How Well Capitalized Are Well-Capitalized Banks? T he wave of bank and savings and loan failures in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the resulting losses to deposit insurance funds, served to highlight the need for banks to hold sufficient capital to survive difficult times. In addition, many argued that deposit insurance made it imperative that banks be better capitalized, since deposit insuranc...

Each "Communication Corner" essay is self-contained; however, they build on each other. For best results, before reading this and doing the exercise, go to first "How an Ugly Duckling Became a Swan," then read succeeding essay. Books good writing are virtually ubiquitous. They number in hundreds if not thousands. Occasionally one comes along that seems stand head shoulders above all rest. But q...

George Boolos has described an interpretation of a fragment of ZFC in a consistent second-order theory whose only axiom is a modification of Frege’s inconsistent Axiom V. We build on Boolos’s interpretation and study the models of a variety of such theories obtained by amending Axiom V in the spirit of the principle of limitation of size. After providing a complete structural description of all...