Featuring the author Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia Business School; with comments by Andrew Olmem, Partner, Venable LLP; moderated by Mark Calabria, Director, Financial Regulation Studies, Cato Institute.
In the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis a pervasive view
began to emerge of banking as an inherently unstable occupation
that must be tightly regulated and monitored by government
agencies. Charles Calomiris and co-author Stephen Haber overturn
this notion by presenting an inconvenient truth: not all countries
suffer systemic banking crises. Some countries have managed to
create a system that provides abundant credit without the
propensity for banks to fail. So what is their secret? The answer
is equally simple: The well-being of a banking sector depends on
the ability of political institutions to limit rent-seeking by
populist groups. Join the Cato Institute for a lively discussion of
the true causes of the financial crisis and whether in light of the
evidence presented by the authors the antidote (Dodd-Frank) causes
more problems than it solves.
