Many commentators have been predicting the death of the euro since the Eurozone crisis started over three years ago. But many commentators have underestimated the ability of the Eurozone to plod along and kick the problem into the future. The Eurozone is beset by problems, but politicians are playing for time - they are nursing weak economies (and their banks) along in the hope that economic growth will return, that asset prices will recover, and that economies will miraculously recover their former vim. How long can they do this for? Maybe a decade or more. However, if the PIIGS are still weak in several years time, the euro could well come to an end. Click here to read Barry Eichengreen's recent op-ed on the future of the Eurozone.
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...