Professor E. Avgouleas Speaks at the US Federal Reserve on Ways to Resolve the Too-Big-To-Fail Conundrum

Fri 30 September 2016

Professor Emilios Avgouleas spoke at a workshop of the very high profile series on “Ending The Too-Big-To-Fail” institution organised by the President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) Neel Kashkari under the aegis of the USA Federal Reserve on 26 September.

The aim of the series organised by Mr Kashkari - former under-secretary of the Treasury that handled the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) (essentially, the US bad bank) in 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Bros and who served both the Bush and Obama administrations - was to gather the world’s finest brains to discuss ways to end the 'Too-Big-To-Fail' (TBTF) phenomenon.

The series to which Prof Avgouleas was invited, was one of the highest profile and featured panellists including: ex Fed governor Ben Bernanke, Simon Johnson (Stanford), ex Fed vice-chairman and chairman of the G-30 Roger Ferguson (keynote) and leading US economists from institutions such as Chicago, Harvard, NYU, as well as senior industry leaders.

Emilios was the only European to be invited to speak in the series and one of only two law professors. He spoke in the first panel of the 4th workshop held in Minneapolis on 26 September 2016 and offered his views on alternatives to catastrophic bail-ins of general bank liabilities.

The moderator of the panel and current vice-chairman of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank introduced the panel - Emilios, the current chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who introduced the idea of convertible capital instruments (CoCos), and the managing director of S&P financial institution - as three of the top five experts in the world on TBTF. He also reserved high and very public praise for Emilios’ individual work on TBTF and financial stability, his more recent joint publications on bank bail-ins with Charles Goodhart, which were described to be the definitive work in the field, and his latest piece on the role of the Central Bank as lender of last resort.

The workshop was live-streamed and the video of proceedings can be watched here.

The workshop programme and powerpoint presentations can be found here.

Further information

Emilios’ papers on bail-in (jointly with Charles Goodhart), the Too-Big-to-Fail institution, and financial stability and his latest work on the Lender of Last resort may be found here:

 
Professor Emilios Avgouleas (currently on leave at Harvard Law School) was in the Spring Term a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School and upon his return in January he will resume his term as the director of the Edinburgh LLM in International Banking Law and Finance.

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