Should the Fed scale back its ownership of mortgage-backed securities? This column analyses the effect of the programme on mortgage interest rates. Controlling for prepayment and default risk suggests the programme has had little or no impact, and that the Fed could gradually cut the size of its portfolio without a significant impact on the mortgage market.

Should the political influence of large financial institutions take some blame for the financial crisis? This column presents evidence that financial institutions lobbying on mortgage lending and securitisation issues were adopting riskier lending strategies. This contributed to the deterioration in credit quality and to the build-up of risks prior to the crisis.

This new CEPR Policy Insight looks at the issues arising from the collapse of Landsbanki.

Icelanders may well reject the terms of the financial deal with Britain and the Dutch in a March referendum. This column introduces a new CEPR Policy Insight arguing that responsibility for Icesave losses falls jointly on Iceland, Britain and the Netherlands. Regardless of the vote, the three governments should come to a more reasonable agreement that enables Iceland to pay its obligations without tipping the economy into the abyss.

Obama’s sweeping proposal for financial regulation took the world by surprise. Here two of the world’s leading professors of finance explain why it is step in the right direction from the standpoint of addressing systemic risk. They also point out a number of drawbacks that should be fixed.

What happened to the capitalist system where everyone was supposed to pay for their own mistakes? Bankers have been playing “I win, you lose” with the general public. This column suggests a return to double liability for bank managers in an attempt to change the game to “If I lose, then I have to pay.”

Global imbalances have been suggested as the root cause of the global crisis. This column argues that another imbalance is the guilty party. The entire world had an insatiable demand for safe debt instruments that put an enormous pressure on the US financial system and its incentives. This structural problem can be alleviated if governments around the world explicitly absorb a larger share of the systemic risk.

This new CEPR Policy Insight suggests that the 'Keynesian ambulance' of fiscal stimuli in response to the crisis may have averted a Great Depression.

The world economy has had a heart attack. “Ambulance economics” is about the immediate reanimation process, i.e. the fiscal stimulus. This column introduces a new CEPR Policy Insight that reviews practical aspects of fiscal stimulus policies, noting especially the inevitable trade-offs involved. It discusses the relationship between a long-term public debt problem caused usually by demographic factors and the need for short-term fiscal stimulus for Keynesian reasons. Also, it analyses critically seven common arguments against fiscal stimuli.

What is the impact of crisis-led protectionism on trade? This column provides a new way to interpret protectionism – the “Russian doll” effect – and shows that the effect on EU exports has been more severe than the rest of the world.