Category Archives: Too Big To Save

They’ve Got It: Fixes for the Financial System [New York Times]

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By SEWELL CHAN and BINYAMIN APPELBAUM. Robert C. Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management and author of “Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System” (Wiley, 2010), wants to require banks to issue an existing kind of bond known as long-term subordinated debt. “Subordinated debt is bought by very sophisticated investors who insist on conditions like capital requirements and covenants to make sure that banks don’t take on too much risk,” he says.

Since their investment is not guaranteed and their time horizon is long term, such creditors have interests closely aligned with those of government regulators, says Mr. Pozen, who is also a lecturer at Harvard Business School.

Financial Crisis Reading List [New York Times - Economix]

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By David Leonhardt. “One book that may deserve more attention than it’s received is “Too Big to Save,” by Robert Pozen, a former vice chairman of Fidelity Investments. I found Chapter 6 — on capital requirements — especially useful. As Mr. Pozen writes, these requirements are ‘the most criticial component of any regulatory system for commercial banks or investment banks.’ “

A Selective Defense of “Too Big to Fail” [Barron's]

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Reviewed by Jim McTague. Here’s an idea for curbing the rapine of all those financial executives thumbing their noses at the taxpayers who rescued them from ruin: Limit their annual salaries to $300,000 to $400,000, and institute three-year performance programs that award bonuses to good stewards, but not the bad.

That’s just one of several provocative ideas found in this thorough, intelligent and straightforward book by money manager Robert Pozen, which traces the ontogeny of the financial crisis and offers remedies — most of them delectably controversial — for preventing calamities.

Too Big to Save? [C-SPAN]

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Robert Pozen looks at the causes of the 2008 financial collapse and says that the financial system needs to be reformed so that we don’t see a repeat down the road. He argues for changing the incentive system on Wall Street and calls for strengthening the government regulation of financial markets. (1 hours, 9 minutes)

Financial crisis served up with relish [Financial Times]

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By John Plender. After two and a half years of relentless financial pounding, the crisis literature is becoming mountainous. To command the weary reviewer’s attention, any new book on the aberrations of the financial community has to have a clear focus and make a compelling case. In Too Big To Save? Robert Pozen, chairman of mutual fund group MFS Investment Management and a former vice-chairman of Fidelity Investments, pulls off the trick.