Special Edition: Money in the Time of Coronavirus
Prompt for Discussion
Contributors: Katharina Pistor, James McAndrews, Saule Omarova, Mark Blyth, Jamee Moudud, Elham Saeidinezhad, Dan Awrey, Fadhel Kaboub, Leah Downey, Virginia France, Lev Menand, Nadav Orian Peer, Robert Hockett, Carolyn Sissoko, Jens van ‘t Klooster, Oscar Perry Abello, and Gerald Epstein
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The financial strains brought by the coronavirus outbreak feel strangely reminiscent of 2008, and yet, markedly different. In the United States, at the writing of this prompt, the S&P 500 has crashed 25%, and the federal funds target rate is once again moving towards the zero bound. The treasury securities market is in disarray, and the Federal Reserve is set to increase its repo lending by over one trillion. In Washington, the administration’s insistence that concerns were overblown is now replaced with negotiations over the size and shape of a stimulus package. “I don’t want to use the b-word”, said a senior administration official about plans to support distressed industries, like airlines. The b-word is, of course, bailout.
So far, so 2008. But the monetary dynamics we are witnessing in the time of corona also take us into new territory. The proximate cause of the crisis past came from within the financial system itself: the housing credit bubble and abuses in subprime lending. The corona crisis, on the other hand, emerges from a material threat to human health. Where the 2008 crisis revealed the vulnerabilities of financial globalization, the corona crisis is disrupting the global production system, upending supply chains, and threatening shortages in essential inventories.
We wonder about the extent to which the policy arsenal of 2008 can contain the dislocations currently occurring, and what, exactly, stimulating consumer demand means when the consumer herself is in quarantine. Moreover, the crisis response to the corona crisis is taking place within an institutional setting that was itself reshaped by the 2008 crisis reforms. As corona strains unfold, it remains to be seen whether the promise of financial resilience will be borne out, or whether fundamental design flaws left in place will frustrate reformers’ efforts.
In this Special Edition Roundtable, JM invites contributors to provide live analysis of money in the time of corona, here in the U.S., and around the world.
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Contributions
June 29, 2020
Roundtable Wrap-up
Sannoy Das, Harvard Law School
May 21, 2020
Human Capital Bonds and Federal Reserve Support for Public Education: The Public Education Emergency Finance Facility (PEEFF)
Gerald Epstein, University of Massachusetts Amherst
May 12, 2020
The Fed Should Bail Out Low-Income Tenants and Not Just Banks and Landlords
Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School
April 29, 2020
Getting to Know a Brave New Fed
Oscar Perry Abello, Next City
April 10, 2020
The Problem with Shareholder Bailouts isn’t Moral Hazard, but Undermining State Capacity
Carolyn Sissoko, University of the West of England
April 2, 2020
Crises, Bailouts, and the Case for a National Investment Authority
Saule Omarova, Cornell Law School
March 31, 2020
Why the US Congress Gives Dollars to the Fed
Jens van ‘t Klooster, KU Leuven and University of Amsterdam
March 26, 2020
A Fire Sale in the US Treasury Market: What the Coronavirus Crisis Teaches us About the Fundamental Instability of our Current Financial Structure
Carolyn Sissoko, University of the West of England
March 25, 2020
The Democratic Digital Dollar: A ‘Treasury Direct’ Option
Robert Hockett, Cornell Law School
March 22, 2020
Derivative Failures
James McAndrews, TNB USA Inc. and Wharton Financial Institutions Center
March 20, 2020
The Case for Free Money (a real Libra)
Katharina Pistor, Columbia Law School
March 19, 2020
The Monetary/Fiscal Divide is Still Getting in Our Way
Leah Downey, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University
March 18, 2020
Is Monetary System as Systemic and International as Coronavirus?
Elham Saeidinezad, UCLA Department of Economics
March 17, 2020
Here We Go Again? Not Really
Dan Awrey, Cornell Law School
March 16, 2020
Repo in the Time of Corona
Nadav Orian Peer, Colorado Law
March 16, 2020
Beyond Pathogenic Politics
Jamee K. Moudud, Sarah Lawrence College
March 15, 2020
Economic and Financial Responses to the Coronavirus
James McAndrews, TNB USA Inc. and Wharton Financial Institutions Center