Market liquidity is all about smooth and rapid executions of large transactions. But why is it hard to keep big markets liquid? This column looks at liquidity in fixed-income markets, assesses new trends (as well as the EU’s new market instrument rules), and makes recommendations to policymakers to avoid illiquidity – a timely reminder that the social costs of illiquidity should not be underestimated.
Read more...Mega commodities trader Glencore and its big peers are looking wobbly. How worried should you be?
Read more...Yves here. As Roy Poses stresses, the media has underreported on the conflicts of interest at work in this FDA nomination. Be sure to read the very long list of Big Pharma names that have supported Dr. Richard Cardiff’s research and provided grants and speaking fees.
Read more...Did climate change denialists like Exxon coordinate their activities, as Big Tobacco did to foster doubt about smoking’s role in lung cancer? If so, what would it take for RICO prosecutions to occur?
Read more...The ramifications for the diesel industry as its reputation as cleaner fuel comes under scrutiny.
Read more...A couple weeks back, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released 124 pages of emails obtained in a FOIA request, asking for any communications between officials at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and corporate lobbyists. The emails are mostly requests to set up meetings or share information between USTR leadership and representatives from either trade associations (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Telecommunications Industry Association, Coalition of Services Industries, etc) or corporations directly (Cigna, General Electric, Liberty Mutual Insurance, MasterCard, AT&T, etc).
But Steve Stewart, Director of Market Access and Trade for IBM Governmental Programs – in other words, IBM’s in-house lobbying shop – takes this relationship-building a step further. He enlisted USTR to help him get his company’s narrative out.
Read more...The evidence that SEC Chairman Mary Jo White needs to go becomes more overwhelming with every passing day.
Read more...The Department of Justice may face an early test of its long-overdue policy change, that the government will seek to prosecute individuals, including executives, in a simmering Treasury bid-rigging scandal
Read more...It is time for Mary Jo White to go.
Read more...Repo is the system that failed during the financial crisis, leading the Fed to ride to banks’ rescue. Is repo any safer now?
Read more...One of the major fallacies skillfully employed by the lending industry since the foreclosure crisis is that the meddling defense attorneys and pro se litigants were clogging the courts with their dilatory motions and challenges, unnecessarily prolonging the foreclosure process, creating neighborhood blight and costing homeowners billions in property values by preventing “market clearing.” This […]
Read more...So yesterday was a bad day if you were a Japanese bank with stubborn executives.
Read more...From the Wall Street Journal comes news of an intriguing case that would give judges much more leeway in overruling a hapless Justice Department and their light-touch deals with corporations.
Read more...Examining an excellent in-depth investigation by Reuters into global financial stability issues, and the role of tax havens in this giant game of pain and plunder.
Read more...A California judge is threatening Uber’s fiendish “Let’s arbitrage state and federal law and replace a monopoly with a different monopoly” plan:
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