Credit Crisis

Judge Posner’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday got me thinking.

Equity spun out of control in the 1920s, crashed, severely damaged the economy, and was controlled not only by forcing equity to be more…

Hernando de Soto’s brilliant Wall Street Journal op-ed today, “Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets,” contains a wealth of common sense.

XBRL US produced a remarkable 29-page document explaining how adoption of an industry standard computer language could expedite economic recovery. The organization’s CEO, Mark Bolgiano, presented it to Congress…

There was much talk about the Great Depression on Meet the Press this morning. Since the Depression, we’ve created nuclear energy, solar energy, lunar travel, Internet technology, and a global economy, so today’s crisis needn’t resemble the Depression. In fact, there’s a great…

There’s an interesting discussion here that for the most part speaks for itself. I’ll only add that consensus is building that more useful data is required. Decisions about what to do with the data needn’t be made now, and uses will evolve over time, just as reporting of…

On Dec. 22, 2004, eight months before I arrived at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commission unanimously adopted a rule…

This morning’s Bloomberg report makes it sound like the idea of transparency is gaining salience:

The philosophy behind both the public-private partnerships and the stress tests is that the more…

Daniel Roth’s new story is up on Wired. It’s the story of how the data standard the SEC adopted on Dec. 17, 2008, can restore Peggy Noonan’s “magic.” As she wrote, “no amount of pessimism will stop it once it starts.” Mr. Roth’s story,