The Financial Times, as is often the case, carried a story on hedge fund risks that was not covered in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Titled “Regulators concerned at hedge fund collateral,” it discusses how an international group of financial regulators is working with some of the biggest Wall Street firms […]
Read more...We’ve taken note of excessive optimism and leverage (see, as examples, “The Rising Tide of Liquidity” and “More Signs of a Toppy Market“). Now the European Central Bank is also sounding cautionary notes. Ever since Alan Greenspan’s famous “irrational exuberance” observation produced a 140 point (then 2%) fall in the Dow, central bankers have been […]
Read more...Free market fundamentalists, most of which have never been within hailing distance of a real market (save perhaps a ceremonial visit to the New York Stock Exchange) view market prices as virtuous and seem woefully ignorant of the games speculators and market-makers play (see our post, “Are Speculators Driving Energy Prices?“) An article in the […]
Read more...There is a widespread belief in the US that editorializing in the Wall Street Journal is limited to the editorial page. We’ve seen in the past that this just ain’t so (see posts of January 12 and January 16). And today we have a doozy. We have a real news event, reported as the lead […]
Read more...We’ve commented in a couple of recent posts (January 14 and January 23) on how credit card companies’ success in price gouging, ahem, extracting revenue from their customers had gone so far as to run the risk of regulatory pushback. We are seeing some initial shots across the industry’s bow. Today, MarketWatch published this story […]
Read more...In a January 17 speech, Federal Reserve governor Frederic Mishkin reiterated the Fed’s view, that its job does not extend to intervening in possible bubbles. By contrast, Ian MacFarlane, who recently retired as head of Australia’s Reserve Bank, and successfully intervened in that country’s housing bubble, feels that the current policy framework does not recognize […]
Read more...What’s amazing isn’t that Gerson Lehrman is under scrutiny, but that it has taken so long to happen. From today’s Wall Street Journal: In recent weeks, the New York Attorney General’s office has begun examining whether employees of companies including Best Buy Co. may have inappropriately discussed material nonpublic information in consulting arrangements like these […]
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