The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee works to identify and analyze developing trends and ongoing events that promise to affect the efficiency and safe operation of sectors of the financial services industry; explore the spectrum of short- and long-term implications of emerging problems and policy changes; help develop private, regulatory and legislative responses to such problems that promote efficiency and safety and further the public interest; and to assess and respond to proposed and actual public policy initiatives with respect to the impact on the public interest.

The current economic environment of low—virtually zero—interest rates has hit savers hard, but abruptly raising interest rates could harm economic growth and the housing market. Until the economy stabilizes and the Fed begins raising interest rates again, savers have few options: they can adjust their lifestyles, dip into their savings, or take on riskier investments such as gold and stocks.

Critics have renewed their calls to tax the carried interest as ordinary income. Unfortunately, the populist rhetoric used by some critics can obscure the facts about how carried interest is actually taxed.

Despite frequent, dire warnings about the unsustainability of government budget deficits in the United States, Europe and Japan, investors are lining up to lend to some governments at very low interest rates.

The Federal Reserve could give banks a big incentive to expand by setting negative interest rates on their excess reserves. 

The reason why non-college white voters embrace the Tea Party movement over Democratic policies--even at their own expense--is because they value other things besides just maximizing their short-term income.

At this Bradley Lecture, Walter Russell Mead will discuss why the core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the 60 years after the New Deal don’t work anymore.

If the Noda government relinquishes its claim to the joint exploration of the seabed around the Senkakus, hesitates to modernize Japan's military and cuts back on missile defense activities, a conservative backlash could emerge, heightened by perceived regional impressions that Japan is weakening relative to China.