It’s hard to tell whether the story at the Guardian, based on a memo apparently leaked by Germany’s finance ministry, is overstating the situation in contending that changes Germany will demand for the euro regime could require a Lisbon treaty negotiation. From the article: Following Greece’s debt emergency and with the euro in the throes […]
Read more...Bloomberg has a detailed story up on its website about a pending Department of Justice suit that charges that municipalities were not simply played for fools by big financial firms and sold down the river by their supposed advisers. Sadly, that is all too common. What is noteworthy here is that the advisers engaged in […]
Read more...Yves here. We’ve tended to focus on unsavory practices on the institutional end of the financial services market because they played a major role in the financial crisis, yet have not gotten the media coverage they merit. But some questionable conduct on the retail end only gets intermittent attention, even though it is also a […]
Read more...The Institute on Assets and Social Policy published a report on Monday based on economic data from the same 2000 families from 1984 to 2007 (hat tip Michael Powell). Its sobering results likely understates the case, since it does not include the post financial crisis period. The study found that the median wealth gap between […]
Read more...At first blush, Greece’s prime minister George Papandreou statement that he is looking into litigation against banks that worsened the country’s financial woes sounds like pandering to his electorate. From Bloomberg: Papandreou said the decision on whether to go after U.S. banks will be made after a Greek parliamentary investigation into the cause of the […]
Read more...Many of my investor buddies e-mail each other frequently during the day (yes, e-mail, not IM or tweet) and I am on the periphery of some of their discussions. One of them took note of the fact that the libertarians in this crowd had gone silent on the question of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, […]
Read more...In March, the EU announced plans to restrict the operations of private equity funds. This is far from surprising, since US and UK firms have exhibited a nasty propensity to lever up firms, pull out a lot in the way of special dividends, and too often overdo the cash extraction and leave a bankrupt hulk […]
Read more...A lot of people are still feeling very bruised by last Friday’s market actions (Felix Salmon went as far as ordering all retail investors to get out of the pool). A message from a reader with ample trading desk experience: BTW, hope you didn’t have any sell-stops yesterday, WTF was that?!?!? I covered my SPY […]
Read more...Tom Ferguson, professor of political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is in fine form here. Enjoy!
Read more...The defenders of the economic orthodoxy have gotten much more shrill of late. In a perverse way, this is probably a positive sign: they might be feeling a tad worried that they are starting to lose their hold over consensus reality. But given how quick various media outlets are to pick up and amplify their […]
Read more...This is a full length show with three other guests, with the topic actually being “who was to blame for the crisis, Washington or Wall Street?” I must confess, I didn’t use the obvious line: for the financial service industry’s backers to complain that lack of regulation caused the crisis is like someone who has […]
Read more...I’m not certain what to make of an article at the New York Times this evening, “Senate Liberals Move to Toughen Bill Regulating Wall Street.” Liberals? That is a word that has almost disappeared from polite conversation. “Liberal” is a term used by those of the conservative persuasion to discredit anyone to the left of […]
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. The recent financial crisis has shown that the legal and regulatory steps that have been taken to provide information […]
Read more...Enjoy! View the segment here.
Read more...One of the things that has been striking as revelation of bad behavior in the collateralized debt market has gotten more press is that a number of commentators who had taken the “nothing to see here, move on” stance have gotten religion. Even more dramatic has been the change in perception of Goldman. The firm […]
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