Perry Mehrling's blog

A New Glass-Steagall?

Jazz, barbecue, and now Kansas City has also its own distinctive style of financial reform, put forward in a recent paper by Hoenig and Morr Read more

Bailout, Default, or Plan C

The Greek debt crisis is once again upon us, and the FT is filled with articles about ramifications for the Eurozone, and recommendations for what to do now. Read more

Further Thoughts

In the aftermath of the Lehman-AIG collapse of September 2008, I set myself the challenge to write a kind of update of Bagehot's famous 1873 Lombard Street:  A Description of the London Money Market. Read more

Sense about Social Security

“The financial health of Medicare and Social Security is deteriorating faster than expected,” so says the Financial Times, my own favorite paper of record, reporting on the newly issued annual Trustees Repor Read more

Currencies or Commodities?

Last Thursday, the ECB announced that it would not be raising the policy interest rate, and hinted strongly that it would not be raising the rate in June either. This latter was a surprise, and Mr. Market did not like it much, as reflected in the slide of the euro against the dollar. Read more

Breaking the Silence

The global financial crisis has revealed to everyone the central importance of the Fed for supporting financial markets, both domestic and international, but there is widespread uneasiness about that revelation. Read more

Learning How to Swap

“Extra time granted” on over-the-counter derivative reform in response to dealer complaints, so reports the FT. Read more

War Reparations, or Prosperity

In September 2008, when the Fed first began to expand its balance sheet while the U.S. Congress dithered over TARP, I likened what was happening to war finance. Read more

And what was QE about anyway?

Now that the end of QE2 is in sight, everyone is wondering what happens next. Is a QE3, focused perhaps on outright purchase of municipal bonds, in the offing? Or will we once again start hearing about “exit strategy”? Read more

Rob Johnson interviews Gordon Brown at Bretton Woods, April 9, 2011. The remarkable international cooperation of the G20 during the financial crisis paves the way for further cooperation to engage the challenges that now face us. Read more