Summary: First Republic Bank has folded and the Fed has a new “unflinching” report on the regulatory and supervisory failures leading to the SVB failure. SVB’s own mismanagement, the 2018 relaxation to Dodd-Frank plus lax and lethargic supervision are to blame. Our student application exercise gets into some of the specifics here (CAMELS ratings anyone?) while also discussing broad trade-offs that regulators face.
Summary: More on banking! Specifically more about a crucial job in the economy’s financial regulation ecosystem– the bank examiner. We hear about a “natural experiment” that shows that, in the absence of bank examiners, banks basically acted liked kids throwing spitballs in a classroom without a teacher! We also hear that we will likely face a shortage of bank examiners in the future. Uh oh! Inspired by this fact, our teaching idea is a career-exploration exercise created by Prof. Natalia Smirnova. Students use the rich BLS data to explore their own futures.
Summary: Another chapter in the Banking Turmoil of 2023– the end of Credit Suisse, a long-standing Swiss banking institution. The Indicator recaps how it got to the end of a road full of bad bets, unprofitable lending and scandal. We also hear about the discomfort in markets in the aftermath of the UBS-Credit Suisse merger down due to the write-down of “CoCo” bonds We seized this opportunity to create a quick, refresher (or even intro!) exercise on capital structure.
Summary: A discussion of this week’s current events without SVB would be incomplete! The Indicator boils down SVB’s problems to three key points. In the Teaching Ideas exercise, students will use SVB’s actual 2022 balance sheet to learn how a seemingly dramatic and complicated phenomenon like a bank failure still just boils down to the bread-n-butter basics!
On this episode from Planet Money, they discuss the events and people that led the creation of the Fed, relevant in 2022 in light of the pressure the Fed is facing in as inflation continues to rise. A quick guide to J.P. Morgan’ s influence and help with founding the Fed so big bailouts no longer had to fall on his pockets.
The people who lose their passkey to bitcoin have no way of accessing their possible fortune. Find out what this means for all the lost or untouched bitcoin.
Cornell Professor Vicki Bogan describes what a bond is, how it is different from a stock, and how they help companies grow. Also, learn what happens when you purchase a junk bond.
Discussion Prompt: From your listening (and additional research if you wish), briefly explain the difference between stocks and bonds. What do you think are the pros and cons of investing more in stocks or more in bonds, or a portfolio of both?
Learn from Planet Money’s Summer School what causes financial bubbles with examples such as the dotcom bubble and the Great British bicycle bubble. Also, hear about how behavioral biases, greater fools theory, and herd behavior make bubbles much worse.
Despite national and global efforts to discourage money laundering, there were recent reports from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network suggest suspicious transactions and funding during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This podcast further discusses some of the failures of banks to report suspicious activities in a timely manner. Matthew Collins from the Brookings Institute states that if our government really wants to hammer down on money laundering and other financial crimes, it is crucial to invest more funds into regulatory bodies such as FinCen.
This podcast discusses research conducted by Daniel Reck regarding the enormous amount of wealth American’s keep overseas to avoid being taxed. Different policies that were enacted, specifically in 2008, aimed to increase the disclosure of offshore wealth, which were somewhat successful in the prevention of tax evasion.
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