While Michael Lewis’ book Flash Boys is sensationalistic and simplistic, it may goad regulators into action, particular since many knowledgeable observers have been making similar arguments for years. But let’s hope they focus on the real issues.
Read more...Who in their right mind would want to invest in a search fund?
Read more...Why the SEC’s latest trial balloon about what it might do about high frequency trading is an embarrassment.
Read more...Why the brouhaha about HFT distracts attention from much bigger Wall Street abuses.
Read more...How absurd are the goals of the pension funds that invest in private equity? Plenty absurd, it turns out.
Read more...In Flash Boys, Michael Lewis has again launched a book that hews to his established formula: colorful outsiders take on a big bad entrenched establishment and win. Even though Lewis seems assured of having yet another best-seller, this book is getting more criticism than his works usually do. Put it this way: when commentators as diverse as Felix Salmon, Matt Levine, and Pam Martens feel compelled to object, it looks like Lewis has overfitted this tale to his blockbuster formula.
Read more...Why you should be skeptical when economists and policy-makers talk about the value of reducing uncertainty which is code for invoking the confidence fairy.
Read more...Our efforts to learn more about the private equity industry are revealing how determined public pension funds are to hiding as much as they can, even when they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.
Read more...CalPERS retiree Tony Butka wrote a letter to CalPERS’ board describing why he is disturbed over how CalPERS is stonewalling my data request.
Read more...Peculiarly, despite the importance of tax havens, a pathbreaking paper published in 2013 by Gabriel Zucman of the Paris School of Economics, The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. Net Debtors or Net Creditors? (hat tip Dikaios Logos) has received perilous little attention. Perhaps that’s because, among other things, it undercuts the Bernanke-flattering claim that “global imbalances” were a major driver of the financial crisis.
Read more...Bubbles have become a major focus of discussion in today’s financial markets. But very few people actually define what they mean when describing this financial phenomenon.
Read more...One of the amusing things right now is that there isn’t much debate in equity-land as to whether to be long or not.
Read more...I doubt that I’m unusual in being a finance type who has heard about 401 (k) abuses and bad practices for a very long time. So it’s gratifying to see the Financial Times that something is finally being done to try to curb this behavior. But that is hardly the full extent of what is rotten in retirement fund land.
Read more...Last week, Crain’s Business Daily and Fortune reported that a whistleblower has provided the SEC with evidence of massive, ongoing violations of securities laws, specifically, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, by several unnamed private equity firms.
Read more...Coffee, a highly respected securities law professor as well as a frequent critic of regulators., he takes a hard look at the SEC’s claims that its performance has improved and finds them wanting.
Read more...