Paul Allen McCulley (born March 13, 1957) is an American economist and former managing director at

PIMCO PIMCO (Pacific Investment Management Company, LLC) is an American investment management firm focusing on active fixed income management worldwide. PIMCO manages investments in many asset classes such as fixed income, equities, commodities, asset ...

. He coined the terms "

Minsky moment A Minsky moment is a sudden, major collapse of asset values which marks the end of the growth phase of a cycle in credit markets or business activity. Description According to the hypothesis, the rapid instability occurs because long periods ...

" and "

shadow banking system The shadow banking system is a term for the collection of non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) that provide services similar to traditional commercial banks but outside normal banking regulations. Examples of NBFIs include hedge funds, ins ...

", which became famous during the

Financial crisis of 2007–2009 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of finan ...

. He is currently a senior fellow at

Cornell Law School Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. One of the five Ivy League law schools, it offers four law degree programs, JD, LLM, MSLS and JSD, along with several dual-deg ...

and an adjunct professor at Georgetown

McDonough School of Business The Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business, commonly shorted to the McDonough School of Business and abbreviated as the MSB, is the business school of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1957, it grants both undergraduate and ...

. 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. A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as account ...

from

Columbia Business School Columbia Business School (CBS) is the business school of Columbia University, a Private university, private research university in New York City. Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of six Ivy League business schools and is one ...

. He received his undergraduate degree from

Grinnell College Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1846 when a group of New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College. Grinnell has the fifth highest endowment-to-st ...

. He retired from PIMCO in December 2010 and joined the

Global Interdependence Center The Global Interdependence Center (GIC) is a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization that holds conferences and programming to increase global dialogue and promote free trade, in order to improve cooperation and understanding among nation states, ...

thinktank. McCulley adheres to

Keynesian economics Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output an ...

, and was particularly influenced by

Hyman Minsky Hyman Philip Minsky (September 23, 1919 – October 24, 1996) was an American economist, a professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis, and a distinguished scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His research att ...

. He is a regular guest of

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...

and

Bloomberg Television Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is head ...

providing investment commentary.

Quotes

*"We believe that Mr. Greenspan should quit giving away puts on the equity market." *"Thus, we are willing to say stocks are irrationally exuberant, notably growth stocks, and, in particular, technology stocks." *"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." *"Debt deflation is a beast of burden that capitalism cannot bear alone." *"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." *"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 A structured investment vehicle (SIV) is a non-bank financial institution established to earn a credit spread between the longer-term assets held in its portfolio and the shorter-term liabilities it issues. They are simple credit spread lenders, ...

; or the repo borrowings of stand-alone

Investment Banks Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with ...

and

Hedge Funds A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as shor ...

; or the senior tranches of

Collateralized Debt Obligations A collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is a type of structured asset-backed security (ABS). Originally developed as instruments for the corporate debt markets, after 2002 CDOs became vehicles for refinancing mortgage-backed securities (MBS).Lepke ...

; or a host of other similar funding instruments."Paul A. McCulley (November 2008)
"The Paradox of Deleveraging Will Be Broken"
. PIMCO.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:McCulley, Paul 1957 births Grinnell College alumni Columbia Business School alumni New Keynesian economists Living people