Chart of the Day

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

From economist-blogger Arnold Kling’s 50-page paper on the financial crisis:

James Kwak, who writes “The Baseline Scenario” with economist-blogger Simon Johnson, explains:

Basically, Kling says that the crisis was composed of the things along the top, which were caused by the things on the left. You can see that he places the blame squarely on poor capital requirements regulations, which gave various banks incentives to (a) originate-to-distribute instead of originate-to-hold; (b) securitize every which way they could; (c) use credit default swaps to reduce capital requirements even further; (d) stuff toxic securities into SIVs; etc.

Because he believes that weak capital requirements (which determine how much capital banks must have on hand in relation to their liabilities) were central to the crisis, Kling thinks we should “encourage financial structures that involve less debt, so that resolution of failures is less complicated” and try to “foster a set of small, diverse financial institutions.” Kwak mostly agrees with Kling’s recommendations, but thinks that Kling should have put more emphasis on making “key institutions” smaller. In any case, you should be reading both of them.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate