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| Foreword | |
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| Preface | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| It's a Horrible Mess | |
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| It's Not Bailey Savings & Loan | |
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| Economics Diary, Spring 2009: The D Word | |
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| Economics Diary, August 22, 2009 | |
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| The Treasury's No-Stress Stress Test | |
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| Economics Diary, August 26, 2009: The State of the States | |
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| It's the Psychology, Duh! | |
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| When Lexington, Massachusetts, Turns into Camden, New Jersey | |
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| Economics Diary, August 29, 2009: The Great D or the Great R? | |
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| Systemic Risk Insurance | |
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| Who's Backstopping the Backstop? | |
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| Trust Doesn't Come Cheap | |
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| Full Nondisclosure | |
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| A System with No Firewalls | |
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| The Big Con: Financial Malfeasance, American Style | |
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| Richard Fuld or Elmer Fudd? | |
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| Playing Bridge as Bear Burned | |
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| Macho, Macho Men | |
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| Stan the Man | |
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| Economic Diary, August 11, 2009: Uncle Sam Sues Uncle Sam | |
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| Economics Diary, September 14, 2009: Judge Rakoff to the SEC: "Drop Dead" | |
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| The Prince of Redness | |
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| CDOs to the Races | |
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| CDO Liquidity Puts | |
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| AIG's Three-Hundred-Million-Dollar Man | |
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| Franklin Delano Raines | |
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| Speculation with Other People's Money | |
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| It's the Leveraging, Not the Leverage | |
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| Stealing Other People's Money | |
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| Madoff's Ponzi Scheme | |
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| The Essence of Ponzi Schemes | |
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| Economics' Take on Ponzi Schemes | |
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| Don't Show Me the Money | |
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| The Real Crime in a Ponzi Scheme | |
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| Is the U.S. Banking System a Ponzi Scheme? | |
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| From Ponzi Schemes to Full Disclosure | |
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| Disclosure Is Essential | |
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| Disclosure Is Not Enough | |
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| Uncle Sam's Ponzi Scheme | |
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| Fiscal Gap Accounting | |
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| Why Is the U.S. Fiscal Gap So Large? | |
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| Social Security's Unfunded Liability | |
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| Is the U.S. Bankrupt? | |
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| Uncle Sam's Dangerous Medicine | |
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| Sam's Got Your Back | |
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| Maturity Transformation in Theory and Practice | |
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| Backing the Buck | |
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| Opening Pandora's Box | |
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| Economics Diary, September 14, 2009: Trade/Financial War with China? | |
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| Our Once and Future Horrible Mess | |
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| Big Brother, Can You Spare One Hundred Billion? | |
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| Bailing Out Corporate Pensions | |
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| Recapitalizing the Banks | |
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| Buying Up Toxic Assets | |
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| GASP-The Geithner and Summers Plan | |
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| Putting More of Someone Else's Skin in the Game | |
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| Leverage upon Leverage | |
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| "Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction" | |
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| Proposed "Control of Derivatives" | |
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| The Dangers of Putting Wall Street on a Leash | |
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| "This Sucker Could Go Down" | |
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| Taking Stock | |
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| We Are Not All Keynesians Now | |
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| Reviewing the Case for Radical Surgery | |
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| Limited Purpose Banking | |
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| Full Disclosure-No Plan Is Perfect | |
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| Banks = Mutual Funds | |
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| The Federal Financial Authority | |
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| Ending Insider Rating | |
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| Bye-Bye, Bernie, Bye-Bye, Allen | |
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| Initiation, Not Securitization, Is the Problem | |
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| Securitizing Death | |
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| Cash Mutual Funds | |
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| Obviating FDIC Insurance and Capital Requirements | |
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| Cash Mutual Funds and Narrow Banking | |
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| Regaining Control of the Money Supply | |
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| Insurance Mutual Funds | |
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| Illustrating a Life Insurance Mutual Fund | |
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| Insuring the Uninsurable-A Life Insurance Example | |
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| The Financial Risk of Swine Flu | |
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| LPB Life Insurance Mutual Funds and Tontines | |
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| Illustrating Other Types of Insurance Mutual Funds | |
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| LPB Lets Us Leverage Us, But Not Our Countrymen | |
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| Using Insurance Mutual Funds to Buy and Sell CDSs | |
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| Sharing Aggregate Risk | |
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| Parimutuel Betting and Insurance Mutual Funds | |
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| Betting on More than One Horse/Mortality Rate | |
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| Illustrating a Homeowner's Insurance Mutual Fund | |
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| Helping Solve the Corporate Governance Problem | |
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| Relationship of Limited Purpose Banking to Glass-Steagall | |
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| Isn't LPB Simply Imposing 100 Percent Capital Requirements? | |
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| Getting from Here to There | |
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| Implementing Limited Purpose Banking | |
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| Zombies and Gazelles | |
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| Deleveraging Investment Banking and Trading | |
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| An End to Rogue Trading | |
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| The Politics of Limited Purpose Banking | |
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| What About? | |
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| Can We Just Agree to Agree? | |
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| Will LPB Reduce Liquidity? | |
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| Will LPB Reduce Credit? | |
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| Who Will Lend to Business? | |
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| Will LPB Reduce Leverage? | |
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| Will LPB Shrink the Financial Sector? | |
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| Doesn't LPB Force Us to Become Our Own Bankers? | |
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| Isn't LPB Reducing the Amount of Safe Assets? | |
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| Does LPB Require Homemade Insurance Policies? | |
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| Insuring Against Changes in Insurability | |
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| With LPB You Don't Know the Odds Until It's Too Late | |
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| Why Not Simply Correctly Price the Government's Guarantees? | |
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| How Will Monetary Policy Operate? | |
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| What about Foreign Assets? | |
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| Won't Americans Just Bank Abroad? | |
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| Doesn't LPB Dramatically Shrink the Money Supply? | |
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| What's the Role of the FFA in Investment Banking? | |
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| What about Venture Capital, Private Equity Firms, and Hedge Funds? | |
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| Is GE a Bank under LPB? | |
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| Can't Nonfinancial Corporations Play Conventional Bank? | |
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| Why Let Proprietorships Run Traditional Banks? | |
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| Will LPB Prevent Financial Panics? | |
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| LPB Will Destroy Valuable Relationships and Information Banks Have About Their Borrowers | |
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| Economics Diary, November 11, 2009: Whither the Economy? | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Afterword: Fixing the Rest of Our Economic Mess | |
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| Fixing Taxes: The Purple Tax | |
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| Fixing Healthcare: Medicare Part C for All! | |
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| Fixing Social Security and Retirement Accounts: The Personal Security System | |
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| Removing the Fiscal and Economic Swords of Damocles | |
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| Notes | |
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| About the Author | |
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| Index | |