Reader Steve sent this tidbit from the Australian. Sovereign wealth funds not all that long ago were generally seen as sophisticated to at least competent. But so were university endowments, and in many cases, “sophisticated” turned out to be tantamount to “has a higher appetite for risk than most” which in a bull market can […]
Read more...Bloomberg reports that former Harvard Fund Management CEO, now Pimco CEO Mohammed El-Erian does not buy the idea that US is returning to normal any time soon. El-Erian in particular took issue with some of Larry Summers’ sunnier prognostications: El-Erian likened Summers’s view of the economy to a three- stage rocket attempting to escape Earth’s […]
Read more...When Jim Rogers taught classes at Columbia, he liked to tell students that the US had a proud history of implementing capital controls, and warned them against going on the merry assumption that it would ever and always be easy to make cross-border investments. For instance, taxes on foreign securities transactins are a soft form […]
Read more...It isn’t uncommon for a theme or a trend to dominate how investors and analysts view a particular sector. For instance, when barriers to interstate banking were lowered, then dropped, bank consolidation was all anyone seemed able to think about, even though there were other important developments in the industry. During that era, at McKinsey, […]
Read more...We’ve note during the well-warranted furor over the dreadful performance of rating agencies in assigning credit grades to structured credits, a business that was handsomely profitable to them, that it was difficult to limit their impact. Ratings are enshrined in all sorts of regulations, from the Fed’s haircuts on its discount window to its alphabet […]
Read more...Conspiracy theorists will have to wait until the article described in Inside Science is published to determine whether it delivers on its claims. It purports to analyze stock holding across 48 countries and alleges they are held in very few hands. But the work was done by physicists, which means they may not have understood […]
Read more...This was too good to pass up. The key section of an offering at The Reformed Broker (hat tip reader Gonzalo): The Five Stages of Panic Buying! 1. Denial (Late March/ Early April) “Ha, another Bear Market rally…wait til the foreclosure/ new home sales/ confidence data comes in! Right back to 6500, maybe lower…bagholders” “Dude, […]
Read more...Reader John O passed along this Bloomberg chart du jour (click to enlarge) which effectively argues that the consumer has gone down so far she has nowhere to go but up: The related article argues: ….these so-called discretionary goods and services accounted for a smaller percentage of consumer outlays last quarter than at any other […]
Read more...Ooh, so there is gambling in Casablanca! I’m shocked, shocked! An excellent bit of sleuthing comes at the Wall Street Journal, on how Goldman has for the last two years has had “trading huddles” that lead to ideas being presented to clients before analysts changed their grades on a stock. Proprietary traders also attend the […]
Read more...Ratings agency Standard & Poors has managed a stunt which to my knowledge has no precedent in the history of the dark art of ratings. It downgraded some not all that highly structured commercial mortgage bonds last week to an eyepopping degree, from AAA to BBB-, just this side of being junk. Then they restored […]
Read more...The very fact an op-ed piece (more accurately, comment, as they call them in the Financial Times) by Paul Boyle against airbrushed accounting needed to be written at all is troubling. A move is afoot that appears further advanced than I realized is to fool with financial firm statements so as to reduce the procyclical […]
Read more...Please read my latest comment: Why is Small Beautiful? And please post comments here on NC. Kind regards, Leo Kolivakis
Read more...Until I figure out a way to quickly copy and paste hyperlinks from Blogger to WordPress, I invite you to go to my blog and read my latest comment: Street Fighters and their Pension Clients You can leave your comments here on NC. Kind regards, Leo Kolivakis
Read more...As readers may recall, we had been skeptical (and critical) of the Public Private Investment Partnership from the outset. It was the third effort at a program that had failed twice under Hank Paulson, namely, to have banks get dud assets off their balance sheets by selling them to a sucker. That’s why this program […]
Read more...Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP, has been a vocal advocate for the need for a financial product safety commission. The notion, which seemed quixotic a few weeks ago, is getting consideration by the Obama Administration. Given how industry friendly Team Obama’s financial services industry measures have been, it runs […]
Read more...