Paul Allen McCulley (born March 13, 1957)[1] is an American economist and former managing director at PIMCO. He coined the terms "Minsky moment" and "shadow banking system", which became famous during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. He is currently a senior fellow at Cornell Law School and an adjunct professor at Georgetown McDonough School of Business.

Paul McCulley
Born (1957-03-13) March 13, 1957 (age 67)
NationalityAmerican
Academic career
FieldFinancial economics
InstitutionPIMCO
School or
tradition
Post-Keynesian economics
Alma materColumbia Business School (M.B.A.)
Grinnell College (B.A.)
InfluencesJohn Maynard Keynes
Hyman Minsky
William H. Gross

He was also a generalist portfolio manager and member of the investment committee in the Pimco Newport Beach office. In addition, he headed PIMCO's short-term bond desk, led PIMCO’s cyclical economic forums and was author of the monthly research publication, Global Central Bank Focus. Prior to joining PIMCO in 1999, he was chief economist for the Americas at UBS Warburg. During 1996–98, he was named to six seats on the Institutional Investor All-America fixed-income research team. He has 25 years of investment experience and holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. He received his undergraduate degree from Grinnell College.[citation needed]

He retired from PIMCO in December 2010 and joined the Global Interdependence Center thinktank.[2][3]

McCulley adheres to Keynesian economics, and was particularly influenced by Hyman Minsky.[4]

He is a regular guest of CNBC and Bloomberg Television providing investment commentary.

Quotes

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  • "We believe that Mr. Greenspan should quit giving away puts on the equity market."[5]
  • "Thus, we are willing to say stocks are irrationally exuberant, notably growth stocks, and, in particular, technology stocks."[6]
  • "There is room for the Fed to create a bubble in housing prices, if necessary, to sustain American hedonism. And I think the Fed has the will to do so, even though political correctness would demand that Mr. Greenspan deny any such thing."[7]
  • "Debt deflation is a beast of burden that capitalism cannot bear alone."[8]
  • "Macroeconomic life after bubbles is not a self-correcting process of renewal, but a self-feeding process of debt deflation — to wit, it’s a Minsky Moment."[9]
  • "Loosely defined, a Shadow Bank is a levered-up financial intermediary whose liabilities are broadly perceived as of similar money-goodness and liquidity as conventional bank deposits. These liabilities could be shares of money market mutual funds; or the commercial paper of Finance Companies, Conduits and Structured Investment Vehicles; or the repo borrowings of stand-alone Investment Banks and Hedge Funds; or the senior tranches of Collateralized Debt Obligations; or a host of other similar funding instruments."[10]

Footnotes

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  1. ^ U.S. Public Records Index Vol 1 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2010.
  2. ^ PIMCO bio.
  3. ^ Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam, "Pimco’s McCulley to Leave Investing for Think Tank," Pimco’s McCulley to Leave Investing for Think Tank, Bloomberg, December 3, 2010.
  4. ^ Laing, Jonathan R. (June 22, 2009). "Cataclysm Averted, Expectations Diminished". Barron's.
  5. ^ Paul A. McCulley (February 2000). "Me and Morgan le Fay". PIMCO.
  6. ^ Paul A. McCulley (March 2000). "Fly Fishing In A Deli". PIMCO.
  7. ^ Krugman, Paul (May 27, 2005). "Running Out of Bubbles". The New York Times.
  8. ^ Paul A. McCulley (January 2001). "Capitalism's Beast of Burden". PIMCO.
  9. ^ Paul A. McCulley (March 2001). "Look, Honey, I Caught A Liverwurst!". PIMCO.
  10. ^ Paul A. McCulley (November 2008). "The Paradox of Deleveraging Will Be Broken" Archived 2011-01-02 at the Wayback Machine. PIMCO.