Timothy Geithner's memoir of the financial crisis of 2007-2008 is an important historical document offering details of how policies were formed and implemented during the financial crisis of 2007-2008, showing the political constraints, and offering lessons for future crises. Walter Bagehot's...

We document that the percentage of all U.S. assets that are “safe” has remained stable at about 33 percent since 1952. This stable ratio is a rare example of calm in a rapidly changing financial world. Over the same time period, the ratio of U.S. assets to GDP has increased by a factor of...

We survey the literature on securitization and lay out a research program for its open questions. Securitization is the process by which loans, previously held to maturity on the balance sheets of financial intermediaries, are sold in capital markets. Securitization has grown from a small amount...

Short-term collateralized debt, such as demand deposits and money market instruments - private money, is efficient if agents are willing to lend without producing costly information about the collateral backing the debt. When the economy relies on such informationally-insensitive debt, firms...

The pre-crisis financial architecture was a system of mobile collateral. Safe debt, whether government bonds or privately produced bonds, ie asset-backed securities, could be traded, posted as collateral, and rehypothecated, moving to its highest value use. Since the financial crisis, regulatory...

Credit Booms are not rare; some end in a crisis (bad booms) while others do not (good booms). We document that credit booms start with an increase in productivity growth, which subsequently falls faster during bad booms. We develop a model in which crises happen when credit booms change to an...

The sale and repurchase (repo) market played a central role in the recent financial crisis. From the second quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2009, net repo financing provided to U.S. banks and broker-dealers fell by about $900 billion – more than half of its pre-crisis total....

We survey the literature on securitization and lay out a research program for its open questions. Securitization is the process by which loans, previously held to maturity on the balance sheets of financial intermediaries, are sold in capital markets. Securitization has grown from a small amount...

There is a demand for safe assets, either government bonds or private substitutes, for use as collateral. Government bonds are safe assets, given the government's power to tax, but their supply is driven by fiscal considerations, and does not necessarily meet the private demand for safe assets....

Credit booms usually precede financial crises. However, some credit booms end in a crisis (bad booms) and other booms do not (good booms). We document that, while all booms start with an increase in the growth of Total Factor Productivity (TFP), such growth falls much faster subsequently for bad...