ABSTRACT Capital regulations stemming from the Basel accords created incentives for banks to securitize mortgages, even risky ones; hold them at a correspondingly low Basel risk weight; or shift them off of banks' balance sheets to obtain even greater leverage. Securitization was praised by economists and regulators for dispersing risks to investors across the world, providing greater resilience to the financial system. However, since in reality banks tended to hold onto securitized assets—either on their balance sheets or off of them, (...) in off‐balance‐sheet entities—the accumulated credit risk remained with the banks, especially in the “shadow banking sector.” This explains the heightened vulnerability of the financial system to a sudden collapse. (shrink)

Capital regulations stemming from the Basel accords created incentives for banks to securitize mortgages, even risky ones; hold them at a correspondingly low Basel risk weight; or shift them off of banks' balance sheets to obtain even greater leverage. Securitization was praised by economists and regulators for dispersing risks to investors across the world, providing greater resilience to the financial system. However, since in reality banks tended to hold onto securitized assets—either on their balance sheets or off of them, in (...) off‐balance‐sheet entities—the accumulated credit risk remained with the banks, especially in the “shadow banking sector.” This explains the heightened vulnerability of the financial system to a sudden collapse. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe inherent complexity of modern financial systems, and their basis in human behavior, make it hard to establish unequivocally the “who, what, where, when, and why” of the global financial crisis. However, after almost a decade, we know enough to discard much of what has, in the meantime, become folk wisdom about the causes of the debacle, including Wall Street bonus culture, bankers’ greed, the moral hazard of “too big to fail,” government intervention and deregulation. While each of these factors (...) may have played some role, the crisis can be much more accurately described as one of ignorance than malevolence. The common thread tying the emergence of the bubble to the disastrous consequences of its bursting is the misunderstanding of correlation and causation links in three key domains: economic policy, financial modeling, and the regulatory framework. These misunderstandings helped fuel the housing bubble and introduced fragility into the system, making it vulnerable to the bubble’s subsequent, unavoidable burst. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has underscored the possibility that capital-adequacy regulations may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis by privileging highly rated asset-backed securities, such as mortgage-backed securities. The same regulations gave an even more privileged position to sovereign debt, leading to the question of whether they helped cause the European sovereign-debt crisis. There is little question that the regulations encouraged European banks to invest in European governments' bonds, but it does not appear that this encouragement led to more government borrowing (...) by significantly reducing the yield governments needed to pay on their debt. However, it does appear that capital-adequacy regulations—along with post-2008 liquidity regulations—concentrated sovereign risk in the European banking system, aggravating the sovereign-debt problem by requiring government bailouts that, in turn, required the issuance of more sovereign debt, further jeopardizing the governments' fiscal position and banks' solvency. Exacerbating the situation, in the midst of a panic, the European Banking Authority imposed new capital requirements on banks and effectively forced them to realize mark-to-market losses on sovereign exposures. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has underscored the possibility that capital-adequacy regulations may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis by privileging highly rated asset-backed securities, such as mortgage-backed securities. The same regulations gave an even more privileged position to sovereign debt, leading to the question of whether they helped cause the European sovereign-debt crisis. There is little question that the regulations encouraged European banks to invest in European governments' bonds, but it does not appear that this encouragement led to more government borrowing (...) by significantly reducing the yield governments needed to pay on their debt. However, it does appear that capital-adequacy regulations—along with post-2008 liquidity regulations—concentrated sovereign risk in the European banking system, aggravating the sovereign-debt problem by requiring government bailouts that, in turn, required the issuance of more sovereign debt, further jeopardizing the governments' fiscal position and banks' solvency. Exacerbating the situation, in the midst of a panic, the European Banking Authority imposed new capital requirements on banks and effectively forced them to realize mark-to-market losses on sovereign exposures. (shrink)

I discuss candidates for definitions of determinism in the context of general relativistic spacetimes, and argue that a definition which does not make recourse to any particular region of spacetime should be preferred over alternatives; one such notion is discussed in detail in the light of various physical examples. The emerging picture of determinism is a pluralist one: sometimes there is no unique way of making our intuitive concept of determinism precise. Instead, what is crucial for assessment of determinism of (...) the theory are auxiliary conditions under which it counts as deterministic or indeterministic, and justification for using them in a given situation. (shrink)

I discuss candidates for definitions of determinism in the context of general relativistic spacetimes, and argue that a definition which does not make recourse to any particular region of spacetime should be preferred over alternatives; one such notion is discussed in detail in the light of various physical examples. The emerging picture of determinism is a pluralist one: sometimes there is no unique way of making our intuitive concept of determinism precise. Instead, what is crucial for assessment of determinism of (...) the theory are auxiliary conditions under which it counts as deterministic or indeterministic, and justification for using them in a given situation. (shrink)

I discuss candidates for definitions of determinism in the context of general relativistic spacetimes, and argue that a definition which does not make recourse to any particular region of spacetime should be preferred over alternatives; one such notion is discussed in detail in the light of various physical examples. The emerging picture of determinism is a pluralist one: sometimes there is no unique way of making our intuitive concept of determinism precise. Instead, what is crucial for assessment of determinism of (...) the theory are auxiliary conditions under which it counts as deterministic or indeterministic, and justification for using them in a given situation. (shrink)

Determinism fails easily if spacetimes with points removed from the spacetime manifold are taken to be physically reasonable representations of a way the world could be according to classical general relativity. I discuss a recently proposed condition for determining which spacetimes have holes—epistemic hole freeness—and show that epistemic hole freeness gives the correct verdict in some non-globally hyperbolic spacetimes with a closed subset removed, certain spacetimes with genuinely indeterministic features count as having an epistemic hole, which implies that the requirement (...) of epistemic hole freeness enforces a form of determinism, and there is a large class of spacetimes that intuitively are radically indeterministic and unphysical due to containing a hole, but are free from epistemic holes. I show that a few natural ways of remedying are not satisfactory. (shrink)

The book is comprised of three components. The first component analyses the creative contribution to the theory of imperatives and norms provided by 20th-century Polish researchers. The second component summarizes their reflections and considerations. The third component is an anthology of the classic writings of Polish authors of the time; it constitutes an illustration of the first part and indicates that their research covered practically the whole scope of this theory. Author Jacek Jadacki (born 1946) is professor at Warsaw University. (...) His scholarly production includes approximately hundred works spanning almost every domain in philosophy: from logic, through ontology, epistemology, aesthetics and ethics, to the history of these disciplines. Among his more than twenty books are Possible Ontologies (with Zdzislaw Augustynek; 1993), From the Viewpoint of the Lvov-Warsaw School (2003), and Polish Analytical Philosophy (2009). His pupils include such well-known figures of modern Polish thought as Anna Brozek, Mariusz Grygianiec, Joanna Odrowaz-Sypniewska, and Mieszko Talasiewicz. (shrink)

We discuss three philosophically interesting epistemic peculiarities of black hole astrophysics: (1) issues concerning whether and in what sense black holes do exist; (2) how to best approach multiplicity of available definitions of black holes; (3) short (i.e., accessible within an individual human lifespan) dynamical timescales present in many of the recent, as well as prospective, observations involving black holes. In each case we argue that the prospects for our epistemic situation are optimistic.

This white paper outlines the plans of the History Philosophy Culture Working Group of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.

This is an English translation of Juliusz Domański’s “Fausta Socyna Explicatio primae partis primi capitis Euangelii Ioannis i egzegeza erazmiańska,” in his "Erasmiana minora. Studia i szkice o pisarstwie filozoficznym i religijnym Erazma z Rotterdamu" (Warsaw: Instytut Tomistyczny, Instytut Filologii Klasycznej UW, 2017), 337–63. Translated with the Author’s permission. The paper compares the method of Biblical interpretation used by Erasmus of Rotterdam with the method of Socinus, raising the question of the extent to which the method outlined by Socinus (...) in his Explicatio primae partis primi capitis Euangelii Joannis can be seen as continuous and and consonant with the method of Erasmus, and to what extent it should be seen as its rejection or modification. In addition, the essay outlines similarities and differences, with respect to both method and content, between Erasmus' Adnotationes and Socinus’ Explicatio. (shrink)