Endorsements of Banking in Crisis

Three esteemed academics kindly provided endorsements on the back cover of my new book Banking in Crisis. Here is what they say:

Richard S. Grossman (Wesleyan Univerity):

"Banking in Crisis combines the very best of serious academic scholarship and keen policy analysis. It should be required reading for anyone - expert and non-expert alike - who is interested in the past, present and future of British banking."

Avner Offer (University of Oxford):

"What makes for stable banking? Bankers are prone to gamble with depositors' money. What keeps them honest is a personal stake, or tight regulation. Turner shows that since 1825, stability required either one or the other, and that relaxation of discipline, whatever its advantages, has placed the financial system at risk. The past worked for a long time and the present doesn't."

Kent Matthews (Cardiff University):

"John Turner has done the community of banking scholars, regulators and policy makers a great service by writing an account of two centuries of British banking. It is timely, scholarly and most of all highly readable. History is contextualised in the economic theory of banking, making it a must-read for students at all levels. Highly recommended."

Bitcoin Bubble?

According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.

How Valuable Are Connections?

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles, co-authored with my colleague Will Quinn , is forthcoming in August. It is published by Cambridge University Press and is available for pre-order at Amazon , Barnes and Noble , Waterstones and Cambridge University Press .

Finance: Past, Present and Future

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