The portrayal of Greece by the international press during the financial crisis has been seen by many independent observers as very harsh. The Greeks have often been blamed for a myriad of ...international political problems and external economic factors beyond their control. In this original and insightful work George Tzogopoulos examines international newspaper coverage of the unfolding economic crisis in Greece. American, British, French, German and Italian broadsheet and tabloid coverage is carefully analysed. The Greek Crisis in the Media debates and dissects the extent to which the Greek response to the financial crisis has been given fair and balanced coverage by the press and questions how far politics and national stereotypes have played their part in the reporting of events. By placing the Greek experiences and treatment alongside those of other EU members such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, Tzogopoulos examines and highlights similarities and differences in the ways in which different countries tackled the challenges they faced during this crucial period and explores how and why the world's media reported these events.
Balancing the banks Dewatripont, Mathias; Rochet, Jean-Charles; Tirole, Jean ...
2010., 20100419, 2010, 2010-04-19, 20100101
eBook
The financial crisis that began in 2007 in the United States swept the world, producing substantial bank failures and forcing unprecedented state aid for the crippled global financial system. ...Bringing together three leading financial economists to provide an international perspective, Balancing the Banks draws critical lessons from the causes of the crisis and proposes important regulatory reforms, including sound guidelines for the ways in which distressed banks might be dealt with in the future.
The bankers' new clothes Admati, Anat; Admati, Anat; Hellwig, Martin
2014., 20130215, 2013-02-15, 2014-03-23, 20130101, ♭2013, 2013
eBook
What is wrong with today's banking system? The past few years have shown that risks in banking can impose significant costs on the economy. Many claim, however, that a safer banking system would ...require sacrificing lending and economic growth.The Bankers' New Clothesexamines this claim and the narratives used by bankers, politicians, and regulators to rationalize the lack of reform, exposing them as invalid.
Admati and Hellwig argue we can have a safer and healthier banking system without sacrificing any of the benefits of the system, and at essentially no cost to society. They show that banks are as fragile as they are not because they must be, but because they want to be--and they get away with it. Whereas this situation benefits bankers, it distorts the economy and exposes the public to unnecessary risks. Weak regulation and ineffective enforcement allowed the buildup of risks that ushered in the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Much can be done to create a better system and prevent crises. Yet the lessons from the crisis have not been learned.
Admati and Hellwig seek to engage the broader public in the debate by cutting through the jargon of banking, clearing the fog of confusion, and presenting the issues in simple and accessible terms.The Bankers' New Clothescalls for ambitious reform and outlines specific and highly beneficial steps that can be taken immediately.
Why did the Eurozone crisis prove to be so difficult to resolve? Why was it resolved in a manner in which some countries bore a much larger share of the pain than other countries? Why did no country ...leave the Eurozone rather than implement unprecedented austerity? Who supported and who opposed the different policy options in the crisis domestically, and how did the distributive struggles among these groups shape crisis politics? Building on macro-level statistical data, original survey data from interest groups, and qualitative comparative case studies, this book argues and shows that the answers to these questions revolve around distributive struggles about how the costs of the Eurozone crisis should be divided among countries, and among different socioeconomic groups within countries. Together with divergent but strongly held ideas about the “right way” to conduct economic policy and asymmetries in the distribution of power among actors, severe distributive concerns of important actors lie at the root of the difficulties of resolving the Eurozone crisis as well as the difficulties to substantially reform European Monetary Union (EMU). The book provides new insights into the politics of the Eurozone crisis by emphasizing three perspectives that have received scant attention in existing research: A comparative perspective on the Eurozone crisis by systematically comparing it to previous financial crises, an analysis of the whole range of policy options, including the ones not chosen, and a unified framework that examines crisis politics not just in deficit-debtor, but also in surplus-creditor countries.
After the Crash Sharyn O'Halloran, Thomas Groll
10/2019
eBook
The 2008 crash was the worst financial crisis and the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. It triggered a complete overhaul of the global regulatory environment, ushering in a ...stream of new rules and laws to combat the perceived weakness of the financial system. While the global economy came back from the brink, the continuing effects of the crisis include increasing economic inequality and political polarization. After the Crash is an innovative analysis of the crisis and its ongoing influence on the global regulatory, financial, and political landscape, with timely discussions of the key issues for our economic future. It brings together a range of experts and practitioners, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner; former congressman Barney Frank; former treasury secretary Jacob Lew; Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England; and Steve Cutler, general counsel of JP Morgan Chase during the financial crisis. Each poses crucial questions: What were the origins of the crisis? How effective were international and domestic regulatory responses? Have we addressed the roots of the crisis through reform and regulation? Are our financial systems and the global economy better able to withstand another crash?After the Crash is vital reading as both a retrospective on the last crisis and an analysis of possible sources of the next one.
The leaderless economy Temin, Peter; Temin, Peter; Vines, David
2013., 20130120, 2013, 2013-01-20, 20130101, c2013
eBook
The Leaderless Economyreveals why international financial cooperation is the only solution to today's global economic crisis. In this timely and important book, Peter Temin and David Vines argue that ...our current predicament is a catastrophe rivaled only by the Great Depression. Taking an in-depth look at the history of both, they explain what went wrong and why, and demonstrate why international leadership is needed to restore prosperity and prevent future crises.
Temin and Vines argue that the financial collapse of the 1930s was an "end-of-regime crisis" in which the economic leader of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, found itself unable to stem international panic as countries abandoned the gold standard. They trace how John Maynard Keynes struggled for years to identify the causes of the Great Depression, and draw valuable lessons from his intellectual journey. Today we are in the midst of a similar crisis, one in which the regime that led the world economy in the twentieth century--that of the United States--is ending. Temin and Vines show how America emerged from World War II as an economic and military powerhouse, but how deregulation and a lax attitude toward international monetary flows left the nation incapable of reining in an overleveraged financial sector and powerless to contain the 2008 financial panic. Fixed exchange rates in Europe and Asia have exacerbated the problem.
The Leaderless Economyprovides a blueprint for how renewed international leadership can bring today's industrial nations back into financial balance--domestically and between each other.
The recent financial crisis proved that pre-existing arrangements for the governance of global markets were flawed. With reform underway in the USA, the EU and elsewhere, Emilios Avgouleas explores ...some of the questions associated with building an effective governance system and analyses the evolution of existing structures. By critiquing the soft law structures dominating international financial regulation and examining the roles of financial innovation and the neo-liberal policies in the expansion of global financial markets, he offers a new epistemological reading of the causes of the global financial crisis. Requisite reforms leave serious gaps in cross-border supervision, in the resolution of global financial institutions and in the monitoring of risk originating in the shadow banking sector. To close these gaps and safeguard the stability of the international financial system, an evolutionary governance system is proposed that will also enhance the welfare role of global financial markets.
The Dodd--Frank Act of 2010 was intended to reform financial policies in order to prevent another massive crisis such as the financial meltdown of 2008. Dodd--Frank is largely premised on the ...diagnosis that connectedness was the major problem in that crisis -- that is, that financial institutions were overexposed to one another, resulting in a possible chain reaction of failures. In this book, Hal Scott argues that it is not connectedness but contagion that is the most significant element of systemic risk facing the financial system. Contagion is an indiscriminate run by short-term creditors of financial institutions that can render otherwise solvent institutions insolvent. It poses a serious risk because, as Scott explains, our financial system still depends on approximately $7.4 to $8.2 trillion of runnable and uninsured short-term liabilities, 60 percent of which are held by nonbanks. Scott argues that efforts by the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and the Treasury to stop the contagion that exploded after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers lessened the economic damage. And yet Congress, spurred by the public's aversion to bailouts, has dramatically weakened the power of the government to respond to contagion, including limitations on the Fed's powers as a lender of last resort. Offering uniquely detailed forensic analyses of the Lehman Brothers and AIG failures, and suggesting alternative regulatory approaches, Scott makes the case that we need to restore and strengthen our weapons for fighting contagion.
As Wall Street rose to dominate the U.S. economy, income and pay inequalities in America came to dance to the tune of the credit cycle. As the reach of financial markets extended across the globe, ...interest rates, debt, and debt crises became the dominant forces driving the rise of economic inequality almost everywhere. Thus the “super-bubble” that investor George Soros identified in rich countries for the two decades after 1980 was a super-crisis for the 99 percent—not just in the U.S. but the entire world. This book demonstrates that finance is the driveshaft that links inequality to economic instability. The book challenges those, mainly on the right, who see mysterious forces of technology behind rising inequality. And it also challenges those, mainly on the left, who have placed the blame narrowly on trade and outsourcing. Inequality and Instability presents straightforward evidence that the rise of inequality mirrors the stock market in the U.S. and the rise of finance and of free-market policies elsewhere. Starting from the premise that fresh argument requires fresh evidence, this book brings new data to bear, presenting information built up over fifteen years in easily understood charts and tables. By measuring inequality at the right geographic scale, the book shows that more equal societies systematically enjoy lower unemployment. It shows how this plays out inside Europe, between Europe and the United States, and in modern China. It explains that the dramatic rise of inequality in the U.S. in the 1990s reflected a finance-driven technology boom that concentrated incomes in just five counties, very remote from the experience of most Americans—which helps explain why the political reaction was so slow to come. That the reaction is occurring now, however, is beyond doubt. In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, inequality has become, in America and the world over, the central issue.
The US economy today is confronted with the prospect of extended stagnation. This book explores why. Thomas I. Palley argues that the Great Recession and destruction of shared prosperity is due to ...flawed economic policy over the past thirty years. One flaw was the growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset price inflation to fuel growth instead of wages. A second flaw was the model of globalization that created an economic gash. Third, financial deregulation and the house price bubble kept the economy going by making ever more credit available. As the economy cannibalized itself by undercutting income distribution and accumulating debt, it needed larger speculative bubbles to grow. That process ended when the housing bubble burst. The earlier post-World War II economic model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neoliberal model has imploded. Absent a change of policy paradigm, the logical next step is stagnation. The political challenge we face now is how to achieve paradigm change.
