This article analyzes the determinants of liquidity crises based on the dynamics of banking and finance under Knightian uncertainty. In this perspective, the facts of the global financial crisis seem to confirm Minsky's hypothesis of endogenous financial instability derived from Keynes's theory...

The savings and loan debacle of the 1980s was the worst financial scandal in U.S. history. The estimated present value cost to the taxpayers was $150-175 billion ($1993). The debacle was a major contributor to a sharp recession in real estate values in the Southwest. However, it had only a...

Economists have dominated U.S. scholarship about the S&L debacle and they have universally viewed the regulatory response as horrific. This paper argues that the conventional economic wisdom is badly flawed. The U.S. regulatory response to the debacle was disastrous – when economists shaped it...

In 1866, the largest discount house in London, Overend-Gurney, teetered on the verge of insolvency as a result of extensive loan losses. It appealed to the Bank of England, then a privately held joint-stock bank with a monopoly over note issuance, but the Bank refused to help Overend-Gurney on...

Although historians continue to debate what exactly sparked the Panic of 1825, it is clear that by December of that year, a widespread bank run had erupted, and bankers flocked to the discount window of the Bank of England. While not yet the central bank, the Bank had special legal authority...

If a bank is facing insolvency, it will be tempted to reject good loans and accept bad loans so as to shift risk onto its creditors. We analyze the effectiveness of buying up toxic mortgages in troubled banks, buying preferred stock, and buying common stock. If bailing out banks deemed “too...

The bail-in tool as implemented in the European bank resolution framework suffers from severe shortcomings. To some extent, the regulatory framework can remedy the impediments to the desirable incentive effect of private sector involvement (PSI) that emanate from a lack of predictability of...