By Mark Roe CAMBRIDGE: To reduce the chance that a financial meltdown like that of 2007-2008 will recur, regulators are now seeking to buttress institutions for the longer-run — at least when they can turn their attention from immediate crises like those of Greece’s debt, America’s ceiling on governmental borrowing, and the potential eurozone contagion from …

By Mark Roe CAMBRIDGE: The West is ensnared in a debt crisis. The United States, as everyone knows, came perilously close to defaulting on August 2, and Standard & Poor’s downgraded US debt from AAA on August 5. In Europe, the outgoing head of the European Central Bank recommends more centralized fiscal authority in Europe in …

By Mark Roe CAMBRIDGE: Financial commentators have likened Japan’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe to derivatives’ role in the 2008 financial meltdown. The resemblance is clear enough: each activity yields big benefits and carries a tiny but explosive risk. But the similarity between the two types of crisis ends where preventing their recurrence begins. For the …

By Mark Roe CAMBRIDGE: For Egypt, the question of the day is whether the country will build an open, democratic political system or relapse into some form — new or old — of autocracy. But an equally important question — above all for Egyptians, but also for other developing countries (and for development experts) — is …