Companies & Regulation

“What would you (try to) do to save your country from economic collapse?” This is indeed a difficult and tricky question, and one that is normally answered along the lines of interventionist economic thinking. The fatal conceit that Hayek wrote about is embedded in this same question: it assumes that the leader of the State will be able to take the appropriate actions to lead the economy (a very complex social order) to whatever goals.

Will the European Central Bank turn to Quantitative Easing ? This is the question haunting all analysts and governments and, if one were to make a bet, better put it on the YES answer. Yes, the ECB will most probably end up doing just what the FED has been doing for years. The main reasons put forward in support of that policy is that there is no much choice: no one wants to lend to EU states and EU banks any more, not even the Chinese government, and the German economy doesn’t have the power to support everyone.

A widespread understanding of the 2007-2008 crisis places the origins of the crisis in a capture of global economy by the finance industry. The “occupy Wall Street” group would surely agree, as well as most of those who get their economics from the general media. And President Sarkozy in his recent Toulon’s speech did confirm the thesis. If this understanding is correct then it is natural to call for further regulation of the finance industry. But not everyone agrees, and some economists favor another understanding.

In one of the first studies critically to examine the Basel Accords, Engineering the Financial Crisis reveals the crucial role that bank capital requirements and other government regulations played in the recent financial crisis. Jeffrey Friedman and Wladimir Kraus argue that by encouraging banks to invest in highly rated mortgage-backed bonds, the Basel Accords created an overconcentration of risk in the banking industry.

is the amount of exposition of French banks to European countries’ private and public debt. They own for instance $106 billion of Italian public debt (which is six times higher…

Until now, the debt crisis seemed to spare the biggest European economy. But the country everybody is relying on starts to meet difficulties to refund its debt. The sale of German benchmark bonds on Wednesday turned to a disaster and the Bundesbank has been forced to hold on to record amounts (39% of the €6 billion Germany had hoped to sell) to ensure the auction did not fail. However, this is not so surprising if one takes a look on German 10-year real bond yield that turns to be negative:

Do fiscal decisions of incumbent mayors affect their probability of being re-elected? Do they consider the fiscal decisions of the neighboring mayors when they face an election? And do these…

William A. Niskanen, chairman emeritus and a distinguished senior economist at the Cato Institute, has died at the age of 78. Niskanen was the chairman of the Cato Institute for…

The Coalition for Tax Competition asked members of the US Congress to cut the $100 million taxpayer subsidy to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Citing the OECD’s record as an opponent of tax competition, the letter released by the coaltion argues that US taxpayers should not be funding an organization which works against their interests by promoting a statist agenda.

European governments are under pressure to shore up the banking sector in the face of growing worries about the industry’s capital levels, access to funding and earning power in the context of global crisis. Indeed, weakened by their bad sovereign debt holdings, several banks are scrutinized by the credit rating agencies and two of them, the French Société Générale and Crédit Agricole have recently been downgraded by Moody’s.