Fragile by Design The Political Origins of Banking Crises and…精选.pdfVIP

Cato Journal these thinkers is not where they erred, but where they continue to offer insight, even to a world that they would hardly recognize. Jason Kuznicki Cato Institute Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014, 570 pp. Charles Calomiris and Stephen Haber have taken on a big task in their book, Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit. Their goal is to explain the double hit that economies and financial systems suffer when they experience a bank- ing crisis and then the tightening of credit that often follows. In order to keep the final product manageable, and thus avoid having a 2,000 page book, the authors limit their case studies to the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Their time frame extends back to the 17th century. At its core, their argument is that financial crises are not random; they flow from the “Game of Bank Bargains”—that is, political deals that dictate everything in a banking system from the issuance of licenses to the means for distri- bution of credit. Charles Calomiris is well-known to those who have studied finan- cial panics and crises. He is the co-author of The Origins of Banking Panics and Contagion and Bank Failures during the Great Depression, to name just a few of his widely cited works. Stephen Haber has undertaken research predominantly on Latin American political and economic policy, with particular emphasis on Mexico. Fragile by Design attempts to draw conclusions about a wide range of financial crises in different countries over a period of cen- turies and brings to mind Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff ’s T