Ending Government Bailouts as We Know Them

by Scott, Kenneth E.; Shultz, George P.; Taylor, John B.

• ISBN13: 9780817911249
• ISBN10: 0817911243
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-01
• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press

Summary

This book provides strategies designed to "make failure tolerable" and eliminate the bailout mentality both now and in the future. The distinguished authors also show that it is indeed possible-and necessary-to explain the causes of the crisis in understandable terms and clarify why resolving the bailout problem is essential to preventing future crises.

Author Biography

Kenneth E. Scott, the Parsons Professor Emeritus of Law and Business at Stanford Law School and a Hoover Institution senior research fellow, is a leading scholar in the fields of corporate finance reform and corporate governance who has written extensively on federal banking regulation. His current research concentrates on legislative and policy developments related to the current financial crisis, comparative corporate governance, and financial regulation. He has extensive consulting experience, including work for the World Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Resolution Trust Corporation, and, most recently, the National Association of Securities Dealers. He is also a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, the Financial Economists Roundtable, and the State Bar of California's Financial Institutions Committee. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1968, he served as general counsel to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and as chief deputy savings and loan commissioner of California and worked in private practice in New York with Sullivan & Cromwell.

George P. Shultz is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Among many other senior government and private sector roles, he served as secretary of labor in 1969 and 1970, as director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1970 to 1972, and as secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974.  He was sworn in on July 16, 1982, as the sixtieth U.S. secretary of state and served until January 20, 1989.  In January 1989, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Shultz rejoined Stanford University in 1989 as the Jack Steel Parker Professor of International Economics at the Graduate School of Business and as a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the Advisory Council chair of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford and chair of the Energy Initiative External Advisory Board at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He is the chairman of Governor Schwarzenegger’s Council of Economic Advisers and a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association.

John B. Taylor is the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University.  Among other roles in public service, he served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 1991 and as undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs from 2001 to 2005.  He is currently a member of the California Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers.  His new book Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis is an empirical analysis of the recent financial crisis.  He also recently coedited The Road ahead for the Fed in which twelve leading experts, himself included, examine and debate proposals for financial reform and exit strategies from the financial crisis.  Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1984, Taylor held positions as a professor of economics at Princeton University and Columbia University. He received a BS in economics summa cum laude from Princeton and a PhD in economics from Stanford University in 1973.