Ten Years After Lehman: The Solution Was “More Lehmans”

The day Lehman went bankrupt I left the office in London for Waterloo Station and realized that something monumental had happened. The faces of the dozens of people waiting patiently for trains from the center to their homes were revealing. Most of them were, like me, City workers. Panic.

I remember when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae both government entities  were bailed out, because it happened shortly before the Lehman collapse. They were the largest originators of subprime mortgages.

In Sweden, Europe’s Drift to the Right Continues

“Populism” seemed to have suffered a premature death a year ago. Emmanuel Macron had beaten Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections, Dutch right-winger Geert Wilders had underperformed massively, and the EU had found — or at least thought to have found — new popularity all around Europe. After a turbulent 2016, in which the UK voted to exit the EU, and which saw Donald Trump become US president, everything seemed well again.

The Kavanaugh Hearings Were a Missed Opportunity—For Both Sides

By now you’ve heard about the combative spectacle that was last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for President Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. This momentous event was characterized not by political acumen, wit, cunning, or prudence, but by partisan obstruction, lawlessness, tantrums, hysteria, ignorance, frenzy, and anger.