Category Archives: Uncategorized

Arbitrage in SME lending

One of the big concerns of the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis is that the recovery might take much longer because many firms, particularly small and medium (SMEs), will have closed down for good. From the very beginning, different actions … Continue reading

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Limiting borrowers leverage

In the last post I talked about the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB), a new regulatory tool to increase banks’ capital requirements that most countries have not used but that could have been effective to mitigate the Covid-19 crisis. As I … Continue reading

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Countercyclical capital buffers and regulatory discretion

One of the main regulations that banks have to comply with are capital requirements; in particular, banks need to hold a minimum amount of capital depending on the composition of their investments (assets). Actually, the use of the word “hold”, … Continue reading

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Moralities of everyday life

What is morality? Why do we feel disgust towards certain actions? Does everyone have a different morality? Should we be moral? How should we determine what is the moral thing to do? These and other questions are discussed in the … Continue reading

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Keeping at It, by Paul A. Volcker

Paul Volcker, who died this last December at the age of 92, is some sort of almost demi-god among people interested in central banking, monetary policy, and banking regulation; in other words, people like me. I was hence extremely interested … Continue reading

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My books: A tour

I am running out of activities to do with my (almost) three-year-old daughter, so I decided to sort my books by topic and alphabetical order. It looks so nice that I decided to record a brief tour around them. Here … Continue reading

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The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis

When I was at the Bank of England, I remember discussing with someone over a coffee about the need to screen new candidates for a willingness to work as public servants. The idea—as argued by my counterpart—was that people who … Continue reading

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National Populism, by Eatwell and Goodwin

National populists prioritize the culture and interests of the nation, and promise to give voice to a people who feel that they have been neglected, even held in contempt, by distant and often corrupt elites. The result of the Brexit … Continue reading

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Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari

“… we are on the threshold of both heaven and hell, moving nervously between the gateway of the one and the anteroom of the other. History has still not decided where we will end up, and a string of coincidences … Continue reading

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Top three books I read in 2019

I managed to reach my goal of reading 24 books in 2019. Ideally it should have been a simple linear process–you know, one book after the other, at more or less a pace of two a month–but it was not. … Continue reading

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