Ezra Klein

Matt is right to say that a lot of what passed for “financial innovation” was in fact innovative efforts at regulatory arbitrage. One of the pieces of the crisis that I hadn’t understood until recently, for instance, was the role that Basel II banking regulations played in the growth of the structured securities market. In […]

Last week, I headed out to Missoula to give a talk on behest of Matt Singer’s Forward Montana. Perks to giving talks in Missoula: 1) They happen in bars. 2) Wearing jeans makes you seem dressed up. There’s literally a pitcher of scotch ale on the chair next to me in case I get thirsty […]

Nate Silver on blogging: For the most part we’re just trying to be interesting to people. I think we differ from a lot of blogs. We very rarely just say, okay, here is this that’s going on and here’s what Ezra Klein said and Ezra’s great, so you should read…. Instead, we actually – everything […]

This post lacks a nifty news peg, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Joshua Coval, Jakub Kurek, and Erik Stafford’s paper “The Economics of Structure Finance.” In particular, people talk about the “systemic risk” of big firms and massive banks. The banks, in other words, that are too big to fail, and whose very […]

Not to cop to a Sunday night spent catching up on DVR’d sitcoms, but Scrubs featured a pretty brilliant acoustic cover of Outkasts “Hey Ya,” which is, in turn, ripped from this even more brilliant “Hey Ya” cover by Mat Wettle of Obadiah Parker. All of which is to say, Happy Monday.

Mark Regnerus’s op-ed on the virtues of marrying young makes some interesting arguments that I’m loathe to offer half-baked commentary on. I prefer easy topics, like the financial crisis. I would, however, like to offer my congratulations to the environmental movement: We have literally reached a place where even articles on the optimal age for […]

You know the economic downturn has gotten bad when it’s slowing the expansion of the new organic supermarket that was supposed to move into my neighborhood. Can’t Congress do something!?

In response to the Great Amendment Hunt of Ought-Nine, commenter Badger asked, “These are pretty silly, but isn’t the House going to make mincemeat out of these things once it goes to conference/reconciliation/de-crazifying committee?” Probably. Most of these amendments were meant to “instruct” the budget conferees. They will be duly ignored. They exist more to […]

Ben Nelson has been carving out an interesting career niche for himself lately. What Joe Lieberman was to foreign policy, he’s decided to become to domestic policy. And so you have odd spectacles like Nelson threatening to vote against Obama’s pro-choice legal nominees and playing a key role in shrinking the stimulus and swearing to […]

By now, you’ve all heard of conference committee: that magical land were a couple powerbrokers from the House and a couple poobahs from the Senate meet to decide what the final budget will look like. Yesterday, the representatives from both chambers were named. They are: Senate: Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, and Patty Murray. House: John […]