Some policymakers accept that some financial firms will inevitably be too-big-to-fail and wish to focus policy efforts on facilitating orderly bailouts and agreeing in advance on "burden-sharing" arrangements for allocating bailout costs among countries.

The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in the fall of 2008 threw a sharp and critical light on the inadequacies of the world's system for resolving insolvent, globally active financial institutions; a debtor-selection system could ameliorate many of these inadequacies.

Is it desirable or feasible to develop a regulatory framework that will prevent firms from becoming too big to fail or posing a risk of systemic harm?

Sunday’s elections results in six European countries, particularly France, Greece and Germany, bode poorly for satisfactorily resolving the European Union’s ongoing financial and political crisis.

Talks aimed at resolving the Iranian nuclear weapons threat will again resume this Friday. In Seoul late last month, the President reminded Iran that it must act with “‘urgency.” “There is time to solve this diplomatically,” Obama enthused. “It is always my preference to solve these issues diplomatically. But time is short.”

The puzzle of underissuance of national bank notes disappears when one disaggregates data, takes account of regulatory limits, and considers differences in opportunity costs.

The puzzle of underissuance of national bank notes disappears when one disaggregates data, takes account of regulatory limits, and considers differences in opportunity costs.

On October 7, Anne Krueger, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, discussed two proposed changes to IMF procedures.