*The Bankers’ New Clothes*

That is the new book by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig and the subtitle is What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about it.  Here is their bottom line:

We have argued that if banks have much more equity, the financial system will be safer, healthier, and less distorted.  From society’s perspective, the benefits are large and the costs are hard to find; there are virtually no trade-offs.

I agree with the proposal, though not with the claim that this is virtually costless, as is laid out in their chapter seven (oddly they focus on the question of whether debt and equity “require” comparable rates of return, rather than the general notion of opportunity cost).  In any case this is a major net work on banking and its regulation.  Here is the book’s home page.  Here is Admati on YouTube.