Mary Schapiro, reported to be the President-elect’s choice to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, is—by several miles—the most qualified person for the job. She’s served a previous six-year stint on the SEC (she was first appointed by Ronald Reagan), including a period as acting chairman. She’s been chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. [...]
Probably not, but it’s an interesting thought: We argue in this paper that if agents correctly believe in the possibility of a partial bailout when a gigantic Ponzi scheme collapses, and they recognize that a bailout is tantamount to a redistribution of wealth from non-participants to participants, it may be rational for agents to participate, [...]
So, in possibly the most shocking development in human history, one Barack Obama was chosen as TIME’s Person of the Year for 2008. (Yeah, I thought it would be Tina Fey too.) And who was the runner up? Why, our friend Hank Paulson. Yay, Treasury Department! Yay, financial crisis! I wrote the profile of Paulson [...]
A reader who has been through the experience of having tons of money and then suddenly not having it anymore writes: I decided to think of the people who lost money in the Madoff scam differently today. At first, I had a vision of old family “blue blooders” who find every tax loophole to keep [...]
