Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [157]
42. Ibid., 180. In a later analysis, Kwak writes “that the [‘too big to fail’] subsidy exists, even after controlling for other factors that explain bank funding costs, and that it is in the range of 50 to 73 basis points.” James Kwak, “Who Is Too Big to Fail?” Presented at “New Ideas for Limiting Bank Size,” conference of the Fordham Corporate Law Center, Fordham Law School, New York, March 12, 2010, 26.
43. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Financial Crisis Inquiry Report (2011), 58.
44. Rajan, Fault Lines, 122.
45. Ibid., 143, citing Michiyo Nakamoto and David Wighton, “Citigroup Chief Stays Bullish on Buyouts,” Financial Times, July 9, 2007.
46. Ibid., 148.
47. Paul Krugman, “Zombie Financial Ideas,” New York Times, Opinion Blogs: The Conscience of a Liberal, Mar. 3, 2009, available at link #82.
48. As my colleague Mark Roe has argued, another example of too much regulation may have been the decision by Congress of when to give derivatives high priority in bankruptcy, which forced the government to intervene to avoid the catastrophic costs of derivatives being the primary debt paid by defaulting banks. See Mark J. Roe, “The Derivatives Market’s Payment Priorities as Financial Crisis Accelerator,” ECGI Law Working Paper No. 153/2010 (Jan. 2011); Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 10-17, available at link #83.
49. Johnson and Kwak, 13 Bankers, 58.
50. Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 185.
51. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004), x.
52. Johnson and Kwak, 13 Bankers, 9–10.
53. Rajan, Fault Lines, 181.
54. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Financial Crisis Inquiry Report (2011), xviii.
55. Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 226.
56. Ibid., 226–27.
57. Ibid., 227.
58. Partnoy, Infectious Greed, 146.
59. Ibid., 145–46.
60. Tett, Fool’s Gold, 244.
61. Ibid., 213.
62. Sewell Chan, “Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds,” New York Times, Jan. 25, 2011, 3.
63. Rajan, Fault Lines, 154.
Chapter 8. What the “Tells” Tell Us
1. Survey, Global Strategy Group (Jan. 11, 2011), on file with author.
Chapter 9. Why So Damn Much Money
1. Robert Kaiser, So Damn Much Money (New York: Knopf Books, 2009), 356.
2. Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, and Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 19.
3. Arianna Huffington, Third World America (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), 130.
4. Kaiser, So Damn Much Money, 115.
5. R. Sam Garrett, “The State of Campaign Finance Policy: Recent Developments and Issues for Congress,” Cong. Res. Serv. (April 29, 2011), available at link #84. (“House and Senate campaigns’ fund-raising and spending have generally increased steadily since the early 1990s. Specifically, receipts more than doubled, from $654.1 million in 1992 to approximately $1.8 billion in 2010. Disbursements rose similarly, from $675.1 million to approximately $1.8 billion.”) In my view, the relevant question is much more pragmatic: Does the demand force members to spend more time raising money than before? Whether spending is constant relative to income or not, its nominal amount has increased, forcing more time to be spent on fund-raising. See Stephen Ansolabehere, John M. de Figueiredo, and James M. Snyder, “Why Is There So Little Money in U.S. Politics?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17 (2003): 105.
6. Randall Bennett Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 434.
7. History buffs are always fascinated by the strange coincidences between Lincoln and Kennedy (described and dismantled at Barbara Mikkelson and David P. Mikkelson, “Linkin’ Kennedy,” Snopes.com (Sept. 28, 2007), available at link #85. The more interesting historical intertwining, in my view, is between the two presidents