As the keynote speaker at a recent conference of the International Consortium on Government Financial Management held in Washington DC, I had the opportunity to discuss with representatives from over 40 countries one of the primary challenges facing governments around the world – citizen engagement.
In fragile economic times, the U.S. government occasionally enacts stimulus programs to provide a jolt to consumer spending. This was certainly the case during the Great Recession, when the government utilized both explicit stimulus programs, such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 200...
The GCFP invites guest blog submissions to encourage discussion of important financial policy issues. This first guest posting, by Bob Pozen, proposes a “Third Type of Retirement Plan” that would address some of the stresses in public sector defined benefit pension plans while preserving much of the...
On July 1, 2016, the U.S. territory, which has been mired in a years-long debt crisis, failed to make good on $2 billion of bond payments due, triggering the worst default in its history. Puerto Rico’s governor Alejandro García Padilla has defended the decision to skip the full payment, emphasizing ...
High rates of debt growth by local governments are a cause for concern in any country. In China, where recent turmoil in the equity and foreign-exchange markets has put a spotlight on that country’s economy and growth prospects, increasing levels of borrowing by provincial and other lower levels of ...
The U.S. government’s ubiquitous role providing credit—mostly to students and homeowners—in the post-financial crisis economy is unmistakable but the ultimate costs to taxpayers can be far from obvious. While nearly all of the deliberation and debate about the price of extending government credit is...
Greece recently failed to pay $1.7 billion due to the IMF, thereby becoming the first developed country to default on an IMF loan. That missed payment represents only a portion of the approximately $23 billion in IMF credit outstanding to Greece, suggesting the ultimate losses to the Fund could be m...
While attending a conference of government financial managers in July 2015, I had the opportunity to participate on a panel to consider ways to improve the U.S. budget process and was amazed at the energy and enthusiasm for the topic. With hundreds of attendees cramming a large breakout session room...
A recent topic of debate in the U.S. budget community centers on how the federal government should estimate the cost of providing loans to various borrowers such as students and homebuyers. Currently costs are assessed assuming that the government’s cost of capital is equal to the Treasury rate. Pro...
It is with great pleasure that I transition to my new role as the inaugural executive director of MIT’s Center for Finance and Policy (CFP). As someone who has focused on government financial institutions for many years, I welcome this new beginning as a chance to direct sunlight towards a unique se...
