Banks | AEIdeas

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Brain drain to Wall Street: Goldman Sachs hires ‘God particle’ physicist

James Pethokoukis | May 16, 2013, 12:58 pm

Apparently there is a pipeline leading from Europe’s CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, to Wall Street (via HuffPo): Ryan Buckingham, a particle physicist with a PhD from Oxford University, spent three and a half years at CERN before joining Goldman Sachs in … read more >

Economics, Monetary Policy

If you want to break up the banks, you should want to break up the Fed

Abby McCloskey | May 15, 2013, 12:48 pm

Tracing out the break-up-the-banks logic leads to some uncomfortable places. Alex Pollock’s new American Banker piece shows how the very reasons advocated for breaking up the banks (“they are too big, too leveraged, create too much systemic risk, have too … read more >

Carpe Diem

Why the US banking system is so dysfunctional vs. Canada’s

Mark J. Perry | April 10, 2013, 10:23 am

The WSJ reports on a fascinating new paper by Columbia University finance professor Charles Calomiris (“The Political Foundations of Scarce and Unstable Credit“), which is based on a forthcoming book he’s co-authored with Stephen Haber. Here are some excerpts from the WSJ article “Why Canada … read more >

Economics, Free Enterprise, Pethokoukis

Why the biggest US banks are even bigger and riskier than you think

James Pethokoukis | February 20, 2013, 8:57 am

Just how big are the biggest US banks, and how safe are they? When trying to figure all that out, it makes a big difference if you are analyzing them according to US accounting standards or international ones. The latter … read more >

Carpe Diem

Commercial lending has almost completely recovered from the Great Recession, and faster than after 2001 recession

Mark J. Perry | January 15, 2013, 4:16 pm

The chart above shows weekly commercial and industrial loan volume at both: a) all US commercial banks (blue line, data here), and b) large domestically-chartered commercial banks (red line, data here). A few highlights: 1. Commercial loan volume at large … read more >

Carpe Diem

US banks have most profitable quarter in six years

Mark J. Perry | December 4, 2012, 1:53 pm

The FDIC released its Quarterly Banking Profile today for Q3 2012, here are some highlights: 1. U.S. banks earned a total of $37.6 billion from July through September, a 6.6% increase compared to Q3 2011, and the most profitable quarter … read more >

Carpe Diem

FDIC quarterly banking report suggests that financial health of U.S. banks has returned to pre-recession conditions

Mark J. Perry | August 28, 2012, 3:12 pm

The FDIC released its Quarterly Banking Profile today for the second quarter, here are some highlights: 1. U.S. banks earned a total of $34.5 billion from April through June, a 20.7% increase compared to Q2 2011 (see chart above). Almost … read more >

Pethokoukis

Would Mitt Romney break up the banks? Would Paul Ryan?

James Pethokoukis | August 15, 2012, 12:46 pm

I’ve noted that on several occasions Paul Ryan has been critical of big banks and seemingly in support of the Volcker Rule. Ezra Klein highlights those instances and wonders if Ryan is in favor of breaking up the big banks. … read more >

Economics

‘TBTF is too big’ vs. Canada

Alex J. Pollock | December 13, 2011, 12:24 pm

A common argument these days runs like this: Banks which are too big to fail (TBTF) are just too big. They are so large they can put the whole financial system at risk. They should be broken up since they … read more >

Economics, Financial Services

Why we shouldn’t break up the big banks

Phillip Swagel | December 7, 2011, 5:51 pm

Today, I testified before the Senate Banking Committee on the new regime for regulating large, complex financial institutions. If you don’t have the time to read the whole testimony, here are some key takeaways: Large financial institutions can be good: … read more >