Over the past fourteen years, the U.S. Federal Reserve has rescued overleveraged financial companies, purchased trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities, and created novel facilities to support ordinary businesses, nonprofits, and local governments. While some argue that the Fed has...

This article argues that bank supervision sits at the center of two foundational tensions in the governance of American finance. The first is the extent to which the financial system is controlled by public actors (i.e., the government) or private actors (i.e., the banks). The second is the...

Federal bank supervision began in the United States with the enactment of the National Bank Act in 1863. From that point until the banking crises of the 1930s, the leaders of the US supervisory agencies—the Comptroller of the Currency (1863) and the Federal Reserve (1913)—recognized that...

In a narrow sense, this essay is meant to encourage business historians to consider (and reconsider) the variety of reports and forms, which can provide insights into the operation of firms and industries. U.S. bank examiner reports tell us about how nineteenth century banks operated within a...

Political voting rights have become the subject of sharp legal wrangling in American elections, and the focus of headlines and popular debate. Less attention has focused on American corporate elections, where something similar has been happening: the last two decades have witnessed significant...

In Fragile by Design (2014), Charles Calomiris and Stephen Haber argue that banking crises, instead of being traceable to inherent weaknesses of fractional-reserve banking, have their roots in politically-motivated government interference with banking systems that might otherwise be robust. The...

Most retirement withdrawal rate studies are either based on historical data or use a particular assumption about portfolio returns unique to the study in question. But planners may have their own capital market expectations for future returns from stocks, bonds, and other assets they deem...

Valuation-based market timing demonstrates strong potential to improve risk-adjusted returns for conservative long-term investors. Such timing strategies based on the cyclically-adjusted price-earnings ratio provide comparable returns as a 100 percent stocks buy-and-hold strategy but with...

While most everyone would agree that valuations matter, the question remains as to whether clients with a long-term outlook (such as those planning for retirement) can hope to act successfully on information about valuations. This article provides favorable evidence based on the historical...

The aim of traditional retirement planning is to set a wealth accumulation target for your retirement date so that your desired expenditures can be obtained using a "safe" withdrawal rate. But it is quite difficult to know if you are making progress toward this target. Volatility over short...