Daniel Bergstresser

Financial Markets

What Problems (If Any) Arise From Stock Buybacks?

April 29, 2019

The Issue:

Stock buybacks by the firms included in the S&P 500 index have increased recently, rising from an average of about $135 billion per quarter over the previous three years to over $200 billion per quarter: $800 billion in the first eleven months of 2018 with announced buybacks bringing the figure to

State and Local Finance

The Burden of Public Pension Promises on State and Local Budgets

December 19, 2018

The Issue:

Unfunded pension liabilities represent a significant challenge to the finances of many state and local governments. While no analysts dispute the general statement that pensions are underfunded in aggregate, there has been some discussion about how to estimate the magnitude of the gap. Moreover, however ...
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Tax Policy

The Capital Gains Tax and Inflation

August 13, 2018

The Issue:

The United States Treasury Department is reportedly studying whether it can issue regulations that would allow taxpayers to account for inflation when calculating taxes on capital gains. Such a change has been considered in the past. Taxing savings, like taxing any economic activity, distorts the functioning ...
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Financial Regulation

Is Financial Regulation Doing the Right Amount to Prevent Cascading Crises?

April 12, 2018

(Click here for a list of systemically important financial institutions under current and proposed asset thresholds.)

The Issue:

One of the perceived causes of the severity of the 2008 financial crisis was that some institutions that failed, or came close to failing, were systemically important. Because of their ...
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Economic Growth

Putting the Recent Swings in Stock Market Indexes into Context

February 8, 2018

The Issue:

The volatility in the stock market in the first week of February 2018 stands in stark contrast to unusually low volatility throughout 2017. The past year was the first one ever that the Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index did not experience any decline greater than 3 percent. The past week, however, ...
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Infrastructure

Tax Reform Threatens Infrastructure Investment

December 26, 2017

The Issue:

During the 2016 presidential campaign and after his election, President Trump promised to lead an upgrade in our nation’s infrastructure. In February 2017, President Trump announced that he would ask Congress to approve programs designed to stimulate $1 Trillion in infrastructure investment. At least ...
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International Trade

The Jones Act and the Cost of Shipping Between U.S. Ports

October 19, 2017

The Issue:

The efforts to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria, which made landfall on the island on September 20, 2017, have brought attention to a previously little-known piece of legislation, the Jones Act. This act prevents foreign-owned or operated vessels from shipping between ports in the United ...
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Government Debt

A Public Pension Time-Bomb?

August 2, 2017

The Issue:

Underfunded pension liabilities have been an important element of most of the recent high-profile public sector defaults, and represent an important challenge for state and local finances. In Puerto Rico unfunded public pension liabilities are about $50 billion of the $123 billion public debt that will ...
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Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico’s Debt Trap

May 16, 2017

The Issue:

At the beginning of May, Puerto Rico entered an unprecedented form of bankruptcy protection with a record breaking $123 billion in combined debt and unfunded pension commitments. The ensuing restructuring process will be, in effect, the largest municipal bankruptcy ever, dwarfing Detroit’s $20 billion ...
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