring. The biggest investment banks are all-singing, all-dancing institutions which play almost every role in the financial system.


pages: 708 words: 196,859

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Etonian, Ford Model T, full employment, gentleman farmer, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index card, invisible hand, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, mobile money, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, open economy, plutocrats, price stability, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, rolodex, scientific management, the market place

In the middle of May came the Emergency Relief Act and that same day Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, designed to push agricultural prices higher by controlling production and reducing acreage. The Tennessee Valley Authority was set up to build dams and construct public power plants. The National Industrial Recovery Act was passed in the middle of June to permit price fixing. It also authorized $3.5 billion in public works programs. The Glass-Steagall Act, also passed in the middle of June, divorced commercial and investment banking and guaranteed bank deposits up to a maximum of $2,500, while the Truth-in-Securities Act established disclosure provisions to govern the issue of new securities. The string of measures was a strange mixture of well-meaning steps at social reform, half-baked schemes for quasi-socialist industrial planning, regulation to protect consumers, welfare programs to help the hardest hit, government support for the cartelization of industry, higher wages for some, lower wages for others, on the one hand government pump priming, on the other public economy.

General Motors The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes) Genoa Economic Conference (1922) Germany attempts to rescue economy of austerity program in banking system in and beginnings of World War I and blame for Great Depression and Britain and characteristics of Great Depression class structure in collapse in lending to colonies of Communists in confidence in corruption in and cost of World War I credit in currency in and customs union and Dawes Committee/Plan default on debts by devaluation in domestic policy in economy of and events leading to World War I foreign borrowing by foreign exchange in foreigners in French relations with funding/financing of World War I in GDP of gold reserves of gold standard in and images of Germans impact of Great Crash on impact of Great Depression on industrial production in inflation in and interest rates in Jews in Mexico compared with mobilization in money supply in and moratorium on reparations and war debt nationalization in between 1919 during 1923 during 1924 in 1930s Norman’s views about optimism on duration of war in prices in proclamation of republic of public works programs in purchasing power in reaction to Versailles Treaty in rearming of recession in reconstruction of and reparations resistance movement in riots/violence in Russian relations with and stereotypes of Germans and stock market Strong’s views about Germany (cont.) taxes in threats of bankruptcy in trade with traditional values in and Treaty of Versailles unemployment in U.S. concerns about economy U.S. loans to U.S. relations with and Young Conference/Plan Gilbert, Seymour Parker Gladstone, William Glass, Carter Glass Plan Glass-Steagall Act gold and Agadir crisis and American tourists in Europe and amount of currency and Bank of England-commercial banks relationship and blame for Great Depression British exports of and British funding of war and commodities and covering of U.S. debt distribution of and events leading to World War I and German invasion of Belgium hoarding of and “hunt for gold cars” and interest rates Keynes’s views about as means for funding war obsession with and prices purchasing power of and “real bills” theory of credit and stock market bubble supply of U.S. buying of gold coins gold standard benefits of and blame for Great Depression and central banks and credit system criticisms of and currency and deflation and devaluation of dollar as dollar standard and Federal Reserve System impact of Great Crash on and inflation and interest rate as key to economic revival Keynes’s views about and Macmillan Committee and money supply and Moreau-Norman disagreements Norman’s views about obstacles to return to and paper currency and pound/sterling and prices and reconstruction of financial system and Roosevelt bank rescue package rules concerning and stock market suspension of Goldschmidt, Jacob Great Britain anti-Americanism in and Austrian-Serbian relations banking system in and blame for Great Depression Canada as custodian of gold reserves of change of governments in credit in currency in deflation in devaluation in early years of Depression in economy in and events leading to World War I and exchange rate financing/funding for World war I in foreign borrowing by France compared with French image in French relations with GDP in and German invasion of Belgium and Germany Glorious Revolution in gold reserves of gold standard in Hoover administration as source of help for impact of Great Crash on impact of World War I on industry/manufacturing in inflation in and interest rates loans to France from loans to Germany from loans to Russia from and London Economic Conference Macmillan Committee in manufacturing/industry in money supply in and moratorium on reparations and war debt Morgan loans to in 1925 optimism on duration of war in prices in and reparations restoration of pound to prewar pedestal in Schacht’s views about societal transformation in speculation in stock market in strikes in taxes in unemployment in U.S. loans to U.S. relations with war debts of and Young conference/Plan Great Crash and blame for Great Depression and characteristics of Great Depression congressional hearings about early impact of impact on Europe of Great Depression blame for causes of early years of Long Island meeting as turning point that lead to modern events compared with price stability as central to recovery from role of central bankers during as sequence of crisis The Great Illusion (Angell) “The Great Slump of 1930” (Keynes) Greenspan, Alan Grenfell, Teddy Grey, Edward Guaranty Trust Company Guardian Trust Company Guggenheim, Daniel Gulbenkian, Calouste The Hague German-Allied negotiations in Young Plan conference at Hambros Hamilton, Alexander Hamlin, George Hanau (Marthe) affair Harding, Warren Harrison, George L.


pages: 537 words: 200,923

City: Urbanism and Its End by Douglas W. Rae

agricultural Revolution, barriers to entry, business climate, City Beautiful movement, classic study, complexity theory, creative destruction, desegregation, edge city, Ford Model T, gentrification, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, income per capita, informal economy, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, manufacturing employment, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, open immigration, Peter Calthorpe, plutocrats, public intellectual, Saturday Night Live, streetcar suburb, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, urban planning, urban renewal, vertical integration, War on Poverty, white flight, Works Progress Administration

With these three pincers advancing quietly against small shops, it would seem unlikely that fine-grained retail fabric could survive in later decades. With notable and precious exceptions, the trend turned sharply downward after about 1940, when all three of these threats had begun to take a toll. BANKERS AND BROKERS Before the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, banking and investment brokering were permissibly combined in a single organization. Indeed, banking could be com93 U R B A N I S M bined with virtually any other line of business. In 1910, New Haven’s banks were for that reason much more diverse than they were later to become. In central square locations, chartered banks—First National, Connecticut Savings, City Bank of New Haven, National New Haven, People’s, Yale National, and New Haven County National—plied their wares, including, quite often, investment and brokerage services.

., 326 Fresenius, Henry, 77 Frug, Gerald, 25, 423 Fuller, Egbert, 130 Fulton, Robert, 45–56 Gamble-Desmond department store, 96, 343 Gamm, Gerald, 152, 244 Gans, Herbert, 305, 337–38 Garvin, Alexander, 371–72, 467, 470 General Motors, 16, 22 Giaimo, Robert, 350, 356–57 Giamatti, A. Bartlett, 113, 114, 247, 425– 26 Gilbert, Alfred C., 110, 179 Gilbert, Cass, 80–81, 82, 83, 84, 205 Gilbert Company, 110 Ginsberg, Harris, 85 Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, 93 Goddard, David, 229 Goldberg, Harry, 97 Golden, John M., 283–86, 294, 309–10, 409 Gooch, Frank Austin, 132 Goodnow, Frank, 191, 193 Grabino, Harold, 293 –94, 318, 320 Gracie, Walter, 130 Graduates Club, 157 Grande, Carl, 376 Gray’s Club, 4 Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.


pages: 650 words: 204,878

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, William J. O'Neil

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, bank run, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book value, British Empire, business process, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, buy the rumour, sell the news, clean water, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, Credit Default Swap, Donald Trump, fiat currency, Ford Model T, gentleman farmer, Glass-Steagall Act, Hernando de Soto, margin call, Monroe Doctrine, new economy, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, price stability, refrigerator car, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, short selling, short squeeze, technology bubble, tontine, trade route, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, Upton Sinclair, yellow journalism

He died in 1913 while traveling in Rome. The New York Stock Exchange remained closed the morning of his funeral out of respect. When trading resumed, volume was very light.6 Carrying on the family tradition, J. P. left his fortune and business to his only son, John Pierpont Morgan Jr.5 Morgan’s name lives on. After the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 forced banks to separate investment banking activities from commercial banking, some of the partners of J. P. Morgan & Co. left to form Morgan Stanley. The two banks maintained a close relationship with each other and with their London cousin, Morgan, Grenfell & Co. Regulatory changes and mergers pulled the old House of Morgan apart.

It seems pretty clear that excess leverage ultimately leads to a very painful unwind. But is this new news? The extreme type of leverage we saw in the 1920s certainly contributed to the stock market crash, and partly in response, Congress over the next decade passed the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933. These laws were designed to prevent the extreme types of leverage that we had in the 1920s, and for over 60 years they worked beautifully until 2000, when Congress, at the behest of the brokerage and banking lobby, decided to repeal aforementioned critical elements of this historical and well-functioning regulatory infrastructure.


pages: 601 words: 193,225

740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building by Michael Gross

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, Donald Trump, Glass-Steagall Act, Irwin Jacobs, it's over 9,000, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, junk bonds, McMansion, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, plutocrats, Ronald Reagan, sensible shoes, short selling, strikebreaker, The Predators' Ball, traveling salesman, Upton Sinclair, urban planning

When Dillon, Read’s president, James Forrestal, resigned to become Franklin Roosevelt’s administrative assistant in the White House, McCain stepped into the job, where he remained until he retired in 1951. Finally, weakened by two heart attacks and a stroke and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, McCain died in 1957. Meanwhile, all those bank failures and hearings led to significant legislation to reform the financial industry. The Banking Act of 1933, or the Glass-Steagall Act, erected a wall between banks and brokerage houses, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, insured people’s bank accounts, and made banks choose between accepting deposits and underwriting securities. Henceforth, only commercial banks could offer checking and savings accounts, and only investment banks could underwrite new securities issued by corporations and sell them to the public.4 The Securities Act of 1933 regulated the sale of securities for the first time and sought to ensure that investors were well informed about the companies selling stocks and to punish deceit, misrepresentation, and fraud in the sale of securities.

Wilkie quickly became the chief spokesman of the electric utility industry, and chief critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, which positioned him to run for president in 1940. 2 Meanwhile, businessmen became public enemies. In June 1933, the Senate Banking and Currency Committee looked into the “preferred lists” of investors who’d gotten the first chance to purchase stock in United Corporation, and whether politicians were among them. That fall, complying with the Glass-Steagall Act, Thorne and Loomis quit the board of Bonbright, and news reports said they’d chosen banking over investment banking. But then, early in 1934, Thorne quit the First National board, too, and Loomis resigned from Bankers Trust. The two men sold all but their United Corporation stock, and Loomis turned his stake over to Thorne to manage and, reading the public mood, “without so much as a backward look, quit Wall Street for good,” his biographer Conant wrote, “shaken by the imputations of self-serving dishonesty.”


pages: 261 words: 81,802

The Trouble With Billionaires by Linda McQuaig

"World Economic Forum" Davos, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, carried interest, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, fixed income, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, John Bogle, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, laissez-faire capitalism, land tenure, lateral thinking, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, very high income, wealth creators, women in the workforce

Cassano was instrumental in peddling some $500 billion worth of CDOs, including the $64 billion connected to subprime mortgages, leading to the collapse and bailout of AIG. Then there’s Angelo Mozilo, former CEO of Countrywide Financial, who made a fortune directly peddling subprime mortgages to unsophisticated, would-be homeowners. There’s also Sanford I. Weill, former head of Citigroup, whose extensive lobbying efforts helped kill the Glass–Steagall Act, thereby undermining regulatory supervision of financial markets and allowing Wall Street to turn itself into a giant casino. Indeed, much of Wall Street would fit in one way or another into this non-poster-boy category of billionaires. (And we haven’t even mentioned the likes of out-and-out billionaire crooks such as Bernie Madoff, who, in crossing the line into obvious criminality, have lost any claims to deserving their fortunes.)


pages: 365 words: 88,125

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

accelerated depreciation, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, borderless world, business logic, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, deskilling, digital divide, ending welfare as we know it, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, Myron Scholes, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, post-industrial society, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, rent control, Robert Solow, shareholder value, short selling, Skype, structural adjustment programs, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Now, the real trouble is that what countries like Iceland and Ireland were implementing were only more extreme forms of the economic strategy being pursued by many countries – a growth strategy based on financial deregulation, first adopted by the US and the UK in the early 1980s. The UK put its financial deregulation programme into a higher gear in the late 1980s, with the so-called ‘Big Bang’ deregulation and since then has prided itself on ‘light-touch’ regulation. The US matched it by abolishing the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, thereby tearing down the wall between investment banking and commercial banking, which had defined the US financial industry since the Great Depression. Many other countries followed suit. What was encouraging more and more countries to adopt a growth strategy based on deregulated finance was the fact that in such a system it is easier to make money in financial activities than through other economic activities – or so it seemed until the 2008 crisis.


pages: 620 words: 214,639

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, Bear Stearns, book value, call centre, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, Irwin Jacobs, Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, Northern Rock, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, shareholder value, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, too big to fail, traveling salesman, uptick rule, vertical integration, Y2K, yield curve

One of the first things he did when he took over from Cayne as CEO in January was to meet with Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and push for access to the window. Dodd had gone so far as to ask Bernanke to extend the privilege to investment banks, but the Fed rebuffed Dodd's request. “It was widely rejected out of hand as something that would just be inadvisable,” Dodd said he was told. Schwartz remained concerned that since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, allowing commercial banks to once again compete with investment banks without limitations, universal banks such as Citigroup and JPMorgan would have a competitive advantage over firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers because, with ready access to the Fed's discount window, they knew they always had a lender of last resort to finance their collateral, a luxury investment banks did not have.

“Would Bear Stearns have survived, no matter what we did?” Schwartz wondered, according to several people who heard his soliloquy. “I don't see it. By staying solvent, might we have picked up a merger with Barclays, or something, once they realized our books were clean? Maybe. But to compete [after] the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act [in 1999], the model became wholesale banks using collateral to finance themselves instead of using deposits. It didn't work when the collateral that was invading the world”—such as mortgage-backed securities—“became non-transparent. That's not to say that we did a good job running the firm.


pages: 324 words: 92,805

The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification by Paul Roberts

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, business cycle, business process, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Cass Sunstein, centre right, choice architecture, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, delayed gratification, disruptive innovation, double helix, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, game design, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, impulse control, income inequality, inflation targeting, insecure affluence, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, job automation, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, knowledge worker, late fees, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, mass immigration, Michael Shellenberger, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, performance metric, postindustrial economy, profit maximization, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nordhaus, the built environment, the long tail, The Predators' Ball, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, value engineering, Walter Mischel, winner-take-all economy

And although this new, more finance-friendly stance began under Republicans Nixon and Reagan, the finance sector’s biggest political supporters are now often Democrats. In fact, it was Democrats in the 1990s who were largely responsible for the sector’s liberation from Depression-era regulation. It was Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs boss, who led the campaign to repeal the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which had prevented commercial banks from also playing the financial markets. Rubin also helped defeat efforts to regulate credit swaps and other financial derivatives. Both these deregulatory initiatives would open up huge new streams of revenues and profits for Wall Street—and a huge new source of campaign finance for Democrats.


pages: 291 words: 90,200

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age by Manuel Castells

"World Economic Forum" Davos, access to a mobile phone, banking crisis, call centre, centre right, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disintermediation, en.wikipedia.org, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, income inequality, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Port of Oakland, social software, statistical model, Twitter Arab Spring, We are the 99%, web application, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, young professional, zero-sum game

This demand seems to capture the current national mood because cleaning up corruption in Washington is something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind … This could be the beginning of a whole new social dynamic in America, a step beyond the Tea Party movement, where, instead of being caught helpless by the current power structure, we the people start getting what we want whether it be the dismantling of half the 1,000 military bases America has around the world to the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act or a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals. Beginning from one simple demand – a presidential commission to separate money from politics – we start setting the agenda for a new America. Post a comment and help each other zero in on what our one demand will be. And then let’s screw up our courage, pack our tents and head to Wall Street with a vengeance September 17.


pages: 336 words: 90,749

How to Fix Copyright by William Patry

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, barriers to entry, big-box store, borderless world, bread and circuses, business cycle, business intelligence, citizen journalism, cloud computing, commoditize, content marketing, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, digital divide, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, haute cuisine, informal economy, invisible hand, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lone genius, means of production, moral panic, new economy, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, search costs, semantic web, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

In the late 1970s, right before the Reagan presidency, the top 1 percent of the population took in less than 9 percent of the total national income. By 2007, the secondto-last year of the Bush II presidency, that figure had increased to 23.5 percent.117 The Clinton years were no different; his policies on Wall Street, such as repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, were indistinguishable from Reagan and the Bushes. Indeed, the steepest increase in income for the top 1 percent occurred during the Clinton Presidency. Figure 3.2 is a chart that graphically shows the income redistribution that has occurred as a result of the change in taxation. WHAT ARE COPYRIGHT LAWS SUPPOSED TO DO?


pages: 324 words: 90,253

When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence by Stephen D. King

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bond market vigilante , British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, congestion charging, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, currency risk, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, endowment effect, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Ford Model T, full employment, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kickstarter, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, loss aversion, low interest rates, market clearing, mass immigration, Minsky moment, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, railway mania, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk free rate, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, technology bubble, The Market for Lemons, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, working-age population

‘BrandFinance®, Football 50: No trophies but Man United Is Still the Brand Champion’, press release, 2012, at http://www.brandfinance.com/images/upload/football_50_2012­_press_release.pdf (accessed Jan. 3013). 15. Source: Sunday Times Rich List 2011. 16. T. Philippon and A. Reshef, ‘Wages and Human Capital in the US Financial Industry: 1909–2006’, NBER Working Paper No. 14644, 2009. 17. Although the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial bank activity from the activity of broking firms, was finally repealed in 1999, it had become mostly ineffective over the previous two or three decades, a victim of continuous financial innovation. 18. See ‘The Widening Gap Update’, The Pew Center on the States, Washington, DC, June 2012. 19.


pages: 828 words: 232,188

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, British Empire, centre right, classic study, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, crony capitalism, Day of the Dead, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, household responsibility system, income inequality, information asymmetry, invention of the printing press, iterative process, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labour management system, land reform, land tenure, life extension, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, means of production, Menlo Park, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, open economy, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, Port of Oakland, post-industrial society, post-materialism, price discrimination, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, stem cell, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce, work culture , World Values Survey, zero-sum game

The simplest and most effective response to the financial crisis of 2008–2009 and the hugely unpopular taxpayer bailouts of large banks would have been a law that put a hard cap on the size of financial institutions, or else dramatically raised capital requirements that would have had much the same effect.7 If such constraints existed, banks taking foolish risks could go bankrupt without triggering a systemic crisis and government bailout. Like the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, such a law could have been written on a few of sheets of paper. But this possibility was not seriously considered during the congressional deliberations on financial regulation. What emerged instead was the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection, or Dodd-Frank, Act, which, while better than no regulation at all, extended to hundreds of pages of legislation and mandated reams of further detailed rules that will impose huge costs on banks and consumers down the road.

Garibaldi, Giuseppe Gberie, Lansana GDP Geddes, Barbara Gellner, Ernest Gemeinschaft General Land Office (GLO) generational turnover geography; in Africa; economic growth and; in Europe; institutions and; in Latin America; and military conquest or defense; slavery-plantation complex and Georgia (country) Germany; Africa and; bureaucracy in; civil law in; democracy in; and financial crisis of 2008–2009; industrialization in; Junkers in; Luther and; military in; nation building in; Nazis in; political parties in; Social Democratic Party in Gerschenkron, Alexander Gesellschaft Ghana Gilded Age Gini Index Gladstone, William Glass-Steagall Act Glavis, Louis globalization; technology and Glorious Revolution Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von gold Goodnow, Frank Gorbachev, Mikhail Goto Shimpei government(s); abuses of power by; autonomy of; distrust of; elites and; externalities regulated by; modern, routes to; necessity of; public goods and; quality of; redistribution and; social regulation and; state capacity and; see also bureaucracies; state(s) Gowon, Yakubu Gramsci, Antonio Granger laws Grant, Ulysses S.


The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (Hardback) - Common by Alan Greenspan

addicted to oil, air freight, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset-backed security, bank run, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, currency risk, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, double entry bookkeeping, equity premium, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, financial intermediation, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, information security, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, new economy, North Sea oil, oil shock, open economy, open immigration, Pearl River Delta, pets.com, Potemkin village, price mechanism, price stability, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, Suez crisis 1956, the payments system, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tipper Gore, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, We are all Keynesians now, working-age population, Y2K, zero-sum game

In the fall, Larry Summers and I had to settle a major turf war between the Treasury and the Fed. What had set it off was a push by Congress to overhaul the laws governing America's financial industries—banks, insurance companies, investment houses, real estate companies, and the like. Years in the making, the Financial Services Modernization Act finally did away with the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that limited the ability of banks, investment firms, and insurance companies to enter one another's markets. 198 More ebooks visit: http://www.ccebook.cn ccebook-orginal english ebooks This file was collected by ccebook.cn form the internet, the author keeps the copyright.

Krome, 428 George Washington High School, 24, 25, 29 Gephardt, Dick, 7 Gerashchenko, Viktor, 130 Gergen, David, 96-97, 148 Germany, 49, 180, 183, 287, 289n, 334n, 378, 460, 499-500 Argentina compared with, 335 current account surplus of, 351 economic freedom in, 276-77 job tenure in, 271 skilled-worker shortages in, 409 Germany, East, 125-26, 131-32, 286 Germany, Nazi, 24 Germany, West, 131-32, 281, 284-87, 381, 503 Gerstner, Lou, 153,404 Getz, Stan, 26 GI Bill, 29, 3 4 , 4 0 0 , 4 0 1 Gillespie, Dizzy, 27 Gingrich, Newt, 156, 158-59, 212 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 179 Glacier National Park, 454 Glass-Steagall Act, 198, 3 7 5 - 7 6 glide-path proposal, 218, 221-22 Global Crossing, 200 globalization, 10-14, 16, 18, 161, 162, 192-93, 248, 249-50, 260, 267, 361-72 Brown's views on, 283, 284 democracy and, 376 disinflation and, 228, 378-81 economic future and, 467, 4 7 6 - 7 8 , 479, 484, 502 income inequality and, 393, 395-97, 398-99, 400 slowdown of, 365 technological factors in, 11-12 U.S. current account deficit and, 347, 350 global warming, 364, 4 5 3 - 5 6 , 460, 468-69, 482 GNP (gross national product), 35, 46, 68-69, 71, 121 gold, 3 5 4 , 3 9 1 , 4 8 0 Goldman, Eric, 56n Goldman Sachs, 109 Goldsmith, Anna, 20 Goldsmith, Nathan, 20 Goldsmith, Rose, 20, 2 1 , 39, 74 gold standard, 13, 4 8 0 - 8 1 , 482, 491 golf, 7 4 , 8 1 , 119,298 Gong Xiantian, 300 Gonzalez, Henry B., 150-53 Goodman, Benny, 23, 27 Google, 168 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 134-36, 325, 327, 328, 332 as reformer, 125, 126, 130, 138 Gore,Al, 1 4 9 , 2 0 8 , 2 1 5 , 3 1 2 Gore, Tipper, 142 Gosbank, 130 Gosplan, 128-30 Gould, Jay, 139 government, 52, 364n, 481 Adam Smith's views on, 261, 262 Chicago school view of, 72 competition suppressed by, 273-75 jobs in, 273 Keynesian view of, 15, 30, 72 property rights vs., 254-55 Reagan's views on, 87, 92 recession policies of, 66-68, 70-71 regulation by, 15, 256-57, 264-65, 273, 279, 280, 2 9 1 , 292, 372-76, 489, 502 U.S. current account and, 353-57 government spending, 35, 67, 184, 213, 216, 218, 219,234,242,280 9/11 and, 7 , 8 - 9 grain, 136, 264, 3 2 0 , 3 2 2 Gramm, Phil, 218, 221, 236, 244 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 376 Great Britain, 259, 281, 2 9 1 , 369n, 396, 502 common law of 252, 253, 497n 520 More ebooks visit: http://www.ccebook.cn ccebook-orginal english ebooks This file was collected by ccebook.cn form the internet, the author keeps the copyright.


pages: 351 words: 102,379

Too big to fail: the inside story of how Wall Street and Washington fought to save the financial system from crisis--and themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andy Kessler, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, book value, break the buck, BRICs, business cycle, Carl Icahn, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, Dr. Strangelove, Emanuel Derman, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, moral hazard, naked short selling, NetJets, Northern Rock, oil shock, paper trading, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, supply-chain management, too big to fail, uptick rule, value at risk, éminence grise

This new power-sharing arrangement, although logical, greatly displeased Dimon. A more injurious slight came after the $83 billion merger with Citicorp, the deal that rewrote the rules of the U.S. financial system as the last Depression-era barriers between commercial and investment banking—passed as the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933—were removed by a bill introduced by Republican senator Phil Gramm of Texas and Republican congressman Jim Leach of Iowa. Dimon had worked tirelessly to bring the deal to completion, yet when the time came to split the eighteen board seats of the merged company between Travelers and Citicorp, he found himself left out.

Those discussions ended abruptly when Paulson came home to his apartment one day and had an epiphany: “Legally, we would be buying Morgan, but JP Morgan was so much bigger than Goldman Sachs that in reality they would be taking us over, and they would bury us,” he later recalled. “I also knew that somehow we’d figure out how to do everything they could do.” During the Clinton administration’s first term, Congress was working on the legislation that would repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, tearing down the walls dividing banks, brokers, and other financial businesses. At the time, lobbyists for Goldman actually persuaded the committee writing the bill—which became the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999—to include a minor amendment they had sought in the event that they ever wanted to become a bank holding company.


pages: 976 words: 235,576

The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite by Daniel Markovits

8-hour work day, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, algorithmic management, Amazon Robotics, Anton Chekhov, asset-backed security, assortative mating, basic income, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, carried interest, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, computer age, corporate governance, corporate raider, crony capitalism, David Brooks, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Emanuel Derman, equity premium, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, fear of failure, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, hiring and firing, income inequality, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, Kiva Systems, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, machine readable, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, medical residency, meritocracy, minimum wage unemployment, Myron Scholes, Nate Silver, New Economic Geography, new economy, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, savings glut, school choice, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, six sigma, Skype, stakhanovite, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, traveling salesman, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero-sum game

., 83 F.Supp.3d 528, 535 (S.D.N.Y. 2015), rev’d, 822 F.3d 650 (2d Cir. 2016) (describing how Countrywide, which Bank of America merged with in 2008, “replac[ed] trained underwriters with entry-level ‘loan specialists’”). to be constructed and traded: Perhaps most important, the 1960s inaugurated regulatory innovations, for example the weakening and eventual repeal (in 1990) of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had since 1933 limited collaboration between commercial and investment banks. See, for example, David H. Carpenter, Edward V. Murphy, and M. Maureen Murphy, The Glass-Steagall Act: A Legal Analysis (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, January 19, 2016), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44349.pdf. to value such securities: The 1950s and 1960s witnessed fundamental theoretical advances in the construction and pricing of financial instruments—including the capital asset pricing model that grew out of Harry Markowitz’s work on portfolio allocation and the Black-Scholes model for pricing options and other derivatives.


pages: 809 words: 237,921

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, AltaVista, Andrei Shleifer, bank run, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, central bank independence, centre right, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Computer Numeric Control, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, export processing zone, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Kula ring, labor-force participation, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, openstreetmap, out of africa, PageRank, pattern recognition, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Skype, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, the market place, transcontinental railway, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks

The bedrock of the postwar financial system in the United States was “Regulation Q,” which restricted interest rates on savings accounts, limiting competition between different financial institutions, as well as interstate branching restrictions that prevented banks from competing for deposits in multiple states. These restrictions were augmented by the Glass-Steagall Act, which was enacted in 1933 and separated retail banking (mainly deposit taking and lending) from the riskier business of investment banking (which focused on such things as underwriting, mergers and acquisitions, financial derivatives, and trading). In this regulated environment, the bureaucratized and comfortable jobs in banking came to be described by the “3-6-3 rule”—take deposits at 3 percent interest rate, lend them at 6 percent interest rate, and hit the golf course by 3 p.m.

., 436, 437 Ferguson, Missouri, 304–6, 309–11, 313, 327–29 Fernández de Kirchner, Cristina, 343, 344 feudalism, 169–73, 175, 177–78, 181, 184, 266, 271, 278–79, 414, 416–17, 455, 500 feuds, 35–36, 162, 168, 267, 276–78, 415 Fibonacci, Leonardo, 138–39 Field, Stephen, 311 Fifteenth Amendment, 52 Fifth Amendment, 312 Figueres, José, 297, 303 Finer, Herman, 405 Finley, Moses, 454 firearms, 89–90, 94 First Amendment, 305, 310, 490 First and Second Congo Wars, 99 First Crusade, 188 First Reform Act, 190 FitzNigel, Richard, 173 Flanders, 136 Florence, Italy, 139–40, 141 Florentine Catasto of 1427, 139–40 Flores, Juan José, 355 Flynn, Henry, 84 Fogel, Robert, 454 Force Publique (Belgian Congo), 457 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts, 491 Fornander, Abraham, 116–17 Foster, Augustus John, 315 “Four Clean-ups” campaign, 17 “Four Freedoms” speech, 493–94 Fourteenth Amendment, 52, 310–11 Fourth Amendment, 305, 310, 312, 490 Fourth Crusade, 188 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 135–40, 143–44 Franklin, Benjamin, 495 Franks, 154, 154–57, 160–64, 167, 170, 213 Frederick Barbarossa, 127–28, 142, 417 Frederick I, King of Prussia, 274 Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia, 274–75 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, 182 Frederick William I (the Great Elector), King of Prussia, 273–74, 275 Free Corps, 393, 395 Free Officers Movement, 385 Frei, Eduardo, 408 Fritzsche, Peter, 393–94 FSB (Federal Security Bureau, Russia), 286, 287 Fujimori, Alberto, 422 Fukuyama, Francis, 1–2 Gaidar, Yegor, 285 Galileo Galilei, 196 Gamsakhurdia, Zviad, 92–93 gana-sanghas, 252, 253–54 Gandhi, Mahatma, 261 Gaozu, Emperor, 207 García Granados, Miguel, 299 Gaviria, César, 448 Gebusi of Papua New Guinea, 8, 59 generational theory of Ibn Khaldun, 104–14, 116, 122, 125, 373, 387 Geneva Convention, 460 Genoa, Italy, 139 Georg Wilhelm, elector of Brandenburg, 273 Georgia (republic), 92–94, 121–24 German National People’s Party, 397 German Workers’ Party, 396 Germania, The (Tacitus), 155–56 Germanic tribes, 155–56, 160, 182, 185, 199, 270 Germany: and decline of Weimar Republic, 390–96; and Great Depression, 467; and Nazi takeover of German state, 404–6; and Prussian bureaucracy, 12; recovery from autocracy, 423–25; Red Queen dynamics of, 399–404, 405–6; and rise of Nazism, 396–99; welfare state development, 472 Ghana, 18, 20, 362–63, 364, 366 Ghazali, Abu Hamid al-, 379 Ghibellines, 417 Giele, Enno, 206 Gilgamesh problem, xiii–xv, 18, 47, 68, 153, 297 Glass-Steagall Act, 478 globalization, 269, 420, 455–57, 476–78, 482, 486 Glorious Revolution, 188, 189, 195, 280 Gluckman, Max, 120–21 “gnocchi” (ghost workers), 341–44, 345, 445, 448, 449 Godric of Finchale (later Saint Godric), 143 Godwinson, Harold, 169 Goebbels, Joseph, 392, 404 Goi, 20–21 Golden Bull (document), 182 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 93, 282, 285, 288 Göring, Hermann, 392 Goths, 185 Govindan, Thillai, 245 Gram Sadak Yojana, 262–63 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 479 Great Britain.


pages: 314 words: 101,452

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, Carl Icahn, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, corporate raider, disinformation, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, interest rate swap, Irwin Jacobs, John Meriwether, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, margin call, Michael Milken, mortgage tax deduction, nuclear winter, Ponzi scheme, risk free rate, The Predators' Ball, yield curve

I had memorized those few facts widely accepted by Princeton undergraduates to be part of an investment banking interview survival kit. Investment banking applicants were expected to be culturally literate. For example, in 1982 at least, they had to be able to define the following terms: commercial banking, investment banking, ambition, hard work, stock, bond, private placement, partnership, and the Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall was an act of the U.S. Congress, but it worked more like an act of God. It cleaved mankind in two. With it, in 1934, American lawmakers had stripped investment banking off from commercial banking. Investment bankers now underwrote securities, such as stocks and bonds. Commercial bankers, like Citibank, took deposits and made loans.


pages: 304 words: 99,836

Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story by Greg Smith

Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, Black Swan, bonus culture, break the buck, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, delayed gratification, East Village, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, high net worth, information asymmetry, London Interbank Offered Rate, mega-rich, money market fund, new economy, Nick Leeson, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, technology bubble, too big to fail

This was another set of rapids to navigate, and there was no set of rules for getting through, but you were always being judged. In addition to our very full slate of daytime activity, we were frequently given huge projects to do after hours—say, a twenty-page presentation on the pros and cons of the Glass-Steagall Act. There was no time during the day to work on something like this; you couldn’t exactly sneak off for five hours and crank it out. That left the time after everyone went home—usually around 7:00 P.M.—and the weekends. Working till midnight on a weekday was not unusual; nor was coming in to the office on a Saturday or Sunday, or both.


pages: 357 words: 99,456

Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

4chan, affirmative action, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Manning, commoditize, crack epidemic, David Brooks, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, false flag, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, green new deal, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, immigration reform, interest rate swap, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Marshall McLuhan, microdosing, moral panic, Nate Silver, no-fly zone, Parents Music Resource Center, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Saturday Night Live, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, social contagion, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Tipper Gore, traveling salesman, unpaid internship, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y2K

The AP ran a whopping 4,109 stories on Monicagate in its first year of coverage, and had twenty-five reporters on the story full-time. The top three networks devoted 1,931 minutes to the subject in 1998, more than the next seven subjects combined (and much more than a 1998 story that would have major implications for a later economic collapse, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that had kept the investment banking, depository banking, and insurance businesses separate). As they are now, talk shows were full of speculation that the president would imminently leave office. “I think [Clinton’s] Presidency is numbered in days,” said Sam Donaldson on ABC in the fateful last week of January 1998.


pages: 827 words: 239,762

The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite by Duff McDonald

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bob Noyce, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, deskilling, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, eat what you kill, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, impact investing, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, new economy, obamacare, oil shock, pattern recognition, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, pushing on a string, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, random walk, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, survivorship bias, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, urban renewal, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

An irony: It was none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt—the scourge of the laissez-faire crowd at HBS—who helped bring about the rise of McKinsey and its ilk. From the end of the nineteenth century through the 1930s, Washington had been making periodic regulatory efforts to curb the power of big business, including the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act and Clayton Antitrust Act, both in 1914, and, ultimately, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The intended effect of these measures was to prevent corporations from colluding with one another to manipulate markets. But the unintended effect, according to historian Christopher McKenna, was to accelerate the creation of an informal—but legal—way of sharing information between oligopolists.

., 166 Frei, Frances, 238, 569–70 Freud, Sigmund, 78 Friedman, Milton, 360–64, 366, 374, 375, 424, 442, 568, 576 Friedman, Walter, 249 From Higher Aims to Hired Hands (Khurana), 217, 220, 423 “From Pioneer Egalitarianism to the Reign of the Superrich” (Mettler), 542 Fuller, Joseph, 420 Fuller, Mark, 418–19, 420 Functions of the Executive, The (Barnard), 111, 257 Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 92 Galambos, Louis, 249 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 172–73, 270–71, 288, 295, 342, 432 Gandz, Jeffrey, 314 Garvin, David, 150, 564 Gay, Edwin, 21–29, 34–35, 42–45, 57, 63, 98, 243, 355; BBR and, 38; business history and, 27–28; Business Policy course and, 47–48; case method, 27, 30, 47–48, 52; goals for HBS, 44–45; resignation, 44; “science” of business, 212, 214, 221; Taylor and, 29, 34–35, 38–41; two functions of a firm, 28, 32 General Electric, 31, 42, 69, 70, 81, 83, 87, 142, 147, 149, 183, 219, 303, 305, 373, 531; HBS case method and, 58 General Motors, 61, 123, 139, 191, 194, 245, 266, 270, 460; antitrust legislation and, 249–50; Chandler and, 245; Drucker study of, 143–44; Japanese carmakers and, 246–47; layoffs at, 492; Sloan and, 348 Gentile, Mary, 437 George, Bill, 315–18, 482, 523 Gerald, Casey, 1–5, 9, 427, 440, 563, 577 Germany: business education, 198, 232; industry in, 350, 352, 358 Gerstner, Lou, 209, 496, 498 Ghemawat, Pankaj, 519 Ghoshal, Sumantra, 368, 375–76, 491 Gifford, Walter, 67 Gilbert, Clark G., 235 Gilder, George, 329 Gillespie, Richard, 87 Gilmartin, Raymond, 106, 107 Gioia, Dennis, 568–69 Giscard d’Estaing, Olivier, 125 Gladwell, Malcolm, 534 Glass-Steagall Act, 102, 200 Glauber, Robert, 403–4 Global Financial System project, 455–56 globalization, 263, 387–88 “Globalization of Markets, The” (Levitt), 263 Goldberg, Carol, 157 “Golden Passports” (Van Maanen), 392–95 Goldman Sachs, 44, 72, 74, 105, 106, 122, 142, 199, 202, 207, 211–12, 289, 315, 459, 466, 469; donations to HBS, 474; Faculty-Business Executives Exchange Program, 475; financial crisis of 2007–10 and, 548; HBS grads at, 460, 468, 473, 474; Paulson and CDOs, 477–78; SEC charges against, 478; scholarship at HBS, 474, 477; sends employees to HBS, 473; Thain and, 475–77; Whitehead and, 473–75 Goldston, Eli, 297 Goleman, Daniel, 315 Goodpaster, Kenneth, 436 Google, 10, 199 Gordon, Albert, 96, 106, 338, 458 Gospel According to the Harvard Business School, The (Cohen), 71, 275, 397 Gragg, Charles, 397–98 Gramm, Wendy, 505 Gras, Norman S.


pages: 354 words: 105,322

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, butterfly effect, buy and hold, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, cellular automata, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, G4S, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, jitney, John Meriwether, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, large denomination, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, machine readable, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, nuclear winter, obamacare, offshore financial centre, operational security, Paul Samuelson, Peace of Westphalia, Phillips curve, Pierre-Simon Laplace, plutocrats, prediction markets, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, random walk, reserve currency, RFID, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, tech billionaire, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, transfer pricing, value at risk, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Westphalian system

Born’s recommendations to PWG were limited to derivatives; unlike Bair, she was not a bank regulator. Her advice was to continue restrictions on new swap types and move most existing swaps to futures exchanges. Not only was Born’s advice marginalized, the boys’ club did the opposite. In 1999, the sixty-six-year-old Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. Glass-Steagall, enacted in the Great Depression, separated the banking business from securities underwriting. One cause of the Great Depression was that banks in the 1920s originated weak loans and sold these as securities to unsuspecting retail investors. In 1933, Congress passed Glass-Steagall, which said that banks could either accept deposits and make loans, or underwrite and sell securities, but they could not do both.


pages: 378 words: 110,518

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Alfred Russel Wallace, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, Bernie Madoff, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, capital controls, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Claude Shannon: information theory, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Graeber, deglobalization, deindustrialization, deskilling, discovery of the americas, disinformation, Downton Abbey, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, eurozone crisis, factory automation, false flag, financial engineering, financial repression, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, game design, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, guns versus butter model, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market clearing, means of production, Metcalfe's law, microservices, middle-income trap, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Norbert Wiener, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, post-industrial society, power law, precariat, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, RFID, Richard Stallman, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, scientific management, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, supply-chain management, technological determinism, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Transnistria, Twitter Arab Spring, union organizing, universal basic income, urban decay, urban planning, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, wages for housework, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Yochai Benkler

This created the third basic reflex of neoliberalism: the widespread illusion that you can generate money out of money alone. Though they had reduced the percentage of capital banks were required to keep on hand, the US authorities had maintained the strict partition between Main Street lending banks and investment banks imposed in the 1930s by the Glass-Steagall Act. But by the late 1990s, in a rush of mergers and acquisitions, the investment bank sector was going global, making a mockery of the rules. It was Treasury Secretary Larry Summers who, in 1999, through the repeal of Glass-Steagall, opened the banking system to the attentions of those adept at exotic, opaque and offshore forms of finance.


pages: 571 words: 106,255

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, bank run, banks create money, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, conceptual framework, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, delayed gratification, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Elisha Otis, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, initial coin offering, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, iterative process, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, means of production, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, QR code, quantum cryptography, ransomware, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, secular stagnation, smart contracts, special drawing rights, Stanford marshmallow experiment, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Walter Mischel, We are all Keynesians now, zero-sum game

No other ostensibly private industry enjoys such an exorbitant privilege, combining the highest rates of profitability in the private sector with the protection of the public sector. This combination has made bankers' work as creative and productive as that of public sector employees, but more rewarding than most other jobs. As a result, the financial industry just keeps growing as the U.S. economy becomes ever more “financialized.” Since the repeal of the Glass‐Steagall Act in 1999, the separation between deposit and investment banking has been removed, and so the deposit banks who had FDIC deposit guarantee can now also engage in investment financing, having the FDIC guarantee protect them from investment losses. An investor who has a loss guarantee has a free option, effectively, a license to print money.


pages: 362 words: 108,359

The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade That Transformed Wall Street by Jonathan A. Knee

AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, book value, Boycotts of Israel, business logic, call centre, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, corporate governance, Corrections Corporation of America, deal flow, discounted cash flows, fear of failure, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, if you build it, they will come, iterative process, junk bonds, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, new economy, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, proprietary trading, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, technology bubble, young professional, éminence grise

Morgan & Company had been before it, the godhead of securities underwriting, in total control of the bluest of blue chip issuers. And the men who ran it were, in the best tradition of Pierpont Morgan, stubborn, hardheaded, and imperious; accustomed to leadership, unaccustomed to challenge.”1 When the 1930s Glass Steagall Act forced J. P. Morgan to choose between being an investment bank or a commercial bank, it had considered securities underwriting as an unreliable “byproduct business”2 to the core commercial banking franchise, much as later firm leaders in the 1950s and 60s would see M&A as a loss leader byproduct business to securities underwriting.


pages: 372 words: 107,587

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, computerized trading, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, green transition, happiness index / gross national happiness, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Kenneth Rogoff, late fees, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, naked short selling, Naomi Klein, Negawatt, new economy, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, price stability, private military company, quantitative easing, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, short selling, special drawing rights, systems thinking, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade liberalization, tulip mania, WikiLeaks, working poor, world market for maybe five computers, zero-sum game

And derivatives have arguably helped create a situation that limits further growth in the financial system’s ability to perform its only truly useful function within society — to provide investment capital for productive enterprise. One of the main reforms enacted during the Great Depression, contained in the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, was a requirement that commercial banks refrain from acting as investment banks. In other words, they were prohibited from dealing in stocks, bonds, and derivatives. This prohibition was based on an implicit understanding that there should be some sort of firewall within the financial system separating productive investment from pure speculation, or gambling.


pages: 357 words: 110,017

Money: The Unauthorized Biography by Felix Martin

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital asset pricing model, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Graeber, en.wikipedia.org, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, invention of writing, invisible hand, Irish bank strikes, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, Michael Milken, mobile money, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, plutocrats, private military company, proprietary trading, public intellectual, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, Scientific racism, scientific worldview, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, smart transportation, South Sea Bubble, supply-chain management, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail

., “Should We Have Narrow Banking?” in Turner et al., 2010, p. 219. 10. Tarullo, 2012a, p. 9. 11. The restriction on banking activities was in practice eroded over time, but it was in 1999 that the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act revoked the central provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act. The McFadden Act restriction was repealed by the 1994 Riegle–Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act. 12. Having been roughly stable for more than sixty years from the 1930s to the 1990s, the average size of U.S. banks relative to national income tripled in the space of twenty years (see Haldane, 2010, p. 8 and Chart 1).


pages: 401 words: 109,892

The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets by Thomas Philippon

airline deregulation, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrei Shleifer, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, central bank independence, commoditize, crack epidemic, cross-subsidies, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, flag carrier, Ford Model T, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, inventory management, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, law of one price, liquidity trap, low cost airline, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, money market fund, moral hazard, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Pareto efficiency, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, price discrimination, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse automation, zero-sum game

Able to get virtually anyone in Washington on the phone on demand, Boggs held court at the famed Palm restaurant in DC and used his vast web of connections to lobby for clients of all descriptions. He helped the American Bankers Association in its effort to overturn the onerous regulations of the Glass-Steagall Act, was instrumental in rewriting a massive telecommunications bill in 1996, and helped a string of foreign politicians, some of them rather unsavory, secure the assistance of the US government. To be clear, Boggs was no expert in banking, telecommunications, or foreign relations. But he always knew the right people to call, the effective place to apply political pressure, and the value of a well-placed contribution.


pages: 489 words: 106,008

Risk: A User's Guide by Stanley McChrystal, Anna Butrico

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, fear of failure, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Googley, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, inflight wifi, invisible hand, iterative process, late fees, lockdown, Paul Buchheit, Ponzi scheme, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, source of truth, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, wikimedia commons, work culture

largest percentage price increase: Silber, “Why Did FDR’s Bank Holiday Succeed?,” 20. Banking Act of 1933: Leuchtenburg, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Domestic Affairs.” “Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall),” Federal Reserve History, November 22, 2013, https:// www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass-steagall-act. “Brain Trust”: Leuchtenburg, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Domestic Affairs”; “Brain Trust,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, accessed March 26, 2021, https://britannica.com/topic/Brain-Trust. increasing the size of the court: William Leuchtenburg, “When Franklin Roosevelt Clashed With the Supreme Court—and Lost,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 2005, https://smithsonianmag.com/history/when-franklin-roosevelt-clashed-with-the-supreme-court-and-lost-78497994/.


pages: 356 words: 106,161

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century by Rodrigo Aguilera

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer age, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, long peace, loss aversion, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Slavoj Žižek, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, tail risk, tech bro, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, unbiased observer, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

Not surprisingly, they began gaining a larger share of the economic pie — and with it, influence over political affairs (Figure 4.3). While the biggest swings of the deregulatory axe took place under Reagan and Thatcher, further dramatic changes took place under Third Way governments such as the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under Clinton in 1999 which had banned commercial (i.e. deposit-taking) banks from undertaking much riskier investment bank activities. And so on the eve of the global financial crisis, voters who had been fed the idea of being “free to choose” (the title of a popular 1980s television series by economists and free market advocates Milton and Rose Friedman), had no such freedom when it came to determining economic policy in politics.


pages: 437 words: 113,173

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance by Ian Goldin, Chris Kutarna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Dava Sobel, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Doha Development Round, double helix, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental economics, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, full employment, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial robot, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Johannes Kepler, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahbub ul Haq, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Max Levchin, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, open economy, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, post-Panamax, profit motive, public intellectual, quantum cryptography, rent-seeking, reshoring, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, Snapchat, special economic zone, spice trade, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, uber lyft, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, working poor, working-age population, zero day

Over the subsequent decade, European economic and monetary union made it easier and easier for capital to flow around Europe. In 1996 the US Federal Reserve started letting financial institutions use credit derivatives to reduce their reserve requirements (again, so that they could lend more). In 1999 the US Financial Services Modernization Act repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and let banks, securities firms and insurance companies compete in one another’s industries. New volumes Suddenly, cross-border financial flows took off. Between 1990 and 2007, global cross-border flows grew from about $1 trillion to over $12 trillion per year—an average 16 percent annual jump every year for nearly two decades.29 The 2007–2008 financial crisis scared away or broke up a lot of this activity (mostly among advanced economies), but some $4.5 trillion of debt and equity still crosses borders annually.30 New variety Not only are financial flows much greater, but they move through many more places than 25 years ago.


pages: 367 words: 117,340

America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom by Meghan McCain, Michael Black

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, An Inconvenient Truth, carbon footprint, Columbine, fear of failure, feminist movement, gentrification, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, independent contractor, obamacare, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Timothy McVeigh, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, white picket fence

But over the last thirty years or so, it has started to feel more like the party of small, special interests. It feels old and faded and kind of crusty, like a pair of Walter Mondale’s boxers. All the great causes feel played out. There just doesn’t seem like anything for us Democrats to rally around. Honestly, who’s going to burn their bra over the Glass-Steagall Act? As much as I want to be a committed Democrat, I can’t quite justify it to myself. I don’t know what I’m fighting for except opposing what Republicans are fighting for, which more or less boils down to Jesus and putting more money in the pockets of rich white guys. Yes, I understand these are all stereotypes, but stereotypes are fun because they allow me to feel intellectually superior.


pages: 374 words: 114,600

The Quants by Scott Patterson

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, automated trading system, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Brownian motion, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, centralized clearinghouse, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, Financial Modelers Manifesto, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Haight Ashbury, I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations, index fund, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jim Simons, job automation, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, junk bonds, Kickstarter, law of one price, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Spitznagel, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, Myron Scholes, NetJets, new economy, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Mercer, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Sergey Aleynikov, short selling, short squeeze, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, statistical arbitrage, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Predators' Ball, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, volatility smile, yield curve, éminence grise

In 1999, Deutsche Bank promoted him to vice president. In 2001, he was named a managing director at the age of twenty-seven, one of the youngest to reach the title in the history of the German bank. Weinstein and his fellow derivatives dealers got help from regulators, who were rapidly deregulating. In November 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had cleaved the investment banking and commercial banking industry in two—separating the risk-taking side of banks from the deposit side—was repealed. Giant banks such as Citigroup had argued that the act put them at a disadvantage compared to overseas banks that didn’t have such restrictions.


pages: 342 words: 114,118

After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made by Ben Rhodes

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, British Empire, centre right, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, gentrification, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, independent contractor, invisible hand, late capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, open economy, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, South China Sea, the long tail, too big to fail, trade route, Washington Consensus, young professional, zero-sum game

The purpose was to walk through the deregulation of the Clinton years to demonstrate that the structural problems in our economy had roots that predated the Bush administration’s own spree of tax cuts and deregulation. The avuncular economist Austan Goolsbee walked me through a brief history, focusing on the Clinton-era repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had regulated commercial banking separately from investment banking, an effort that was fueled by $300 million worth of lobbying and that facilitated more corporate mergers, more risky bets, and more wealth concentrated among those who could reap the benefits. The growth of hedge funds and nonbank financial companies had then allowed the wealthiest to find new ways to get wealthier through schemes that were unavailable to and not at all understood by the vast majority of Americans.


pages: 398 words: 112,350

Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South by Beth Macy

affirmative action, Charles Lindbergh, company town, desegregation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, market bubble, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, New Journalism, strikebreaker, TED Talk, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight

Media stunt with Graf and Morgan: Morgan appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Banking and Currency hearings, formed to inform “constructive legislation” that might get America’s economy back on its feet. The investigation led to a major overhaul of the financial regulatory system, which brought about the Glass-Steagall Act and the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission. “The Man Who Will Question Morgan,” New York Times, May 21, 1933. Graf retreated to Germany: Sherwin D. Smith, “A Midget Sat on J. P. Morgan’s Lap and Showed the Great Banker Was Only Human,” Thirty Years Ago, New York Times, May 26, 1963.


pages: 513 words: 141,153

The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich

Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, call centre, centralized clearinghouse, computerized trading, Credit Default Swap, Downton Abbey, eat what you kill, electricity market, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, Michael Milken, Navinder Sarao, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, performance metric, profit maximization, proprietary trading, Savings and loan crisis, tulip mania, work culture , zero-sum game

252–53 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 286 Down syndrome, 328, 330 Drexel Burnham Lambert, 40–41 Ducrot, Yvan, x, 232, 233, 239 Dulles International Airport, 326 dumb money, 29 Eisler, Edward, 159 Elizabeth II of England, 12 Ellis, Paul, xi, 293, 445 Engel, Marcy, 75, 83 Enron, 200, 202, 266–67, 373–74 Ethiopia, 39–40 Euribor, 92 Eurodollar, 74–75 European debt crisis, 285 Ewan, John, xii, 67–68 background of, 67 at BBA, 68, 75–80 false Libor submissions, 181–83, 192–93, 195–96, 222 Hayes trial, 426–27 Libor investigations, 205–8, 270n, 272 Facebook, 110, 147, 381 Farah Pahlavi, 25 Farr, Clare, 45, 455–56 Farr, Sam, 119, 122, 345, 455–56 Farr, Terry, xii, 45–47 background of, 45–46, 119 compensation, 175–76, 378 firing of, 378 Hayes and, 45–47, 59, 87, 121–22, 213–14, 216–17, 224–25, 303–4, 344–46, 407–8 Hayes and Libor manipulation, 95, 108–9, 163–64, 168–70, 282 Libor investigations, 333–34, 344–46 Libor trial, 452–53, 455–56, 459 SFO criminal charges, 390–91, 401 SFO trial of Hayes, 407–8 Stenfors and, 119–22, 163, 170 switch trades, 169–77, 213–14 federal funds rate, 34, 34n, 70 Federal Reserve, base rate, 34, 34n, 70 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 251–52 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 195, 203, 280 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), 407–8, 416–17 financial crisis of 2007–2008, 164–69, 181–82, 186–87, 248–49, 405 financial globalization, 71–72 Financial Services Authority (FSA), xiii, 63, 204 Libor investigation, 205–6, 257, 338–39, 344–46, 350–56 “light touch” strategy, 29–30, 196 Financial Times, 193 Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE), 67–68 Finma, 271 Finsbury Square, 54 Fisher, Paul, 207–8 Flash Crash of 2010, 286, 286n Fleet Street, 187–88 Foreign Exchange and Money Markets Committee (FXMMC), 78, 183, 195–96, 222, 244 forward rate agreements (FRAs), 160 FourFourTwo, 87 Frank, Anne, 228 Freud, Lucian, 49 Fulcrum Chambers, 347–49, 395, 415 futures contract, 31–32 “gardening leave,” 241, 265 Geithner, Tim, 195, 203–4, 357 Gensler, Francesca Danieli, 253–54 Gensler, Gary, xii, 246–49 background of, 246–47 at CFTC, 248–49, 253–54, 312–13 Barclays settlement, 357–59 Libor investigation, 264–65 Libor investigation, 399–400 personality of, 253, 254 Treasury undersecretary, 247–48 Gensler, Robert, 246–48 Gensler, Sam, 246 Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, 316, 317–19, 400 Gilmour, Jim, xii, 118 arrest of, 364–65 background of, 118 compensation, 176, 315 firing of, 378 Hayes and Libor submissions, 163–64, 165–66, 365–66 Libor trial, 452–53, 455–56, 458–59 SFO criminal charges, 390–91, 401 Gilmour, Lisa, 118 Glass-Steagall Act, 19 gold standard, 32 Goldman Sachs, 21, 157–58 culture of, 158–59 Gensler at, 247 Hayes job offers, 157–59, 212 Libor report, 207–8 Golestan Palace, 25 Goodman, Colin, xi, 97–100 background of, 97–98 commissions, 130–32 FSA/CFTC interview, 355–56 Journal stories, 198 Justice criminal charges, 394–95 Justice investigation, 343–44 Libor manipulation, 129, 133–34, 148–49, 149n, 274 Libor run-throughs, 97–100, 116, 116n, 130–31, 130n, 385, 403, 431 Libor trial, 452–53, 455–56 SFO criminal charges, 404 suspension of, 354–55 Goodwin, Fred expansion strategy for RBS, 36–37, 53–54 Libor manipulation, 211–12 Gray’s Sporting Journal, 188 Great Depression, 19 Great Recession, 223, 256, 266 Greek government-debt crisis, 285 Green, David, xiii, 359–62, 366–67, 457 Green, Kevin, 301–2 Griffin, Ken, 20 Grosvenor House, 262 Grübel, Oswald, 212, 336 Gulf International Bank, 182–83 Haile Selassie, 39–40 Hammond, Scott, xiii, 318, 323, 400 Harris, Scott, 115 Harvard University, 26 Hatton, Ricky, 134–35, 136 Hawes, Neil, xiii, 410, 425–33, 436–37, 438, 453 Hayes, Anthony “Abbo,” xi, 235–36, 445 Hayes, Joshua, 337, 363, 370, 373, 383, 384, 388, 409, 415–16, 433–34 Hayes, Nick, ix, 10–11, 104, 152, 419n Hayes, Raymond, 12–13 Hayes, Robin, ix, 10, 110, 123, 140, 145, 146, 151–52, 321, 381 Hayes, Sandy, ix, 10–11, 13, 15, 16, 21, 305–6, 373, 419, 425 Hayes, Tom, ix Ainsworth and.


pages: 493 words: 132,290

Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores by Greg Palast

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", anti-communist, back-to-the-land, bank run, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, centre right, Chelsea Manning, classic study, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, disinformation, Donald Trump, energy security, Exxon Valdez, Glass-Steagall Act, invisible hand, junk bonds, means of production, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Pepto Bismol, random walk, Ronald Reagan, sensible shoes, Seymour Hersh, transfer pricing, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, Yogi Berra

In April 1998, Weill’s company, Travelers Group, an agglomeration of investment banks and other hot financial operations, took over CitiBank. Weill picked up about half a trillion dollars in Citibank assets. Brilliant—and against the law. While Dillinger, the fool, used fast getaway cars and Tommy guns to avoid the law, Weill simply had the law repealed. The law was the Glass-Steagall Act, signed by President Roosevelt in 1933. Glass-Steagall prohibited banks that take deposits (“commercial” banks) from merging with “investment” banks. Investment banks, despite the upright name, are financial casinos, which can make high-stakes, high-risk bets on stocks, bonds, currencies, derivatives, weather, whatever.


pages: 422 words: 131,666

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, addicted to oil, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-globalists, AOL-Time Warner, banks create money, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, big-box store, Bretton Woods, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, computer age, congestion pricing, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death of newspapers, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, easy for humans, difficult for computers, financial innovation, Firefox, full employment, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Google Earth, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, income per capita, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, loss aversion, market bubble, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, negative equity, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, peak oil, peer-to-peer, place-making, placebo effect, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, private military company, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, RFID, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social software, Steve Jobs, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, union organizing, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, white flight, working poor, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

And declaring bankruptcy no longer absolved a person of his debts; under Chapter 13 he would still be responsible for them, along with additional penalties, forever. This made even the riskiest of loans a surer bet. Banks also lobbied lawmakers to overturn rules that prevented them from engaging in both investment-and commercial-banking services. With the suspension of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act (and the associated Bank Holding Company Act), banks won the ability to make loans and then underwrite their sale to other people and institutions. In the old days, a bank made its money on the mortgage payments: it would write a loan to a customer, and the customer would pay it back. In the new scheme, a typical loan would be written by a mortgage lender—like Countrywide or New Century.


pages: 426 words: 136,925

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, call centre, carried interest, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, death of newspapers, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, edge city, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jessica Bruder, jitney, Kiva Systems, lockdown, Lyft, mass incarceration, McMansion, megaproject, microapartment, military-industrial complex, new economy, Nomadland, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, Ralph Nader, rent control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, tech worker, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, white flight, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Works Progress Administration

The tenure of Robert Rubin, the former Goldman Sachs executive whom President Clinton named treasury secretary in 1995, and who went on to earn $126 million at Citigroup, was so controversial that “Rubinite” became a term of opprobrium in liberal circles. Rubin and his successor, Lawrence Summers, thwarted an attempt to regulate financial derivatives and pushed to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking. These moves, which boosted Wall Street, were later implicated in the financial collapse. Making matters worse for the reputation of the Wall Street Democrats was the Obama administration’s failure to hold accountable the bankers most responsible for that collapse.


pages: 514 words: 153,092

The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes

Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Charles Lindbergh, collective bargaining, currency manipulation / currency intervention, electricity market, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Glass-Steagall Act, Ida Tarbell, invisible hand, jobless men, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, plutocrats, short selling, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Upton Sinclair, wage slave, Works Progress Administration

Hoover had encouraged families to tend “subsistence gardens” so that they might feed themselves with their own vegetables. Roosevelt instructed Ickes to develop a subsistence homestead project where families might feed themselves on new farms. Hoover had signed a Glass-Steagall Banking Act in 1932, to expand credit; Roosevelt now prepared his own Glass-Steagall Act. Hoover had deplored the shorting of Wall Street’s rogues; Roosevelt set his brain trusters to writing a law that would create a regulator for Wall Street. The new Securities and Exchange Commission would turn the stock market from a free-for-all with hazy rules into a more comprehensible game, one in which the small player had a fairer shot.


pages: 488 words: 144,145

Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream by R. Christopher Whalen

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Swan, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, commoditize, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, debt deflation, falling living standards, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, housing crisis, interchangeable parts, invention of radio, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, liquidity trap, low interest rates, means of production, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, plutocrats, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce

Geithner, Timothy General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) General Motors (GM) bailout bankruptcy organization collapse debt, impact du Pont investment Durant support General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) bailout credit supply founding Germany Barron attack (Wall Street Journal) central powers, attack (Barron support) WWI debt imposition, impact GI Bill of Rights Gilbert, Clinton (Mirrors of Wall Street) Gilbert, Parker Gilded Age cessation comparison impact trusts, near-bank status Glass, Carter American principle devotion Banking Act sponsorship populist facade proposal Secretary of the Treasury status Glass-Steagall Act Glass-Steagall laws Global currency backing system, problem Global imbalances Global inflation Global marketplace, U.S. advantage Global markets, dollar flow Global payments system, U.S. response Global system, equilibrium Gold Bretton Woods, impact coinage, hard money Jacksonian notion (continuation) coins (specie) confiscation hoarding confiscation conspiracy, relief convertibility Nixon cessation restoration (1879) American resistance return dollar peg, cessation (1971) dollar price, increase exchange FDR, impact greenbacks convertibility, restoration exchange market dynamic movement Fed policy independence impact paper dollars, relationship payment (WWI), promise post-market crisis, Gould operation price fluctuation peak (1869) production purchase, greenbacks (Gould usage) refinement, cyanide process (adoption) reserves bank drain drain seizure Board of Governors complicity stocks, U.S. government holding supply, expansion Goldenweiser, E.A.


pages: 585 words: 151,239

Capitalism in America: A History by Adrian Wooldridge, Alan Greenspan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Blitzscaling, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, general purpose technology, George Gilder, germ theory of disease, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land bank, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Mason jar, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, plutocrats, pneumatic tube, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, price stability, Productivity paradox, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, refrigerator car, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, savings glut, scientific management, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, supply-chain management, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transcontinental railway, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, War on Poverty, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, white flight, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Confederate economy, 81, 81–82 1800–1860, 41, 59 1880–1917, 154, 155, 156 1920–1940, 187, 194 1930–1936, 251–52 1942–1945, 268 1960–1965, 298 1970–1990, 359 1998–2000, 367 Geneen, Harold, 320 General Electric (GE), 105, 140, 143, 144, 148–49, 202, 203–4, 280, 290, 312, 319, 330, 335–36, 392, 413 General Motors (GM), 209–12, 268, 288, 289, 294, 314, 318, 333, 359, 360 geographical mobility, 11–12, 389, 392–93 George, Henry, 177 George Washington Bridge, 90 germ theory of disease, 430 Giannini, Amadeo, 3 GI Bill, 273, 274, 281–82 Gilder, George, 333 Gilman, George Francis, 140 Giuliani, Rudy, 337–38 Glass-Steagall Act, 343 Glidden, Joseph, 116 globalization, 4, 278–79, 294–95, 320–21, 332, 343–47, 366, 376–77 Golden Gate Bridge, 274, 412 Gold Exchange Standard, 258–59 “Goldilocks economy,” 366–67 Goldin, Claudia, 295, 400 Goldman Sachs, 375 gold reserves, 228, 228, 229, 242, 307, 308 gold rush, 42, 101, 111 gold standard, 25, 150–53, 157, 160–63, 184–85, 226–29, 258–59, 306–7, 329 Gold Standard Act of 1900, 152 Goldwater, Barry, 277, 304 Gompers, Samuel, 193 Goodyear, Charles, 24, 47, 422 Google, 349, 354–55, 356, 390–91, 396 Gordon, Robert, 4, 199, 274–75, 366–67 Gore, Al, 230, 368 Gore, Howard Mason, 199 Gould, Jay, 124, 130, 139, 167 government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), 379–80 Grand Central Station (New York City), 96 Granger movement, 171–72 Grant, James, 193 Grant, Ulysses S., 267 Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), 225, 262 Gray, Elisha, 109 Grayson, Jackson, 318–19 Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), 140 “great compression,” 295 Great Crash of 1929, 27, 221–24, 222, 242 Great Depression, 4, 220–66, 373, 418 business and the, 262–66 causes of, 226–37 rising to the challenge, 237–41 Great Merger Movement, 142–45 Great Migration, 11–12, 180–81, 214–15, 392, 436 Great Northern Railway, 88 Great Recession, 386 Great Society, 25, 303–5 Great Stagnation, 4, 399–416, 438 Great Upheaval of 1886, 173 greed and selfishness, 132, 424–25 Greeley, Horace, 73, 130 Grove, Andy, 353 growth rate, 29, 92–93, 387, 387 Grund, Francis, 43 Grundy, Joseph, 232 Haas, Walter, 291 Hamilton, Alexander, 9, 32, 40, 61–67, 161, 239 Hamilton Tariff of 1789, 65 Hancock, John, 32 H&R Block, 293 Hanna, Mark, 159, 168 Hansen, Alvin, 4, 273, 276 Hanson, Gordon, 371 Harding, Warren, 188, 189, 190, 204 “hard” money, 160–61 Harlem, 215 Harlem Renaissance, 215 Harley-Davidson, 345 Harper, Michael, 324 Hartwig, Ron, 318 Hartz, Louis, 182 Harvard Business School, 363, 369 Hawaii, 95 Hawley, Willis, 230 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 55 Hayek, Friedrich, 26, 277 Hayes, Robert, 311 Hayes, Rutherford B., 167 Hearst, William Randolph, 245 Heckman, James, 400 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 182 Heinz, H.


pages: 511 words: 151,359

The Asian Financial Crisis 1995–98: Birth of the Age of Debt by Russell Napier

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Berlin Wall, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discounted cash flows, diversification, Donald Trump, equity risk premium, financial engineering, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, lateral thinking, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, mass immigration, means of production, megaproject, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, Pearl River Delta, price mechanism, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, short selling, social distancing, South China Sea, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, yield curve

In September 1998, it was already obvious that regulatory arbitrage was rife in the global banking system, and that the securitisation underway was acting to permit greater leverage and also weaken bank balance sheets. Mr Mingo and Mr Jones had told everyone in 1998 what the consequences would be if nothing was done and nothing was done. The securitisation business continued to grow and the bank balance sheets continued to weaken. Financial liberalisation continued and the Glass-Steagall Act, which had split retail banking from more risky financial activities, was partially repealed in 1999. Those in the Clinton administration who wished to extend greater regulation to the derivatives markets were defeated by those who believed that markets were quite capable of regulating themselves.


pages: 561 words: 157,589

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, DevOps, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disinformation, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, gravity well, greed is good, Greyball, Guido van Rossum, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kaizen: continuous improvement, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Lean Startup, Leonard Kleinrock, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, microbiome, microservices, minimum viable product, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, OSI model, Overton Window, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, software as a service, software patent, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strong AI, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the map is not the territory, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, VA Linux, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, zero-sum game, Zipcar

The laws of the United States, and most other countries, have grown mind-bogglingly complex. The Affordable Care Act was nearly two thousand pages long. By contrast, the National Highway Bill of 1956, which led to the creation of the US Interstate Highway System, the largest public works project in history, was twenty-nine pages. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which regulated banks after the Great Depression, was thirty-seven pages long. Its dismantling led to the 2008 financial crisis; the regulatory response this time, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, contains 848 pages, and calls for more than 400 additional bouts of rulemaking, in total adding up to as much as 30,000 pages of regulations.


Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Politics and Society in Modern America) by Louis Hyman

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business logic, card file, central bank independence, computer age, corporate governance, credit crunch, declining real wages, deindustrialization, diversified portfolio, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, late fees, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, means of production, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, p-value, pattern recognition, post-Fordism, profit maximization, profit motive, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Tax Reform Act of 1986, technological determinism, technology bubble, the built environment, transaction costs, union organizing, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

See Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC) Freedom National Bank, 184–85 French, Henry, 19 Freund, David, 295n11 Frieman, Jorie, 194–95 From Cottonbelt to Sunbelt (Schulman), 325n143 Fuentes, Pressman, 347n141 Furness, Betty, 182, 183–84, 190 furniture industry: in the 1920s, 32–36, 40; installment sales of furniture under Regulation W, 109, 110 Gallagher hearings, 347n155 Garcia, Joseph, 170 Garvin’s department store, 159 Gatzert, Walter, 109 Gelpi, Rose-Maria, 295n12 General Electric (GE), 28, 134, 163, 165–69 General Electric Contracts Corporation (GECC; later General Electric Contracts Corporation, then GE Capital), 28, 165–69, 171, 242, 272, 340n168; “maintenance fee” of, 268; offer of “private label” credit to retailers, 168; rewards card, 265 General Motors (GM), 21, 21–22, 22, 25, 26, 31, 43; “fundamental index” for measuring success, 23; recognition of the importance of time sales, 25 General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC), 21, 22, 25, 25–26, 26, 31 Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), 257 Generation Debt (Kamenetz), 260n275 Giannini, Amadeo, 67, 94, 95 Ginnie Mae. See Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA) Glass-Steagall Act (1933), 68, 254–55 Glenn, John M., 297n26 GMAC v. Weinrich (1924), 32 Goldman Sachs, 255 370 Goodell, Charles, 206 Government Accounting Office (GAO), 257, 261 Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), 227–29, 232, 233, 234, 351n26; exemption from all taxes, 352n39 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), 278 Great Depression, 45, 88; foreclosures during, 48 Great Society, 223–34, 283 Grebler, Leo, 48 Greenspan, Alan, 272 Greenwood Trust Co. v.


pages: 540 words: 168,921

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism by Joyce Appleby

1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, Doha Development Round, double entry bookkeeping, epigenetics, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Firefox, fixed income, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Francisco Pizarro, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, General Magic , Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, informal economy, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, knowledge economy, land bank, land reform, Livingstone, I presume, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, PalmPilot, Parag Khanna, pneumatic tube, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, refrigerator car, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, spice trade, spinning jenny, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, two and twenty, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban renewal, vertical integration, War on Poverty, working poor, Works Progress Administration, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War

Unlike their predecessors who financed railroad construction in the nineteenth century, they invested in the securities they created for their customers, throwing caution to the wind in order to make loans with fewer assets as ballast. Corporations replaced partnerships, allowing executives to take more risks without assuming personal responsibility. In all this they were greatly aided by the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated commercial from investment banks and prohibited commercial banks from owning corporate stock. The go-go spirit of the 1990s also kicked in.2 The 2008 financial crisis had two underlying causes roiled by a wild card. The first predisposing cause was set in place in the late 1970s, when a recession stirred interest in eliminating the regulations that formed a legacy of the Great Depression of the 1930s.


pages: 598 words: 172,137

Who Stole the American Dream? by Hedrick Smith

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbus A320, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, asset allocation, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, business cycle, business process, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, family office, financial engineering, Ford Model T, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, guest worker program, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, industrial cluster, informal economy, invisible hand, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Larry Ellison, late fees, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Maui Hawaii, mega-rich, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Occupy movement, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, Ponzi scheme, Powell Memorandum, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Renaissance Technologies, reshoring, rising living standards, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech worker, Ted Nordhaus, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Vanguard fund, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, Y2K

Born accused them of “muzzling” her agency and abruptly announced her intention to quit the government when her term expired in April 1999. But eight years later, just as she had warned, the derivatives market started to blow up and spread financial mayhem worldwide. Repealing Glass-Steagall An even more pivotal victory for the Wall Street–Washington axis was repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (the Banking Act of 1933) by Congress in 1999, at the urging of Rubin and Greenspan. Glass-Steagall had been passed as one of the first reforms of the New Deal to try to prevent a repeat of the 1929 market crash. Its purpose was to separate commercial banking from investment banking. The law walled off the dull but vital business of safe, reliable banks, where consumers could put their savings and their checking accounts, from the risky business of investment banks engaged in mergers and acquisitions, “financial engineering,” marketing derivatives, and playing the market with company assets for their own profit.


pages: 526 words: 160,601

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Cannon Gibney

1960s counterculture, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, bond market vigilante , book value, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate personhood, Corrections Corporation of America, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, equal pay for equal work, failed state, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Haight Ashbury, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jane Jacobs, junk bonds, Kitchen Debate, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Armstrong, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, operation paperclip, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, school choice, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Snapchat, source of truth, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, TaskRabbit, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, We are all Keynesians now, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Continental collapsed in 1984 after acquiring bad oil and gas loans (just the sort of asset now plaguing several Boomer-run banks).14 Continental’s salvation taught banks and depositors that they would not really face the sort of market discipline that was a core assumption of the free market theories supposedly driving deregulation. RN catalyzed the Boomers’ privatization of gain and socialization of risk. To make the most of RN, other laws had to be dismantled, like the Glass-Steagall Act (GS). Passed as part of the New Deal, GS restricted banks from engaging in riskier (if potentially more lucrative) activities that were unrelated to their core business. The Federal Reserve opened some questionable loopholes to GS in the 1980s, but the law remained on the books. By 1998—about four years after the government wound up the last of the S&Ls—Citicorp merged with Travelers Insurance to form Citigroup.


pages: 733 words: 179,391

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought by Andrew W. Lo

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Andrei Shleifer, Arthur Eddington, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bob Litterman, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, break the buck, Brexit referendum, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, confounding variable, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, Diane Coyle, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, double helix, easy for humans, difficult for computers, equity risk premium, Ernest Rutherford, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Fractional reserve banking, framing effect, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, Henri Poincaré, high net worth, housing crisis, incomplete markets, index fund, information security, interest rate derivative, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Hawkins, Jim Simons, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, language acquisition, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, martingale, megaproject, merger arbitrage, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Neil Armstrong, Nick Leeson, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, p-value, PalmPilot, paper trading, passive investing, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, predatory finance, prediction markets, price discovery process, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, RAND corporation, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, Shai Danziger, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical arbitrage, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, stocks for the long run, subprime mortgage crisis, survivorship bias, systematic bias, Thales and the olive presses, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, ultimatum game, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Walter Mischel, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Our exposition follows Sharpe’s most closely. 2. Siegel (2014). 3. This term also refers to both economic and regulatory reforms that were put in place in the wake of the Great Depression to modulate financial activity, including much of the U.S. code that now governs the entire financial system: the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, the Banking Act of 1933, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Company Act of 1940, and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The Great Modulation should not be confused with the “Great Moderation,” a term coined by Stock and Watson (2002) that refers to the 1987–2007 period of lower volatility in the U.S. business cycle.


pages: 661 words: 185,701

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S. Prasad

access to a mobile phone, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, algorithmic trading, altcoin, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, central bank independence, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, democratizing finance, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, full employment, gamification, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, litecoin, lockdown, loose coupling, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mobile money, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, random walk, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, robo advisor, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, SoftBank, special drawing rights, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vision Fund, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WeWork, wikimedia commons, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

A benign view is that they serve as important intermediaries in large and complex transactions, create products that help bridge gaps in the financial system, and enable investors to better manage risk. An alternative view, however, is that, in the rush for short-term profits and bonuses, they end up creating even more risk and instability in the financial system. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 mandated the separation of commercial and investment banking functions in the United States, mainly to prevent commercial banks from taking on too much risk through financial speculation. As part of a broader deregulation of the financial sector, Glass-Steagall was largely repealed in the 1990s.


pages: 829 words: 187,394

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cashless society, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commodity super cycle, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, deglobalization, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Extinction Rebellion, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, margin call, Mark Spitznagel, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megaproject, meme stock, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mohammed Bouazizi, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, railway mania, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Haywood, time value of money, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Walter Mischel, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, yield curve

Scott, 203 Florence, 21–3 ‘Fordism’, 89 Fordyce, Alexander, 63 foreign exchanges, xxv; currencies pegged to the dollar, 251, 252, 253; dollar as global reserve currency, xxiii, 118, 239, 251–2, 253, 261, 262–3, 267; French currency during Mississippi bubble, 56–7; growth of reserves, 252, 253, 254–5, 256; international bills of exchange, 24; Louvre Accord (1987), 105–6; printing of money to acquire reserves, 137, 252; Shanghai Accord (2016), 241, 241*; undervalued Chinese yuan, 267–8, 270, 271 Forest Service, US, 154–5 France: 1848 Revolution, xix; allocation of capital in Bretton Woods era, 291; French Louisiana, 50, 52; Law and depreciated government debt, 48, 50, 51–2, 59, 65, 69; Law and paper money, xxii, 47, 52, 55–8; Law as Finance Minister, 46, 57; Law establishes General Bank (1716), 49–50; Law’s Mississippi Company, 46, 50–61, 65, 68, 172–3, 178, 202–3, 273, 286, 298, 308; Les Trente Glorieuses, 302; and long-term bonds, 225; Palais Mazarin, Paris, 54, 54*; rentier term, 7; Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars, 41–2, 69–70; Royal Bank, 50, 52, 53, 57, 58; war with England (1690s), 38 Francis, Pope, 201, 213 Franklin, Benjamin, Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748), xviii, 22, 28, 190 fraud, 64, 80, 149 free market economics, 95–6, 295–6 Freud, Lucien, 208 Frick, Henry, 157–8 Fridson, Martin, 146 Friedman, Milton, 98, 99, 101, 131 Fugger, Jakob, 202 Fullarton, John, 67–8, 71, 75 Gage, Lyman, 83, 311 Galai, Dan, 228–9 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 287 Galiani, Ferdinando, 218–19, 220, 221, 222, 233 GameStop (retailer), 307 Garber, Peter, 60 Gehringer, Agnieszka, 134–5 Geithner, Tim, 76 General Electric, 156, 157, 159, 170–71 General Motors, 90, 166–7 General Strike (UK, 1926), 86 Genoa, 22, 23, 35, 47–8, 49 George, Henry, 243, 246, 260* Gergy, Jacques Vincent, Count of, 60 Germany, 7, 159, 225, 291, 299; economy in 1920s, 82, 91, 92, 93; and Eurozone crisis, 144–5; negative interest rates in, 192–3, 245; Wirtschaftswunder, 302 Gesell, Silvio, 242–3, 246, 294 ‘gig economy’, 149 Gladstone, William, 40, 72, 76* Glahn, Richard von, 265* Glass–Steagall Act, 232 Global Asset Management, 228, 228* globalization: feedback loop with interest rates, 260–61, 311; first wave of (from 1860s), 260, 311; global aspect of inflation, 122; and great bubbles of history, 263; political backlash against in West, 261; recent phase (from 1980), 260–61, 311 Goetzmann, William, 8†, 14, 60, 247 Gold Exchange Standard, 11, 85, 85*, 86, 87, 90*, 261 Gold Standard, 43, 82, 84–5, 85*, 86, 98, 99, 133, 251 Goldman Sachs, 175, 255, 258 Goodhart, Charles, 105, 121, 127, 246 Gopinath, Gita, 144 Gordon, Robert, 128 Goschen, George, 77, 78–9 Goschen conversion (1888), 65*, 79 Graham, Benjamin, 90–91 Grant, Albert, 73 Grant, James, 82, 118, 141, 148, 191, 194, 230–31, 297; on Fed’s dual mandate, 155; on negative-yielding bonds, 226; on radical monetary gimmicks, 242; on regulation, 232; The Forgotten Depression, 100 Grantham, Jeremy, 183 Great Depression, 98–101, 98*, 105, 108, 125–6, 129, 142–3, 299 see also Wall Street Crash (October 1929) Great Fire of London (1666), 33 the ‘Great Moderation’, 112 Great Recession, 146, 152–3, 181–2, 206–17, 221–4; and secular stagnation argument, 124–5, 126–8, 131; slow recovery in developed world, 124–5, 126–9, 131–2, 150–53, 298–9, 304; and support for democracy, 299 see also financial crisis (2008) Greece, 144–5, 147, 148*, 253, 262, 293; ancient/classical, 6, 9, 10–11, 11*, 13, 13, 17–18, 18†, 20, 200, 200*, 219 Green, Sir Philip, 197 Greensill, Lex, 228* Greenspan, Alan, 110, 132, 226; Fed’s focus on near-term inflation, 110–14; interest rates under, 110–15, 117, 134–5, 134*, 162, 186, 190–91, 204, 226–7, 238, 252–3, 267 Gresham’s Law, 145–6, 224 Griffin, Ken, 209 Gross, Bill, 217, 221, 235, 236, 246 Grotius, Hugo, 40 Guinness (Irish brewer), 79 Gundlach, Jeffrey, 246 Gupta, Sanjeev, 228* H2O (investment company), 228 Hadley, Arthur, 140, 157 Haldane, Andrew, 168, 232, 233, 311 Hamilton, Earl J., 48, 58, 58* Hammurabi’s Code, 9 Hanauer, Nick, 217 Hankey, Thomson, Principles of Banking, 75–6 Hansen, Alvin, 124–5, 126, 127, 128, 129 Harding, William, 84 Harman, Jeremiah, 66 Harriman, Edward H., 157, 158 Hartnett, Michael, 200 Hawtrey, Ralph, 87 Hayek, Friedrich: and concept of time, 32, 95; critique of monetary policy in 1920s, 92, 96, 96*, 101, 105, 108, 114, 133; and deflation/inflation, 100, 101, 105, 113, 133–4, 302; and inequality, 296, 299; interpretation of 1929 Crash, 101, 105; on money, 294, 295, 297*, 312; and ‘natural rate’ of interest, 32, 96, 96*, 133, 269; rejects price stabilization policy, 92, 96, 96*, 108, 133; view of intellectuals, 297, 302–3; view of interest, 297–8, 301; The Denationalisation of Money (1990), 297*; Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1929), 96; ‘The Pretence of Knowledge’ (Nobel prize lecture), 302–3; The Road to Serfdom (1944), 295–6, 298, 302 Haywood, Tim, 228* Hazlitt, Henry, Economics in One Lesson (1946), xx hedge funds, 166, 169–70, 183, 207, 209, 229, 304 Heinz, H.


pages: 701 words: 199,010

The Crisis of Crowding: Quant Copycats, Ugly Models, and the New Crash Normal by Ludwig B. Chincarini

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, automated trading system, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black-Scholes formula, Bob Litterman, business cycle, buttonwood tree, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, delta neutral, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, high net worth, hindsight bias, housing crisis, implied volatility, income inequality, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, John Meriwether, Kickstarter, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, managed futures, margin call, market design, market fundamentalism, merger arbitrage, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mitch Kapor, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, National best bid and offer, negative equity, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shock, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Sharpe ratio, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, survivorship bias, systematic trading, tail risk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

In fact, many of the activities that it classified as insurance activities, we would have classified as a hedge fund writing protection on the mortgage market with a dangerous degree of leverage. The Dodd-Frank Act also made modifications for insurance companies. In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act represented the most significant change in the U.S. financial services industry in 66 years, repealing the core provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act that restricted bank holding companies from affiliating with securities firms and insurance companies. This led to the ability for an insurance firm like AIG to operate like a massive casino and become a hidden source of systemic risk. It is not clear, however, if the repeal of Glass-Steagall itself was the principal problem.


pages: 823 words: 220,581

Debunking Economics - Revised, Expanded and Integrated Edition: The Naked Emperor Dethroned? by Steve Keen

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, business cycle, butterfly effect, capital asset pricing model, cellular automata, central bank independence, citizen journalism, clockwork universe, collective bargaining, complexity theory, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental subject, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, Henri Poincaré, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, iterative process, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market microstructure, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, Money creation, money market fund, open economy, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, place-making, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, profit maximization, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, random walk, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific mainstream, seigniorage, six sigma, South Sea Bubble, stochastic process, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, time value of money, total factor productivity, tulip mania, wage slave, zero-sum game

DotCom bubble double-entry bookkeeping Dow, Sheila Dow Jones Industrial Average, movements of dynamic analysis Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model (DGSE); uselessness of earthquakes, theory of Econlit online service econometric models, large-scale economics: as pre-science; as science; different from true sciences; dumbing-down of textbooks; future of; loss of interest in; methodology of; need for revolution in; neoclassical see neoclassical economics; paradigm shifts in; teaching of economies of scale econophysics efficiency of markets efficient markets hypothesis; contradicted; failure of Ehrenberg, Andrew Einstein, Albert; Theory of Relativity emergent behavior emergent properties, concept of employment, theory of Engel curves entrepreneur, role of; as key actor entropy equilibrium; conflated with economic utopia; dismissed by Keynes; general (unreal assumptions of); in exchange rate of commodities; in Marx; in neoclassical theory; instability of; irrelevance of; partial equilibrium method; self-equilibrating economy; value of shares; Walrasian model of Escher drawings euphoric economy European Union (EU), and economic growth evolutionary school of economics exchange, in primitive societies exchange-value expectation; formation of; rational expected value, concept of experiments, importance of externalities ‘F-twist’ factories, built with excess capacity factors of production; fixed; flows of; variable failure to see crisis coming false equalities Fama, Eugene Federal Reserve Board; mismanagement of money supply feudalism finance sector; reform of financial assets: analysis of; pricing of Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Financial Crisis Observatory Financial Instability Hypothesis see Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis firm, theory of (neoclassical) Fisher, Irving; bankruptcy of; debt deflation paper; The Theory of Interest flat world analogy Fokker-Planck model fractal geometry Fractal Markets Hypothesis Fractional Reserve Banking Freakonomics freedom, and labor French, Kenneth freshwater v. saltwater macroeconomics Friedman, Milton; ‘assumptions don’t matter’; helicopter image; paper on methodology full employment Fullbrook, Edward Fullwiler, Scott Galbraith, J. K. Galileo Galilei Game Theory Garicano, Luis Giffen goods Glass-Steagall Act, repeal of glut; alleged impossibility of Gödel’s proof Godley, Wynne gold standard; theory of Goodwin, Richard; growth cycle model Gordon, R. J. Gorman, William government spending, as stabilizer of economy Gramm, Phil Graziani, Augusto Great Depression; misunderstanding of Great Moderation Great Recession; combating of; misunderstanding of; neoclassical response to Greater Fool principle Greenspan, Alan growth theory; neoclassical Handbook of Mathematical Economics Harrison, Edward Harrod, R.


pages: 767 words: 208,933

Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist by Alex Zevin

"there is no alternative" (TINA), activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, Columbine, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, desegregation, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, imperial preference, income inequality, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Khartoum Gordon, land reform, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Journalism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, post-war consensus, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, Socratic dialogue, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Their prospects, by the time they retire, seem on par with those of 1950s coalminers.’147 This prediction was not just at odds with the editorial bottom line, but spectacularly wrong. Endorsing fresh-faced Bill Clinton in 1992, ‘standard-bearer of a new Democratic party: fiscally responsible, socially hard-headed’ – and set to fatten the Wall Street banks with repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act and thin the welfare rolls – the new generation of Economist journalists were all aboard for the new world order.148 This eBook is licensed to Karim Mamdani, karim.mamdani@gmail.com on 12/02/2019 8 Globalization and Its Contents The Economist reached the last years of the twentieth century on a high.


pages: 1,104 words: 302,176

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) by Robert J. Gordon

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airline deregulation, airport security, Apple II, barriers to entry, big-box store, blue-collar work, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, cotton gin, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Detroit bankruptcy, discovery of penicillin, Donner party, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, feminist movement, financial innovation, food desert, Ford Model T, full employment, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Golden age of television, government statistician, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, impulse control, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflight wifi, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, invention of air conditioning, invention of the sewing machine, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, Lewis Mumford, Loma Prieta earthquake, Louis Daguerre, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market fragmentation, Mason jar, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, Menlo Park, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, Norbert Wiener, obamacare, occupational segregation, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, payday loans, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, Productivity paradox, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, refrigerator car, rent control, restrictive zoning, revenue passenger mile, Robert Solow, Robert X Cringely, Ronald Coase, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Skype, Southern State Parkway, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, streetcar suburb, The Market for Lemons, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, working poor, working-age population, Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism, yield management

High school graduation rates reached nearly 80 percent by 1975 but then slipped back. James Heckman and others have shown that those who do not obtain high school diplomas but rather GED certificates have social and economic outcomes more similar to high-school dropouts than to high-school graduates. 76. The FDIC was created as part of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which “tightened branching restrictions, created federal deposit insurance, imposed interest-rate ceilings on deposits, empowered the Federal Reserve Board to vary reserve requirements, and decoupled commercial banking from investment banking” (Vietor 2000, p. 979). This last achievement, the decoupling of commercial and investment banking, was repealed by the Clinton administration in 1999, and the repeal has been blamed in part for excess financial leverage and other aspects of the 2007–9 U.S. financial crisis and subsequent recession. 77.


pages: 1,009 words: 329,520

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co. by William D. Cohan

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, bank run, Bear Stearns, book value, Carl Icahn, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, computer age, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, deal flow, diversification, Donald Trump, East Village, fear of failure, financial engineering, fixed income, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, interest rate swap, intermodal, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, land bank, late fees, Long Term Capital Management, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, Michael Milken, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short squeeze, SoftBank, stock buybacks, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, Yogi Berra

[M]oreover it seems to us Paris would be in far better position if they borrowed entire amount from Banque de France at the beginning when skies are clear than if they borrowed a lesser amount and then filled their line under stress of circumstances at a time when doing so might create most unfavorable impression." AT THIS TIME, Altschul appeared to be far more preoccupied with what the consequences of the recently passed Banking Act of 1933, also known as the Glass-Steagall Act after its main congressional sponsors, would mean for Lazard. The act, which rose out of the bank failures of the Depression, sought to separate commercial banking--the taking of deposits--from investment banking, that is, the underwriting of securities. Wall Street firms were given a year to decide which business line to choose.


pages: 1,169 words: 342,959

New York by Edward Rutherfurd

Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, illegal immigration, margin call, millennium bug, out of africa, place-making, plutocrats, rent control, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, the market place, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, urban renewal, white picket fence, Y2K, young professional

The gift was still sitting, fully wrapped, in a closet in the apartment. One day, he promised himself, he’d get round to dealing with it. God knows, he meant to. His banking career had started well. The first choice had been what kind of bank he wanted to go into. Gorham knew that ever since the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 had regulated the banking industry after the great crash, one had to choose between two kinds of banking career: the commercial, high street banks that took ordinary people’s deposits, and the investment banks—the merchants banks, as they were called in London—where the financiers made their deals.


Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House by Peter Baker

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, buy low sell high, carbon tax, card file, clean water, collective bargaining, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, drone strike, energy security, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, friendly fire, Glass-Steagall Act, guest worker program, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, information security, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, no-fly zone, operational security, Robert Bork, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, South China Sea, stem cell, Ted Sorensen, too big to fail, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, working poor, Yom Kippur War

Bush Presidential Library and Museum, 36.1, epl.1 Georgia, 20.1, 21.1, 34.1, 34.2, 34.3, 35.1, 37.1 Gephardt, Richard, 8.1, 10.1, 12.1, 12.2, 13.1, 17.1, 17.2, 18.1 Gergen, David Germany, 13.1, 13.2, 16.1, 17.1, 17.2, 21.1, 33.1, 34.1, 34.2, 35.1 Gerson, Michael, 3.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.1, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 14.1, 14.2, 15.1, 16.1, 18.1, 357, 20.1, 20.2, 20.3, 20.4, 20.5, 23.1, 25.1, 25.2, 26.1, 27.1, 31.1, 31.2, 31.3, 32.1, epl.1 Gettysburg, Battle of Gillespie, Ed, prl.1, 18.1, 22.1, 23.1, 23.2, 23.3, 25.1, 28.1, 32.1, 32.2, 34.1, 34.2, 34.3, 35.1, 35.2, 35.3, 35.4, 35.5, 35.6, 36.1 Gingrich, Newt, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 28.1 Giuliani, Rudy, 8.1, 8.2, 20.1, 31.1, 35.1 Glass-Steagall Act (1933) Glenn, John Glick, Jeremy Glick, Lyzbeth Glover, Juleanna Goeglein, Tim, 17.1, 34.1 Golden Mosque (al-Askari Mosque) Goldmark, Didi Goldsmith, Jack, 17.1, 17.2, 18.1, 20.1, epl.1 Goldwater, Barry Gonzales, Alberto, 5.1, 5.2, 8.1, 8.2, 10.1, 11.1, 16.1, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18.1, 20.1, 20.2, 21.1, 21.2, 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 23.1, 23.2, 26.1, 27.1, 31.1, 31.2, 32.1, 35.1, 37.1 Gorbachev, Mikhail, prl.1, 6.1 Gordon, David, 20.1, 30.1, 31.1, 34.1, epl.1 Gore, Al, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 8.1, 18.1, 18.2, 24.1, 34.1, epl.1, nts.1n, nts.2n Gore, Tipper Goss, Porter, 20.1, 26.1 Gottesman, Blake, 14.1, 37.1 Graham, Billy Graham, Lindsey, 16.1, 24.1, 24.2, 28.1, 30.1, 34.1 Grant, Ulysses S., 11.1, 36.1 Grassley, Charles Gray, C.


pages: 1,544 words: 391,691

Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice by Pierre Vernimmen, Pascal Quiry, Maurizio Dallocchio, Yann le Fur, Antonio Salvi

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", accelerated depreciation, accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, AOL-Time Warner, ASML, asset light, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, book value, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, carried interest, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, delta neutral, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, discrete time, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, electricity market, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, foreign exchange controls, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, impact investing, implied volatility, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interest rate swap, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, means of production, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Journalism, Northern Rock, performance metric, Potemkin village, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk/return, shareholder value, short selling, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, supply-chain management, survivorship bias, The Myth of the Rational Market, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, vertical integration, volatility arbitrage, volatility smile, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

In the last 15 years, large financial conglomerates have emerged both in the US and Europe. This resulted from mega-mergers between commercial banks and investment banks: BNP/Paribas, Citicorp/Travelers Group, Chase Manhattan/JP Morgan and, more recently, Merrill Lynch/Bank of America. This trend, eased by changes in regulation (in particular in the US with the reform of the Glass–Steagall Act in 1999), shows a willingness of large banking groups to adopt the business model of a universal bank (also called “one-stop shopping”) in a context of increasing internationalisation and complexity. This is particularly true for certain business lines like corporate finance or fund management, in which size constitutes a real competitive advantage.


pages: 1,336 words: 415,037

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bob Noyce, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Brownian motion, capital asset pricing model, card file, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, collateralized debt obligation, computerized trading, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, desegregation, do what you love, Donald Trump, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, financial engineering, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Golden Gate Park, Greenspan put, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Honoré de Balzac, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, index fund, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Larry Ellison, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, medical malpractice, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, NetJets, new economy, New Journalism, North Sea oil, paper trading, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Plato's cave, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, random walk, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scientific racism, shareholder value, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, telemarketer, The Predators' Ball, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, tontine, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, yellow journalism, zero-coupon bond

Banks lost their fear of bad credit through the combination of an emerging asset bubble, simple greed, the advent of securitization, and an eagerness to find toehold ways to fund equity transactions, a signal that the wall between commercial and investment banks erected by the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act was beginning to break down. 4. Eric J. Weiner, What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. 5. They started out as investment-grade bonds, but when their issuers cratered, the bonds became so cheap that they paid a higher rate; e.g., a bond that yielded 7% would yield 10% if the price of the bond dropped to 70% of par. 6.