Many commentators have raised the idea of requiring banks and financial institutions to issue contingent convertible debt that can be converted to equity as a sort of pre-set form of re-capitalization in case of trouble. Greg Mankiw has said that it is his favorite idea in financial regulation reform. He has pointed to reports that […]
Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson
Derivatives Clearinghouses and Exchanges
Update: The Lincoln version of the derivatives legislation clears the Senate Agriculture Committee today (which raises another set of issues, different from the ones under discussion below): Democrats won the support of a senior Republican who voted in a Senate committee Wednesday for a sweeping overhaul of the market for derivatives, the complex financial instruments […]
Waco
Bill Clinton’s invocation of Timothy McVeigh in connection with the Tea Party movement caused me to recall my review of a book on the Waco massacre that was a motivation for McVeigh. The book under review was Reavis, The Ashes of Waco, and it appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in 1995. Re-reading it for […]
Anti-Mankiw!
When I saw this item on Professor Greg Mankiw’s blog, I admit that my first thought was … someone has written Anti-Mankiw, Vols 1 and 2. Can I channel a (dead) zeitgeist or what? And, indeed, it turns out that someone is apparently trying to organize a collective to do something like that, if I […]
The Goldman Fraud Suit
I’m sure many VC readers have been looking at the papers today, trying to sort out facts versus allegations, in the SEC suit against Goldman Sachs for fraud involving CDOs. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Financial Times all have good stories, to take the papers from my front lawn. One […]
To Meld – What Does “Meld” Mean?
And like me, did you “learn” the meaning from the Vulcan mind-meld? (Continuing a discussion with Michelle from comments to an earlier post.) I have to say, I did “learn” the word by hearing its repeated use on Star Trek. To meld, so far as I’ve ever been concerned, means … whatever it is that […]
Melded Approaches to Terrorism Detention and Trials
Rick Pildes and David Golove have a calm, reasoned discussion at Balkinization on ways to deal with terrorism related detentions and trials. They call for an approach that mingles aspects of criminal law and armed conflict law. They emphasize the need for a legislated system. (It is true, of course, that I am an […]
Chemical Weapons in my Neighborhood
The land in DC occupied today by American University and the Spring Valley neighborhood was once used by the US Army in WWI as a testing ground for chemical agents, including mustard gas and various other things. I live in Spring Valley and work at American University, so I have long followed the saga that […]
Continuity and Change in Detention Policy in Counterterrorism
Former DOS Legal Adviser John Bellinger has a short opinion column out at the Council on Foreign Relations site (corrected link, I hope!), discussing continuity and change in US detention policy on counterterrorism. John takes up a range of issues, from trials to repatriation and more, and concludes that there is mostly continuity with the second […]
Welfare Evaluation, Behavioral Agents and Rational Agents
By Kenneth Anderson on April 14, 2010 10:48 pm in Economy, Libertarian Paternalism, Paternalism, Regulation
A reader sends me the following comment, further to the several VC posts on behavioral economics (initially occasioned by Andy Ferguson’s Weekly Standard essay): One basic issue that this whole-“behavioral econ– good-or-bad?” discussion seems to have neglected the following simple point: welfare evaluation is much harder with “behavioral agents” than “rational agents.” With “rational” agents […]
Is Harold Koh’s Defense of Drones Also the Defense of Targeting a US Citizen?
By Kenneth Anderson on April 14, 2010 10:24 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, Targeted Killing, War on Terror
Adam Serwer, a journalist and blogger at the American Prospect, makes this observation in a very interesting post (linked in Robert Wright’s NYT Opinionator column) at the American Prospect Tapped blog (via The Progressive Realist): State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh‘s speech to the American Society of International Law has mostly been read as a justification of […]
Drone Warfare: The Upbeat News About the Obama Administration
At least, peering through the lens of Tom Barlett, blogging at the Chronicle of Higher Education, peering through the further lens of the latest issue of Defining Ideas, a Hoover Institution publication that puts together various current articles and pieces from its community of fellows, typically reprinted from elsewhere or else excerpted. As Bartlett says: […]
Washington Post Editorializes in Praise of Harold Koh’s Drone Statement
By Kenneth Anderson on April 13, 2010 1:11 pm in Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
The Washington Post has an editorial today praising State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh’s March 25 statement defending the legality of drone warfare (part of a long speech on several international law topics). The editorial specifically endorses the Legal Adviser’s invocation of self-defense as a separate ground for using force apart from armed conflict in […]
Paternalistic versus Therapeutic?
I finally had a chance to read the Cato Unbound symposium that Todd Z mentioned below. It’s well worth the read. I should add to my earlier post on this that I am not, as it happens, hostile to the pursuit of behavioral economics; far from it. But I do share some of the skepticism […]
Greek Bailout and Liquidity Risk
Treat liquidity risk and runs on institutions as fundamentally a question of lack of information – the lack of information on the underlying financial solvency prompting flight from uncertainty. In that case, the question following the announcement in the press yesterday of the Greek-EU bailout is not so much what it signals about liquidity, as […]