Fed officials such as James Bullard, Thomas Hoenig and Gary Stern have spoken eloquently about the need to address banking’s too-big-to-fail problem, but in the real world, bank regulators haven’t done much about it. In fact, the Washington Post reported last week,…

Whenever something goes wrong, it’s human instinct to find a scapegoat. Since things have gone terribly wrong with the economy, Time magazine is asking readers to assign blame to a lineup of 25 politicians, bankers, Wall Street moguls and others.…

James Hamilton at Econbrowser has an excellent post on why we should be concerned about excesses in executive pay. Rather than discussing inequality or morality, he worries about getting the incentives right. After mentioning the vast sums earned by CEOs who proved…

My column on Citigroup and Bank of America drew an insightful voice mail from Charles “Chip” Roame, managing principal of Tiburon Strategic Advisors in Tiburon, Calif. The financial-services consultant’s comments came too late to get into the column, but they’re too…

Citigroup is outraged that Wells Fargo would come in and break up its bargain-basement, government-financed deal to buy Wachovia Bank. But let’s hope the regulators find a way to make the Wells Fargo deal happen: It won’t cost taxpayers anything, and it may…