Many of my investor buddies e-mail each other frequently during the day (yes, e-mail, not IM or tweet) and I am on the periphery of some of their discussions. One of them took note of the fact that the libertarians in this crowd had gone silent on the question of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, […]
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...The first part of this two part series proved to be very popular among blog readers, given the level of comments, so I thought I’d feature the second part, which was posted by Real News Networks on Monday. Enjoy!
Read more...Tom Ferguson, professor of political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is in fine form here. Enjoy!
Read more...By John Ryskamp, an attorney and author of The Eminent Domain Revolt One must work to get behind the import of an enabling act, because such an act is invariably, and intentionally, short and vague. It intends to grant much, and to tell little. This is certainly true of the three acts compared here: the […]
Read more...The defenders of the economic orthodoxy have gotten much more shrill of late. In a perverse way, this is probably a positive sign: they might be feeling a tad worried that they are starting to lose their hold over consensus reality. But given how quick various media outlets are to pick up and amplify their […]
Read more...I’m not certain what to make of an article at the New York Times this evening, “Senate Liberals Move to Toughen Bill Regulating Wall Street.” Liberals? That is a word that has almost disappeared from polite conversation. “Liberal” is a term used by those of the conservative persuasion to discredit anyone to the left of […]
Read more...By Yves Smith and Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive The Fed and its friends and enablers in power, most recently Rahm Emanuel, are fighting tooth and nail to beat back the Audit the Fed amendments to pending financial reform legislation. That’s unfortunate and misguided. Even a cursory inspection of the Fed’s disclosures […]
Read more...But opacity, leverage, and moral hazard are not accidental byproducts of otherwise salutary innovations; they are the direct intent of the innovations. No one at the major capital markets firms was celebrated for creating markets to connect borrowers and savers transparently and with low risk. After all, efficient markets produce minimal profits. They were instead […]
Read more...Reader Hubert sent along this post, with permission, and the following note: My friend Erwin has published a book out of ten years of columns for the German paper “Die Welt”. He put an Intro in front of it where he lays out why Germany will go down the tubes as everybody else. It is […]
Read more...I’ve recounted my own sorry experience with Chase, in which branch staff repeatedly misrepresented its business checking product. I’ve closed that account, but Chase nevertheless managed to extract some fees on a supposedly “fee free” account. Another example of Chase’s aggressive and less than upstanding conduct comes from a reader via e-mail: I have been […]
Read more...One of the things that has been striking as revelation of bad behavior in the collateralized debt market has gotten more press is that a number of commentators who had taken the “nothing to see here, move on” stance have gotten religion. Even more dramatic has been the change in perception of Goldman. The firm […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives Jennifer Burns (2010) “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right” Oxford University Press One of the strange by-products of the publishing boom around the global financial crisis is the revival […]
Read more...It’s ironic how the “Goldman was so smart to have shorted subprime” meme is now being turned on its head in the MSM as Goldman’s conduct in the run-up to the crisis is begin re-examined in a new light. The underlying premise of the Goldman defenders is that it is fine for the firm to […]
Read more...A 15 year veteran of Wall Street who put us on to Magnetar disappeared unexpectedly, much to our concern. He resurfaced recently and gave us a bulletin: Sorry I’ve been out of touch so long. It’s just that I’ve become quite disappointed/disaffected by the whole thing. We have failed and “they” have won. All the […]
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