By Tim Iacono, founder of the investment website Iacono Research and creator of the blog The Mess that Greenspan Made Boy, for a group of policymakers at the nation’s central bank who, in a best case scenario, are going to just sit on their hands for at least the rest of the year, there sure […]
Read more...The short answer to the question in the headline is “When there are no rules.” A headline in a current Bloomberg story illustrates the problem: “Goldman Sachs, Greece Didn’t Disclose Swap, Investors ‘Fooled’.” “Fooled” is an unusual choice of words, particularly when applied to to presumed grown-ups like institutional investors and international overseers. Bloomberg seems […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. It is award season and I would like to nominate the 13-author “Preventing Deflation: Lessons from Japan’s Experience of […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Surprise, surprise: Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece, Spain, Portugal, and undermined the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts. This has now […]
Read more...Folks, the time has come when I must start shamelessly promoting my book, Econned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism, which is being released March 2, 2010. I thought the extract below would give readers an idea of what the book is about, with one caveat. Econned goes into some detail about […]
Read more...It turns out some businesses are thriving in the downturn, with lobbyists a prime example. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, lobbyist revenues increased 5% in 2009 versus 2008. As The Hill noted (hat tip DoctoRx): Lobbyists have said business for them managed to remain upbeat throughout 2009 despite the poor economy because of […]
Read more...The latest “Goldman [appears to be] behaving badly” incident reflects either uncommon boneheadedness (the only question is whether by an employee or the firm itself) or a very clever ruse to further discredit the reputation-challenged bank. Well-known British film director/producer/screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, for instance) and actor Bill Nightly started a […]
Read more...Can someone shut these banking industry narcissists up? The one and only time I met Steve Schwarzman was in 1986, when he and Pete Peterson had just started the Blackstone Group. I was a manager (meaning a mid level working oar) at McKinsey. We had teed up a deal and were assisting our foreign client […]
Read more...The top story at the Financial Times at this hour, “‘Volcker rule’ gives Goldman stark choice,” is a accurate report of Paul Volcker’s latest remarks, but gives a wildly misleading impression of the “choice” facing Goldman: Goldman Sachs and other banks should give up their bank status if they want to avoid the ban on […]
Read more...The February report from the Congressional Oversight Panel makes for sobering reading. It forecasts $200 to $300 billion in losses coming from commercial real estate loans, and notes these were not considered in the famed stress tests, since that process looked only through 2010, when the losses from CRE will peak later. Some snippets (hat […]
Read more...Victor Shih has done some serious analytical work to try to get a handle on the magnitude of China’s local debt. His post, which included extracts from his op-ed in the Asian Wall Street Journal, shows that some of the narratives about China are woefully incomplete. The whole post is very much worth reading, but […]
Read more...I’m late to this, as everyone with an operating brain cell, starting with Simon Johnson to Paul Krugman is duly horrified by the remarks that Obama made in a Bloomberg interview, published this AM: President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie […]
Read more...By Tim Iacono, who publishes a weekly investment newsletter on natural resources and the blog The Mess That Greenspan Made It seems that, once again, former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan has grown tired of listening to his critics who have increasingly laid blame at his feet for the inflation of (and, more importantly, the subsequent […]
Read more...Upon occasion, I’ve asked readers to contact their Senators or Representatives about pending legislation. Many of you have taken action, even though that takes a bit of effort (actually composing and making the call or e-mail). Some readers have also commented, cynically, “Why bother, Congress will do what it corporate constituents want to happen.” Today’s […]
Read more...Readers may know that one point of contention in the worries about Greece’s deficits is that it had hidden the fact that it violated Maastricht rule that fine eurozone countries whose fiscal deficits exceed 3% of GDP. How was this subterfuge achieved? While the Greek government engaged in some bogus accounting on its own, it […]
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