I have just received the current issue of Econ Journal Watch, which is a Symposium on the US Sovereign Debt Crisis. Click here to see this issue of EJW. Tyler Cowen, in his introductory remarks, suggests that the US will experience a debt crisis within the next one or two decades. The US federal government is currently borrowing 40 cents of every dollar its spends - is this really sustainable in the long run? I don't think we will see a total default by the US, but a partial one, with the Fed attempting to raise the inflation rate.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...