An article by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times, “Trading volumes retreat with investor trust,” contends that the notably low trading activity of late is a sign of deeper changes in financial markets: The most pernicious issue hanging over the system right now is a loss of confidence – not merely in the idea that the […]
Read more...This post first appeared on July 11, 2007 Readers of this blog know that I have been concerned about the state of the credit markets for some time. We’ve had (until the last month or so), rampant liquidity feeding asset bubbles in virtually every asset class except the dollar and the yen, tight risk spreads […]
Read more...Although it was unclear how the high concept behind the Volcker rule would translate into legislation, we had doubts from the get-go. The idea is sound: firms that are ultimately playing with government money should be involved only in socially valuable transaction intermediation and fundraising (and all major dealers around the world are backstopped, pretenses […]
Read more...In an interesting bit of reporting disparity, news of planned EU legislation on bank pay is a top story on the front page of the Financial Times, yet is buried in the Wall Street Journal and didn’t make the cut at the New York Times. Admittedly, that is no doubt in part due to that […]
Read more...I want the word “reform” back. Between health care “reform” and financial services “reform,” Obama, his operatives, and media cheerleaders are trying to depict both initiatives as being far more salutary and far-reaching than they are. This abuse of language is yet another case of the Obama Adminsitration using branding to cover up substantive shortcomings. […]
Read more...Gulf resident and fisherman’s wife Kindra Arnesen took advantage of the offer extended to her to visit cleanup sites and staff meetings: At any rate, I was invited the following week to go behind “enemy lines.” They gave me, of all people, security clearance to go into the base of operations meetings in Venice, Louisiana […]
Read more...The normally bank-friendly Fed fired an unexpected shot across the industry’s bow today, taking issue with its failure to take sufficiently tough measures to curb undue risk-taking. Per the Washington Post: The Federal Reserve has completed an initial review of compensation policies at 28 large banks it oversees and has been giving them confidential feedback […]
Read more...Public officials of all sorts have tried ratcheting up their halting efforts to Do Something about Wall Street chicanery to appease an unhappy public. One manifestation has been increased frequency of a long-established enforcement pattern, of picking off select, high profile targets while leaving many corrupt practices in place. The object lesson du jour is […]
Read more...Today provided yet another example of how the best government money can buy works. The Senate majority leader Harry Reid suffered an embarrassing defeat when his effort to pass a motion for cloture, which would have stopped debate on the financial reform bill, failed due to two Democrat and one Republican defection among the votes […]
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...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...By Richard Smith, a London-based capital markets IT specialist Here’s someone with his head screwed on, back in April 2007, who proves singlehandedly that “hoocoodanode” was no defense for failing to anticipate the implosion of the shadow banking system (more on this prescient analyst in due course): For several years now, we have marvelled at […]
Read more...The EU seems unintimidated by various threats the hedge fund and private equity fund industry have tried to make to forestall efforts to restrict the activities of those firms. The EU proposed both limiting the ability of EU nationals to invest in non-EU funds, and the ability of non-EU players to operate within the EU. […]
Read more...It is long overdue, but big institutional investors are finally rebelling against the outsized fees charged by large private equity firms. Since the moneybags are an understated lot, their protest, so far, looks rather tame. But by the standards of this clubby world, this is still a serious move. Originally, when funds were smaller, the […]
Read more...A war of words has broken out between the Treasury Department and the EU over proposed EU financial services regulations. The first salvo in this dispute occurred earlier this week, when, as reported in the Guardian, American banks were excluded from the sovereign bond market, which means new issues (they obviously cannot be prohibited from […]
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