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Why Does Wall Street Always Win?
By Simon Johnson After a long summer of high-profile scandals – JPMorgan Chase trading, Barclays rate-fixing, HSBC money-laundering and more – the debate about the financial sector is becoming...
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One Man Against The Wall Street Lobby
By Simon Johnson Two diametrically opposed views of Wall Street and the dangers posed by global megabanks came more clearly into focus last week. On the one hand, William B. Harrison, Jr. – former...
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Who Built That?
By Simon Johnson Perhaps the biggest issue of this presidential election is the relationship between government and private business. President Obama recently offended some people by appearing to imply...
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Introducing The Latin Euro
By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson The verdict is now in: traditional German values lost and the Latin perspective won. Germany fought hard over many years to include “no bailout” clauses in the...
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Restoring The Legitimacy Of The Federal Reserve
By Simon Johnson The Federal Reserve has a legitimacy problem. Fortunately, a potential policy shift is available that offers both the right thing for the Fed to do and a way to please sensible people...
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Scott Brown: ATM For The Big Banks
By Simon Johnson During the Dodd-Frank financial reform debate in early 2010, newly elected Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts was referred to as an ATM for the bankers – meaning that whenever they...
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Fiscal Confrontation And The Declining Influence Of The United States
By Simon Johnson It is axiomatic among most of our Washington elite that the United States cannot lose its preeminent global role, at least not in the foreseeable future. This assumption is implicit in...
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Read This Book, Win The Election
By Simon Johnson With the presidential election looming and both sides looking for a knockout blow in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday evening, now is a good time for both Democrats and...
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Bipartisan Trouble Ahead
By Simon Johnson In Washington today, “bipartisan” is a loaded term. The traditional usage of bipartisan is an agreement across the usual political divide – sometimes a good idea and in many cases the...
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Too Big To Fail Remains Very Real
By Simon Johnson Prominent voices within the financial sector are increasingly insisting on one point: We have ended “too big to fail.” The idea is simple: through a combination of legislation (the...
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The Importance Of Elizabeth Warren
By Simon Johnson One of the most important results on Tuesday was the election of Elizabeth Warren as United States senator for Massachusetts. Her victory matters not only because it helps the...
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Neil Barofsky For The S.E.C.
By Simon Johnson There are two fundamentally different views regarding modern Wall Street. The first is that the financial sector has been terribly and unjustly put upon in recent years – regulated...
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Mary Miller vs. Neil Barofsky For The S.E.C
By Simon Johnson The Obama administration is floating the idea that Mary J. Miller, under secretary for domestic finance at the Treasury Department, could become its nominee to lead the Securities and...
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The Debt Ceiling Confrontation Is Playing With Fire
By Simon Johnson Congressional Republicans are again threatening not to increase the ceiling on the amount of federal government debt that can be issued. On Wednesday, they agreed to postpone this...
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A Growing Split Within Republicans On Too Big To Fail Banks
By Simon Johnson An interesting debate is developing within the Republican Party on how to approach the problem of too-big-to-fail financial institutions. On the one hand, a growing number of...
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“Some Of These Institutions Have Become Too Large”
By Simon Johnson In a recent interview with PBS’s Frontline, Lanny Breuer – head of the criminal division at the Department of Justice – appeared to admit that some financial institutions were too big...
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Sir John Peace Should Resign As Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank
By Simon Johnson On Thursday, March 21, Sir John Peace conceded that he lied to investors on March 5, 2013 when he said of Standard Chartered Bank, “We had no willful act to avoid sanctions; you know,...
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Go For Gold
By Simon Johnson, April 1, 2013 In both 13 Bankers (2010) and White House Burning (published 2012, paperback just came out) James Kwak and I weighed the merits of going back on a global gold standard....
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Goldman Sachs Concedes Existence Of Too Big To Fail
By Simon Johnson Global megabanks and their friends are pushing back hard against the idea that additional reforms are needed – beyond what is supposed to be implemented as part of the Dodd-Frank 2010...
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Remember Citigroup
By Simon Johnson On Thursday of last week, four senators unveiled the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. The pushback from people representing the megabanks was immediate but also completely lame – the...
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