WASHINGTON, DC – The recent governance controversy at JPMorgan Chase has masked a much larger issue. Regardless of Jamie Dimon’s victory in …

WASHINGTON, DC – There are two competing narratives about recent financial-reform efforts and the dangers that very large banks now pose aro…

WASHINGTON, DC – When economists discuss “fiscal adjustment,” they typically frame it as an abstract and complex goal. But the issue is actu…

WASHINGTON, DC – Financial reform in the United States and worldwide hangs in the balance. The problems that brought us the terrible crisis …

WASHINGTON, DC – Germany’s gold is on the move. For the first time since official gold transactions became more transparent, the Bundesbank …

ZANZIBAR – Here’s an odd prediction for the coming year: 2013 will be a watershed for financial reform. True, while the global financial cri…

WASHINGTON, DC – In early 2012, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used the term “fiscal cliff” to grab the attention of lawmakers and th…

WASHINGTON, DC – In the discussion of whether America’s largest financial institutions have become too big, a sea change in opinion is under…

WASHINGTON, DC – The Republican Party has some potentially winning themes for America’s presidential and congressional elections in November…

WASHINGTON, DC – In most countries, to be “fiscally conservative” means to worry a great deal about the budget deficit and debt levels – and…

WASHINGTON, DC – The recent departure of Robert Diamond from Barclays marks a watershed. To be sure, CEOs of major banks have been forced ou…

WASHINGTON, DC – Are America’s great universities still the stalwart custodians of knowledge, leading forces for technological progress, and…

WASHINGTON, DC – The creation of the euro just over a decade ago was a courageous and unique experiment. Today, the outcome – whether the eu…

WASHINGTON, DC – Tax time in the United States – the dreaded mid-April deadline for filing annual income-tax forms – has come and gone. The …

WASHINGTON, DC – Europe’s policy elite – the people who call the shots at the national and eurozone level – are in serious trouble. They hav…

WASHINGTON, DC – Among the fundamental principles of any functioning justice system is the following: Don’t lie to a judge or falsify docume…

WASHINGTON, DC – In the three years since the global financial crisis erupted, two dominant views of what went wrong have emerged. It is cru…

WASHINGTON, DC – Santa Claus came early this year for four former executives of Washington Mutual (WaMu), a large US bank that failed in fal…

WASHINGTON, DC – On the surface, at least, the situation in the eurozone today and South Korea in the fall of 1997 look very different. Both…

WASHINGTON, DC – Participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement are right to argue that the big banks have never properly been investigated…

WASHINGTON, DC – According to Voltaire, the Roman Empire fell “because all things fall.” It is hard to argue with this as a general statemen…

WASHINGTON, DC – America’s Tea Party has a simple fiscal message: the United States is broke. This is factually incorrect – US government se…

WASHINGTON, DC – Leading United States congressmen are determined to provoke a showdown with the Obama administration over the federal gover…

WASHINGTON, DC – European leaders are convinced that bank capital is “expensive,” in the sense that raising capital requirements would slow …

WASHINGTON, DC – John Boehner, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is leading the Republican Party’s charge on fiscal pol…