Simon Johnson

Chaque crise économique débouche sur une prise de conscience collective. En Europe, ce moment approche. Des millions de personnes devront bientôt faire face au chaos et admettre que l'euro, tel que nous l'avons connu, est chose du passé.

Pour comprendre le pourquoi de cette situation, il faut avant tout perdre...

In every economic crisis there comes a moment of clarity. In Europe soon, millions of people will wake up to realize that the euro-as-we-know-it is gone. Economic chaos awaits them.

To understand why, first strip away your illusions. Europe's crisis to date is a series of supposedly "decisive" turning points...

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, is a member of the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Mr. Dimon's role there is sometimes presented as "advisory" but he sits on the Management and Budget Committee; here is the committee's charter, which includes reviewing and endorsing...

In an interview Thursday on PBS NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had the following exchange:

"JEFFREY BROWN: Do you think Jamie Dimon should be off the board [of the New York Federal Reserve Board]?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Well, that's a question he'll have to make and the...

Experienced Wall Street executives and traders concede, in private, that Bank of America is not well run and that Citigroup has long been a recipe for disaster. But they always insist that attempts to re-regulate Wall Street are misguided because risk-management has become more sophisticated -- everyone, in this view,...

Some high income Americans pay a lot of tax; others do not. If you have right tax advice and if most of your income can be structured as some form of "capital gains," your marginal rate -- what you pay on the your last dollar of income -- may be...

A decision on choosing the next president of the World Bank is expected this week -- perhaps as early as Monday. The Obama administration nominated Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth College and a noted public health expert. The reaction to this nomination from development economists and people experienced in...

A major new research report -- released this weekend by the renowned international consulting firm, IMS -- finds conclusively that implementation of the proposed Volcker Rule would damage not just the irreplaceable Muppets but also "all children-oriented television or other media-based educational program content."

The logic in the...

As it currently stands, the "JOBS" bill now before the Senate would gut investor protection in the United States. The title of the bill is a complete misnomer -- anything that weakens investor protection makes it more risky to invest in companies and increases the cost of capital to honest...

The House "JOBS" bill is a thinly disguised repeal of investor protection in the United States. This legislation would help unscrupulous people in the securities industry, but it would be bad for nonfinancial businesses -- by raising the risks to investors, it would push up the cost of capital for...

The Senate is due to vote today on the so-called "JOBS" bill -- a piece of legislation, originating in the House, which aims to reduce disclosure and other securities law protections for investors (see my review yesterday; a link to HR3606 is here).

Supporters of the...

From the 1970s until recently, Congress allowed and encouraged a great deal of financial market deregulation -- allowing big banks to become larger, to expand their scope, and to take on more risks. This legislative agenda was largely bipartisan, up to and including the effective repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act...

One of the big problems in Greece over the past decade or so is that the government was not honest with its data. Various people assisted in the matter -- including Goldman Sachs with respect to some debt issues -- but ultimately this was a political decision at the highest...

Representative Ron Paul sees himself as an independent thinker -- not afraid to confront the conventional wisdom, whether in the form of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke or mainstream views within the Republican Party. As I have written elsewhere recently, we should take Mr. Paul seriously -- and...

For everyone struggling to get their arms around the debt crisis in Europe, Bill Marsh in today's New York Times offers literally a compelling picture, with graphic illustration for the key issues.

The picture is big, 18×21 inches. Either you need a very large computer screen or a...

The finance ministers and central bank governors of the world gather this weekend in Washington for the annual meeting of countries that are shareholders in the International Monetary Fund. As financial turmoil continues unabated around the world and with the I.M.F.’s newly lowered growth forecasts to concentrate the mind, perhaps...

After receiving support from the United States at the critical moment, Christine Lagarde was named Tuesday as the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund. In campaigning for the job, Ms. Lagarde, France’s finance minister, made various promises to emerging markets with regard to improving their relationships with the...

Ms. Warren is helping get the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) off the ground and remains the leading contender to become its formal head (subject to Senate confirmation). She summarizes her substantive agenda this way: "We're trying to make these markets transparent, which makes it easier for...

Standard & Poor's announced on Monday that its credit rating for the United States was affirmed at AAA (the highest level possible) but that it was revising the outlook for this rating to "negative."

In this context, that was a warning "that we could lower our long-term rating on the...

Washington is filled with self- congratulation this week, with Republicans claiming that they have opened serious discussion of the U.S. budget deficit and President Barack Obama's proponents arguing that his counterblast last Wednesday will win the day.