Tag Archives: Simon Johnson

Dropping the Ball on Financial Regulation — Simon Johnson

 

MIT Sloan Prof. Simon Johnson

From the New York Times

With regard to financial reform, the outcome of the November election seems straightforward. At the presidential level, the too-big-to-fail banks bet heavily on Mitt Romney and lost; President Obama received relatively few contributions from the financial sector, in contrast to 2008. In Senate races, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio demonstrated that it was possible to win not just without Wall Street money but against Wall Street money. Read More »

Simon Johnson: The End of the Euro is Not About Austerity

From The New York Times Economix Blog

Most current policy discussion concerning the euro area is about austerity. Some people, particularly in German government circles, are pushing for tighter fiscal policies in troubled countries (i.e., higher taxes and lower government spending). Others, including in the new French government, are more inclined to push for a more expansive fiscal policy where possible and to resist fiscal contraction elsewhere.

The recently concluded Group of 20 summit meeting is being interpreted as shifting the balance away from the “austerity now” group, at least to some extent. But both sides of this debate are missing the important issue. As a result, the euro area continues its slide toward deeper crisis and likely eventual disruptive breakup…

Read the full post at: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/the-end-of-the-euro-is-not-about-austerity/

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and co-author of “White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You.”

Simon Johnson: Is Europe on the Verge of a Depression, or a Great Inflation?

MIT Sloan Prof. Simon Johnson

From the New York Times

The news from Europe, particularly from within the euro zone, seems all bad.

Interest rates on Italian government debt continue to rise. Attempts to put together a “rescue package” at the pan-European level repeatedly fall behind events. And the lack of leadership from Germany and France is palpable – where is the vision or the clarity of thought we would have had from Charles de Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer?

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Low Bank Capital Is Next Fiscal Crisis: Simon Johnson

From Bloomberg News

The summer debate that has dominated Washington seems straightforward. Under what conditions should the U.S. government be allowed to borrow more money? The numbers that have been bandied about focus on reducing the cumulative deficit projection over the next 10 years, as measured by the Congressional Budget Office.

But there is a serious drawback to this measure because it ignores what will probably prove to be the U.S.’s single largest fiscal problem over the next decade: The lack of adequate capital buffers at banks.

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Defaulting to big government—the unintended consequences of not raising the debt ceiling

MIT Sloan Prof. Simon Johnson

From CNN World

Leading United States congressmen are determined to provoke a showdown with the Obama administration over the federal government’s debt ceiling. Ordinarily, you might expect House Republicans to blink at this stage of the negotiations, but there is a hardline minority that actually appears to think that defaulting on government debt would not be a bad thing.

These representatives – with whom I’ve interacted at three congressional hearings recently – are convinced that the US federal government is too big relative to the economy, and that drastic measures are needed to bring it under control. Depending on your assessment of “Tea Party” strength on Capitol Hill, at least a partial debt default does not seem as implausible as it did in the past – and recent warnings from ratings agencies reflect this heightened risk.

But the consequences of any default would, ironically, actually increase the size of government relative to the US economy – the very outcome that Republican intransigents claim to be trying to avoid.

See the full post at Global Public Square

Simon Johnson, a professor of global economics and management at MIT Sloan, is the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and co-author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown