Francis Coppola

At the end of my previous post, I posed the question: why did Latvia experience the deepest recession in the world in 2008-9?The first puzzle is that Latvia's banks were in no worse shape than anyone else's and better than some. Among small countries, Iceland, Ireland and (in 2013) Cyprus all experienced bigger banking collapses relative to the size of their economies than Latvia. Larger countries did too, notably Germany and the UK, both of which suffered widespread damage across their large...

This is not what you think it is. And it is not what I intended to write about, either. I was going to write about Latvia as it is now, after the deepest recession in the world in 2008-9 and an excruciatingly painful front-loaded fiscal consolidation. Has it really recovered, or is it just marking time?But in looking at Latvia now, I find myself drawn to its history. Latvia's unusual response to the kicking it got in 2008 was because of its history. It had a deep recession 1991-3 and a severe...

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism takes issue with me over my attempt to derail the "Banking should be boring" bandwagon. She claims that new research by the IMF proves that banking should indeed be boring: The IMF paper is generally in line with the argument that banking should be boring, meaning that complexity, opacity, and leverage typically work far more for the benefit of the financier and at the expense of customers and society at large. Frances Coppola tries to turn that argument on its...

W.H. Auden’s epic poem “The Age of Anxiety”, written during the dark fragmentation of the Second World War II, was widely acclaimed as defining the spirit of our time. Few claim to have read it, but everyone knows the title: as Daniel Smith put it in an op-ed in the New York Times, “as a sticker on the bumper of the Western world, “the age of anxiety” has been ubiquitous for more than six decades now.” Anxiety – and its cousins introspection and depression – is widespread, disrupting...

No, says The Times' David Smith. He says that the notion that there was a pause in austerity is an "austerity myth".He points to this chart from the Office for Budget Responsibility that shows fiscal consolidation as a percentage of GDP (relative to the 2008 Budget) continuing on throughout 2013 and 2014 and 2015:But the OBR's chart doesn't actually show what I would define as austerity. It shows the size of the government budget as a percentage of GDP relative to...

Since the financial crisis, some people have argued that “Banking should be boring”. The idea is that banking should be limited to simple deposit-taking, lending and payments services. We don’t need the trappings of modern investment banking: structured lending schemes, derivative products, complex risk metrics, synthetics and the like. They may be fun to create, and highly lucrative to trade, but they aren’t socially useful. Let’s get back to basics. All we need is little banks, simple...

My latest post at Pieria looks at the role of design in a time of change. Using mirrors and glass as metaphors, it maps the transformation of the "spirit of the age" from anxiety to empathy as the world heals from the trauma of the twentieth century's three Great Wars (yes, you read that correctly). And although it is optimistic about the new opportunities for collaboration and sharing that technology creates, it asks whether replacing introspection with connection and opacity with...

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10 Erin chats with Frances Coppola – associate editor at Pieria and author of the blog “Coppola Comment.” Frances tells us if negative interest rates in Europe are working and gives us her take on the ECB’s recent move to stop accepting Greek collateral for loans. She is negative on both outcomes with negative interest rates not adding to credit growth and the ECB’s moves having no positive impact on helping prevent a...

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10 Erin chats with Frances Coppola – associate editor at Pieria and author of the blog “Coppola Comment.” Frances tells us if negative interest rates in Europe are working and gives us her take on the ECB’s recent move to stop accepting Greek collateral for loans. She is negative on both outcomes with negative interest rates not adding to credit growth and the ECB’s moves having no positive impact on helping prevent a catastrophic outcome over Greece....

Music by Stephen Sondheim. Lyrics by Brian Lucey. Vocals and piano by Frances Coppola.