Micah Hauptman

An unaddressed cause of the 2008 financial crisis was banks' reliance on elaborate schemes called repurchase agreements, or "repos," to fund their operations. Four years later, usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America remain heavily dependent on them, endangering the financial system, as shown in a...

The federal government has yet to learn the overarching lesson of the 2008 financial crisis -- that too much risk concentrated in and between the largest financial institutions is a recipe for disaster. Preventing banks from becoming so large, complex, and interconnected that their failure would ravage the economy --...

The idea that behemoth banks should be broken up is widespread and bipartisan, embraced by regulators and politicians alike.

Regulators -- past and present -- including Simon Johnson, Richard Fisher and Thomas Hoenig have offered public support for downsizing and reforming "too big to...

This post was co-authored by Marshall Auerback and Micah Hauptman.

"Balance the budget!" It's the endlessly repeated narrative heard in Washington. Implicit in this narrative is that budget deficits are crippling our economy and the U.S. government is on the verge of insolvency. If we only imposed strict fiscal...

This post was co-authored by Dr. Eric Tymoigne and Micah Hauptman.

When you think of Ponzi schemes, fraudsters like Bernie Madoff come to mind. However,
Ponzi schemes are not always the result of a few crooks; they can also be a common practice used by society to...