In the stage musical and film 'Evita', Eva Peron sings "Screw the middle classes! I will never accept them." A recent study in the United States indicates that the middle classes are being screwed and squeezed as never before - click here to see NY Times coverage of the report. This squeezing of the middle classes is also happening in other economies - click here to see a recent Economist piece on the issue. Three questions spring to mind. Why is this happening? Will the middle class disappear? What is the long-term effect of this squeezing of the middle classes? The squeezing of the middle classes is a worrying trend which has major consequences for the future of Western civilisation.
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...