dimelab dimelab: shrinking the gap between talk and action.

Ed Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog

Ed Harrison (1); Ed Kane (4); Ed Prescott (1); FHFA Inspector General Ed Kelley (1); mentor Ed Kane (1).

naked capitalism Thu 2009-11-19 19:53 EST

Freddie and Fannie Outside Supervisor Ousted

In September, the Department of Justice ruled that FHFA Inspector General Ed Kelley did not have authority to investigate wrongdoing or other abuses related to the agency, according to an internal DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo signed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Daniel Koffsky...

Fannie; Freddie; naked capitalism; Supervisor Ousted.

zero hedge Tue 2009-11-03 19:57 EST

Guest Post: Systemic Risk is All About Innovation and Incentives: Ed Kane

...we present the views of our friend and mentor Ed Kane of Boston College, who argues that the problem with the financial regulatory framework is not the law, regulation nor even the regulators, but rather the confluence of poorly aligned incentives and financial innovation... The financial crisis of 2007-2009 is the product of a regulation-induced short-cutting and near elimination of private counterparty incentives to perform adequate due diligence along the chain of transactions traversed in securitizing and re-securitizing risky loans (Kane, 2009a). The GLBA [Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999] did make it easier for institutions to make themselves more difficult to fail and unwind. But it did not cause due-diligence incentives to break down in lending and securitization, nor did it cause borrowers and lenders to overleverage themselves. Still, the three phenomena share a common cause. Excessive risk-taking, regulation-induced innovation, and the lobbying pressure that led to the GLBA trace to subsidies to risk-taking that are protected by the political and economic challenges of monitoring and policing the safety-net consequences of regulation-induced innovation. These challenges and the limited liability that their stockholders and counterparties enjoy make it easy for clever managers of large institutions to extract implicit subsidies to leveraged risk-taking from national safety nets (Kane, 2009b)...To reduce the threat of future crises, the pressing task is not to rework bureaucratic patterns of financial regulation, but to repair defects in the incentive structure under which private and government supervisors manage a nation's financial safety net.

Ed Kane; Guest Post; incentives; innovation; systemic risk; Zero Hedge.

naked capitalism Sun 2009-09-13 12:26 EDT

Guest Post: Top Economists Say We Must Break Up the Insolvent Banks (Government Says Let's Make Them Bigger)

The following top economists and financial experts believe that the economy cannot recover unless the big, insolvent banks are broken up in an orderly fashion: Joseph Stiglitz, Ed Prescott, R. Glenn Hubbard, Simon Johnson, Thomas Hoenig, Neal S. Wolin, Sheila Bair, Anna Schwartz, William K. Black, et al...And yet, the top economic policy makers (Summer, Geithner and Bernanke)...don't want to break up the insolvent giants or even keep them from growing, don't want to reinstate Glass-Steagall, and want to let the banks keep using their same inaccurate models, overseen by the same spineless regulators.

bigger; break; Government Says Let's Make; Guest Post; insolvent banks; naked capitalism; Top economist says.

The IRA Analyst Thu 2009-06-11 00:00 EDT

The Institutional Risk Analyst: Credit Default Swaps and Too Big to Fail or Unwind: Interview With Ed Kane

Credit Default Swaps and Too Big to Fail or Unwind: Interview With Ed Kane; ``The whole basis of policy making in Washington today is that the taxpayer is a sucker who does not know how to defend him or her self against this kind of regulatory gambling.''

big; Credit Default Swap; Ed Kane; fail; Institutional Risk Analyst; interview; IRA Analyst; unwinds.

Mon 2008-10-27 00:00 EDT

naked capitalism: "Currency crisis is gathering storm"

Ed Harrison

currencies Crisis; gathering storm; naked capitalism.

Tue 2008-06-03 00:00 EDT

[ The Financial Ninja ]: Really Scary Fed Charts: MAY, False Alarm?

"ed has basically traded in high quality instruments, US treasuries, for low quality instruments that the market doesn't want at all"

False Alarm; Financial Ninja; Really Scary Fed Charts.