Charles Calomiris


Charles William Calomiris is an American financial policy expert, author, and professor at Columbia Business School, where he is the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions and the Director of Columbia Business School Program for Financial Studies.

Early life, education, and career

Born in Washington, D.C., his father was businessman William Calomiris, a past president of the Washington Board of Trade and founder of the William Calomiris Investment Corp, who led efforts to create housing for low- and middle-income Washington residents. Charles Calomiris received a B.A. in economics from Yale University and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. Calomiris thereafter served in numerous capacities with organizations addressing economic policy, including serving as a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee, co-director of the Hoover Institution's Program on Regulation and the Rule of Law, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has advised government entities as a researcher at the Office of Financial Research in the United States Department of the Treasury, and as a member of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission of the United States Congress.

Views

Calomiris was critical from the outset of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a set of financial regulations passed in response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Argued that the law doubles down on "too big to fail" and does not prevent the government from subsidizing mortgage risk, which fueled the crisis. He further cited the law's overly complicated and ambiguously worded provisions, and instead advocated alternative "incentive-robust" solutions, such as "a rule requiring that banks hold cash at the central bank equal to 20% of their assets", and "a minimum uninsured debt requirement for large banks in the form of subordinated debt".
In 2018, Calomiris argued in favor of capitalism, noting that many predictions made by Karl Marx have failed to materialize. In a September 2018 conference at Columbia University's Centre on Capitalism and Society, Calomiris argued that the improvement of the U.S. economy since 2016 "cannot be reasonably contested".

''Fragile By Design''

In 2014, Calomiris coauthored, with Stephen Haber, Fragile By Design: The Political Origins of Banking Panics and Scarce Credit.
In the book, Calomiris and Haber argue that the problems faced by the banking industry arise from the extensive network of government regulations effectively directing how they do business, including that "geographic restrictions on banking made banks too small to weather regional economic shocks". The book received various accolades, including an American Publishers 2015 Award for best book in Business, Finance and Management, and being named to best books of the year lists by the Financial Times and Bloomberg Businessweek.