Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s Blog

Financial crisis causes lot of damage, and ill-conceived post-crisis measures, no matter how well-intended, can only magnify their effects. Examples abound.  For instance, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a US law that erected trade barriers, is widely regarded as having added considerable strain to the world economy after the 1929 stock market crash.  However, [...]

Sherman McCoy, the fictional 1980s “Master of the Universe” Wall Street bond trader, had his sights set on a deal that could earn him $ 1.7m in commission payments, money he needed to pay off the mortgage on a lavish Park Avenue apartment.  “The only real problem was the complexity of the whole thing,” readers [...]

As the global financial crisis deepens, European leaders are making a virtue of big government and state intervention.  This is a dangerous path to take.  Corporate bail-outs beyond the banking industry may now be an inevitable consequence of decisions to save the banks and in the US to lend billions of dollars to, say, the [...]