In this topical book, Boudewijn de Bruin examines the ethical 'blind spots' that lay at the heart of the global financial crisis. He argues that the most important moral problem in finance is not the ...'greed is good' culture, but rather the epistemic shortcomings of bankers, clients, rating agencies and regulators. Drawing on insights from economics, psychology and philosophy, de Bruin develops a novel theory of epistemic virtue and applies it to racist and sexist lending practices, subprime mortgages, CEO hubris, the Madoff scandal, professionalism in accountancy and regulatory outsourcing of epistemic responsibility. With its multidisciplinary reach, Ethics and the Global Financial Crisis will appeal to scholars working in philosophy, business ethics, economics, psychology and the sociology of finance. The many concrete examples and case studies mean that this book will also prove useful to policy-makers and regulators.
The squam lake report French, Kenneth R; Baily, Martin N; Campbell, John Y ...
2010., 20100525, 2010, 2010-05-25
eBook
In the fall of 2008, fifteen of the world's leading economists--representing the broadest spectrum of economic opinion--gathered at New Hampshire's Squam Lake. Their goal: the mapping of a long-term ...plan for financial regulation reform.
The Squam Lake Reportdistills the wealth of insights from the ongoing collaboration that began at these meetings and provides a revelatory, unified, and coherent voice for fixing our troubled and damaged financial markets. As an alternative to the patchwork solutions and ideologically charged proposals that have dominated other discussions, the Squam Lake group sets forth a clear nonpartisan plan of action to transform the regulation of financial markets--not just for the current climate--but for generations to come.
Arguing that there has been a conflict between financial institutions and society, these diverse experts present sound and transparent prescriptions to reduce this divide. They look at the critical holes in the existing regulatory framework for handling complex financial institutions, retirement savings, and credit default swaps. They offer ideas for new financial instruments designed to recapitalize banks without burdening taxpayers. To lower the risk that large banks will fail, the authors call for higher capital requirements as well as a systemic regulator who is part of the central bank. They collectively analyze where the financial system has failed, and how these weak points should be overhauled.
Combining an immense depth of academic, private sector, and public policy experience,The Squam Lake Reportcontains urgent recommendations that will positively influence everyone's financial well-being--all who care about the world's economic health need to pay attention.
An Engine, Not a Camera Mackenzie, Donald
2006, 2008-08-29, 20060101, c2006, Volume:
1
eBook, Book
In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, ...based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. More than that, the emergence of an authoritative theory of financial markets altered those markets fundamentally. For example, in 1970, there was almost no trading in financial derivatives such as "futures." By June of 2004, derivatives contracts totaling $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide. MacKenzie suggests that this growth could never have happened without the development of theories that gave derivatives legitimacy and explained their complexities. MacKenzie examines the role played by finance theory in the two most serious crises to hit the world's financial markets in recent years: the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. He also looks at finance theory that is somewhat beyond the mainstream--chaos theorist Benoit Mandelbrot's model of "wild" randomness. MacKenzie's pioneering work in the social studies of finance will interest anyone who wants to understand how America's financial markets have grown into their current form.
An insightful look at how to reform our broken financial systemThe financial crisis that unfolded in September 2008 transformed the United States and world economies. As each day's headlines brought ...stories of bank failures and rescues, government policies drawn and redrawn against the backdrop of an historic Presidential election, and solutions that seemed to be discarded almost as soon as they were proposed, a group of thirty-three academics at New York University Stern School of Business began tackling the hard questions behind the headlines. Representing fields of finance, economics, and accounting, these professors-led by Dean Thomas Cooley and Vice Dean Ingo Walter-shaped eighteen independent policy papers that proposed market-focused solutions to the problems within a common framework. In December, with great urgency, they sent hand-bound copies to Washington. Restoring Financial Stabilityis the culmination of their work.Proposes bold, yet principled approaches-including financial policy alternatives and specific courses of action-to deal with this unprecedented, systemic financial crisisCreated by the contributions of various academics from New York University's Stern School of BusinessProvides important perspectives on both the causes of the global financial crisis as well as proposed solutions to ensure it doesn't happen againContains detailed evaluations and analyses covering many spectrums of the marketplaceEdited by Matthew Richardson and Viral Acharya, this reliable resource brings together the best thinking of finance and economics from the faculty of one of the top universities in world.
Resumen. Al comienzo de la presente obra, el autor conceptualiza el término Antropoceno desde la premisa de una nueva época geológica en la historia de la Tierra. En ella, sostiene, interaccionan ...diversas crisis desde dentro del sistema capitalista, fundamentalmente; la crisis secular de valorización del capital. Esta crisis, expone, nos coloca en una situación de emergencia planetaria (afecta simultáneamente a todas las geosferas terrestres), y tiene su origen en el modo de desarrollo y producción extractivista y fosilista, que convulsiona por la mercantilización y la reproducción de capital. Por último, apoyado en el análisis sociometabólico de reproducción del modo capitalista, propone la posibilidad de superar esta crisis a través de la organización de las sociedades que, conscientes de la coyuntura histórica, logren resolver las contradicciones en un planeta que se fractura.
Palabras clave: crisis sistémica, Antropoceno, capitalismo, reproducción de capital, comunismo.
Understanding financial crises Allen, Franklin; Gale, Douglas
2007., 20070322, 2009, 2009-04-02, 20070101, 2007
eBook, Book
What causes a financial crisis? Can financial crises be anticipated or even avoided? What can be done to lessen their impact? Should governments and international institutions intervene? Or should ...financial crises be left to run their course? In the aftermath of the recent Asian financial crisis, many blamed international institutions, corruption, governments, and flawed macro and microeconomic policies not only for causing the crisis but also unnecessarily lengthening and deepening it. Based on ten years of research, the authors develop a theoretical approach to analyzing financial crises. Beginning with a review of the history of financial crises and providing readers with the basic economic tools needed to understand the literature, the authors construct a series of increasingly sophisticated models. Throughout, the authors guide the reader through the existing theoretical and empirical literature while also building on their own theoretical approach. The text presents the modern theory of intermediation, introduces asset markets and the causes of asset price volatility, and discusses the interaction of banks and markets. The book also deals with more specialized topics, including optimal financial regulation, bubbles, and financial contagion.
Four years have passed since the onset of the 2008 global crisis, and although some believe that there may be a second down draft soon, attention has shifted from crisis narration to assessing ...lessons essential for preventing or managing recurrences. The exercise is worthy, but there is always the danger of preparing for the last war when the next attack takes another form. Prevention and Crisis Management addresses this problem by highlighting the future threat to Asia from a broader perspective that takes account of the Japanese and Asian financial crises during the 1990s as well as the global crisis of 2008. The enlarged framework turns out to be illuminating for two distinct reasons. First, it reveals that Asian crises take many diverse forms, and second, the solutions devised to date have only been locally and not universally effective. Policymakers are accordingly advised to always plan for the element of surprise.Sample Chapter(s)Introduction (40 KB)Chapter 1: Asian Currency and Financial Crises in the 1990S (99 KB)Contents:Crises 1990-2010:Asian Currency and Financial Crises in the 1990s (Steven Rosefielde and Assaf Razin)The 2008-2009 Global Crisis (Steven Rosefielde and Assaf Razin)Crisis in Transitioning Countries (Yoji Koyama)PIIGS (Steven Rosefielde and Assaf Razin)Global Default (Steven Rosefielde and Daniel Quinn Mills)Prevention:Prevention and Counter-Measures (Torbjörn Becker)Threats and Deterrents:Global Imbalances (Huan Zhou and Steven Rosefielde)Chinese Protectionism (Jonathan Leightner)China's Economic Future (Akio Kawato)Optimal Asian Dollar Surplus (Eric Fisher)Toward an East Asian Economic Community (Yun Chen and Ken Morita)Asian Union (Steven Rosefielde, Jong-Rong Chen and Masumi Hakogi)Buddhist Crisis Prevention and Management (Teerana Bhongmakapat)Readership: Researchers, academics, graduates and general public who are interested in Asian economies, globalization, macroeconomics and international economics.
At the beginning of the 1990s, a massive speculative asset bubble burst in Japan, leaving the nation's banks with an enormous burden of nonperforming loans. Banking crises have become increasingly ...common across the globe, but what was distinctive about the Japanese case was the unusually long delay before the government intervened to aggressively address the bad debt problem. The postponed response by Japanese authorities to the nation's banking crisis has had enormous political and economic consequences for Japan as well as for the rest of the world. This book helps us understand the nature of the Japanese government's response while also providing important insights into why Japan seems unable to get its financial system back on track 13 years later.
The book focuses on the role of policy networks in Japanese finance, showing with nuance and detail how Japan's Finance Ministry was embedded within the political and financial worlds, how that structure was similar to and different from that of its counterparts in other countries, and how the distinctive nature of Japan's institutional arrangements affected the capacity of the government to manage change.
The book focuses in particular on two intervening variables that bring about a functional shift in the Finance Ministry's policy networks: domestic political change under coalition government and a dramatic rise in information requirements for effective regulation. As a result of change in these variables, networks that once enhanced policymaking capacity in Japanese finance became "paralyzing networks"--with disastrous results.
What is the relationship between the financial system and politics? In a democratic system, what kind of control should elected governments have over the financial markets? What policies should be ...implemented to regulate them? What is the role played by different elites - financial, technocratic, and political - in the operation and regulation of the financial system? And what role should citizens, investors, and savers play? These are some of the questions addressed in this challenging analysis of the particular features of the contemporary capitalist economy in Britain, the USA, and Western Europe. The authors argue that the causes of the financial crisis lay in the bricolage and innovation in financial markets, resulting in long chains and circuits of transactions and instruments that enabled bankers to earn fees, but which did not sufficiently take into account system risk, uncertainty, and unintended consequences. In the wake of the crisis, the authors argue that social scientists, governments, and citizens need to re-engage with the political dimensions of financial markets. This book offers a controversial and accessible exploration of the disorders of our financial capitalism and its justifications. With an innovative emphasis on the economically 'undisclosed' and the political 'mystifying', it combines technical understanding of finance, cultural analysis, and al political account of interests and institutions. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/management/9780199589081/toc.html
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