Bretton Woods Transcripts

Via John Taylor, the transcripts of the Bretton Woods meeting, which created the World Bank and IMF, are now available online.  Sounds likes 822 pages of fascinating reading!

Interview with Gary Gorton

Here’s a recent interview with Gary Gorton on financial crises.

From the introduction:

Read enough books and economics papers about the recent US financial crisis, and at some point you might notice something odd.

 

Most of them are about the factors that made the crisis and subsequent recession so profound and enduring — excess leverage, deregulation, lax lending standards, the rise of securitisation, blindness of the rating agencies, fraudulent bankers — but very few of them are about what actually started the crisis.

 

Gary Gorton’s work is different. His 2009 book, “Slapped by the Invisible Hand”, argued that although these factors were all present, they were also somewhat beside the point. The financial crisis started the way all systemic financial crises start: as a bank run. The only difference was that this bank run took place in the shadow banking system, and the creditors who started the run weren’t depositors of retail banks, but the counterparties of investment banks in repo and commercial paper markets.

Indiana Jones’ Tenure Denial Letter

Apparently, retrieving the Ark of the Covenant is not sufficient to obtain tenure:

BACK FROM YET ANOTHER GLOBETROTTING ADVENTURE, INDIANA JONES CHECKS HIS MAIL AND DISCOVERS THAT HIS BID FOR TENURE HAS BEEN DENIED.

Links of Interest

Eichengreen & O’Rourke: “Gauging the Multiplier: Lessons from History”

Miles Kimball’s “Primer on International Finance”

Thomas Edison’s “Quixotic Plan for a New Monetary Policy”

An Improving Labor Market

Good news from Calculated Risk on the unemployment rate:

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia recorded unemployment rate decreases, six states posted rate increases, and three states had no change, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
…
Nevada continued to record the highest unemployment rate among the states, 11.8 percent in September. Rhode Island and California posted the next highest rates, 10.5 and 10.2 percent, respectively. North Dakota again registered the lowest jobless rate, 3.0 percent.