Is the global financial crisis entering a third phase? Phase 1 was when banks in the US, UK and several other major economies required taxpayers to rescue them. Phase 2 was the Eurozone crisis. Will Phase 3 be a financial crises across emerging markets? (see Bloomberg coverage here and Guardian coverage here). In recent weeks, currencies and stocks in emerging markets have been falling. In response, central banks in these economies, most notably in India, South Africa and Turkey, have been forced to increase interest rates. Why is this happening? How bad will it be? What effect will it have on economic growth in developed economies? Will an emerging market crisis strangle economic recovery in the US and UK? How will US monetary authorities respond to this? Will they continue to taper their bond-buying schemes? I have no doubts that all will be revealed in the coming months!
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...