That’s one of the subplots of Big Money, by Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel, a book that I reviewed for yesterday’s issue of the New York Times Book Review. You can read that review, so I won’t re-review it here, except …
James Kwak
James Kwak
Corporate Political Contributions and Bad Faith, Whatever That Is
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
In an earlier paper (blog post here), I argued that corporate political contributions can in many cases be challenged by shareholders as conflicted transactions that further insiders’ personal interests (e.g., lower individual income taxes) rather than the…
James Kwak
Larry Summers and Finance
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
It’s highly misleading to talk about the government’s positive nominal return as a good thing without evaluating it the way you evaluate any other investment.
James Kwak
Larry Summers Should Keep His Mouth Shut
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
James Kwak
Worse Than We Even Imagined
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
James Kwak
My Daughter’s Wish
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
Today my daughter’s combined first and second grade class wrote down their individual wishes for the world. The wishes are part of a wish tree. Here they are: I wish people could always be happy. I wish…
James Kwak
Criticism of Geithner Well Deserved- Who’s To Blame For That?
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
Over the years, Tim Geithner has come in for a lot of well-deserved criticism… Obama took particular pains to stand behind Geithner throughout his term as treasury secretary. Whom should we blame for that?
James Kwak
Why Regulation Goes Astray
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
Levitin did a good job using the books as a starting point for a discussion of the incentives problem in financial regulation: the problem that regulators have stronger incentives to favor the industry than to defend the public interest.
James Kwak
Is Credit Suisse Really in Jail?
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
Credit Suisse’s guilty plea to a charge of tax fraud seems to be a major step forward for a Justice Department that was satisfied both before and after the financial crisis with toothless deferred prosecution agreements and large-sounding fines that were easily absorbed as a cost of doing business. A criminal conviction certainly sounds good, and I agree that it’s better than not a criminal conviction. But what does it mean at the end of the day?
James Kwak
Connecticut Public Retirement Plan Passes, More or Less
by James Kwak • • 0 Comments
A couple of weeks go I wrote an op-ed about a proposal in Connecticut to create a new tax-preferred retirement plan that would, by default, include almost all workers who don’t currently have access to an employment-based plan (like a 401(k)).