The Game of Bank Bargains (2025 Edition)

In this episode, I was joined by Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Financial Institutions in the Faculty of Business and Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs at Columbia Business School, Stephen Haber, A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Professor of History and, by courtesy, of Economics at Stanford University, and Kiah Haslett, bank reporting veteran and creator of the Fintech Takes Banking newsletter.

Charles and Stephen are the authors of 2014’s excellent comparative analysis of banking and political systems, Fragile by Design, which informed our discussion and I highly recommend anyone involved in financial services read if they haven’t already.

Charles, Stephen, Kiah, and I had the chance to discuss:

* The nature of the “Game of Bank Bargains”

* Why Canadians love their banks

* Some of the underlying reasons behind the growth of the shadow banking system in the US

* Charles’ argument that Biden-era regulators were staunchly opposed to innovation in the banking system and why he thinks that former acting Comptroller Michael Hsu was “a complete hack”

* Why young people should pay more attention to the fiscal decisions coming out of Washington

* The risks of “progressive ideology” and why more government may not be the answer

* And much, much more

You can find more of Charles’ work here and and Stephens’ here. More information on the Hoover Institution, including the ability to sign up for its newsletter, here.

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