Tag Archives: regulation

Lessons from 85 Years of Movies about Finance

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August 26, 2024 — Over the past 85 years, Hollywood has had much to say about financial markets and institutions – often reflecting a distinctly populist perspective. At a time when both populism and financial volatility are much in evidence, what lessons might these movies hold about regulation?

  1. Wall Street speculators

Start with the Wizard of Oz.  The 1939 movie was a populist allegory about money, though most devotees don’t know it.  The Emerald City represents Wall Street, while the yellow brick road symbolizes the gold standard.   The Cowardly Lion represents William Jennings Bryan, who, when the original book was written in 1900, was an agrarian populist candidate running for president against the monetary austerity of the gold standard and on behalf of western farmers (the Scarecrow) and eastern factory workers (the Tin Man). read more

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The Rise and Fall of Cap-and-Trade

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Markets can fail.  But market mechanisms are often the best way for governments to address such failures.  This has been demonstrated in areas from air pollution to traffic congestion to spectrum allocation to cigarette consumption.    Markets for emission allowances – in which those firms that can cheaply cut pollution trade with those that cannot – achieve desired environmental goals at relatively low economic costs.   As of a decade ago, that long-standing economic proposition had become widely recognized and put into action. Yet the political tide on both sides of the Atlantic has been against “cap and trade” over the last five years. read more

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Barack Obama’s Biggest Economic Mistake Has Been…

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In the current issue of Foreign Policy, the editors of the FP Survey ask “top experts” for pithy solutions to the world’s economic problems, “twitter style.”  Some of the answers:

THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY IS …
Anti-market bias. -Bryan Caplan •  Procrastination. -Peter Diamond •  Short-term thinking. -Esther Dyson •  A euro meltdown. -Dean Baker  •  Tax-cut fanatics. -Jeffrey Frankel •  The bond market. -Andy Sumner •

MY OUT-OF-THE-BOX SUGGESTION TO REVIVE THE GLOBAL ECONOMY IS
Wipe out debts. -Daron Acemoglu •  Require candidates for national office to pass ninth-grade tests on arithmetic, history, and geography. -Jeffrey Frankel •  Double down on science. -Tyler Cowen•  A government lottery where winners have mortgages, student loans, or other debt paid off. -Mark Thoma •  We don’t need “out-of-the-box” solutions; we need “head-out-of-the-sand” ones. -Adam Hersh •  Pray. -David Smick read more

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