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Events • September 8, 2014 

# *Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit*

[![](https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/images/fragile-by-design-cover.jpg)](http://www.amazon.com/Fragile-Design-Political-Princeton-Economic/dp/0691155240/?tag=catoinstitute-20)

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. 

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This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 

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##### [Mark A. Calabria](/people/mark-calabria)

Former Director, Federal Housing Finance Agency; Former Chief Economist, Vice President Mike Pence; Former Senior Advisor, Cato Institute

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