James Kwak, discussing a recent Bernanke speech defending financial innovation and a Ryan Avent post parsing it, underscored Avent’s observation that Bernanke had trouble coming up with an example of the sort that the financial services had in mind these days (ie, novel products making use of derivatives and other risk slicing, dicing, and distribution […]
Read more...There are two schools of thought on financial innovation. One is the mainstream view, repeated faithfully by a compliant media, that financial innovation is really really important and under no circumstances must be threatened. Then we have the Old Fart view, best represented by two men who by any standards ought to have retired by […]
Read more...This was too cool to leave as a mere Antidote du Jour. Is this what geeks do for fun in New Zealand Wales? If the video plays in a herky-jerky fashion, try viewing it here. Enjoy!
Read more...At the risk of losing all cred with tech enthusiast readers, let me use a suggestion (from Dwight) as a point of departure: I thought I would recommend that you both consider adopting Twitter as part of your blogging presence in 2009. Twitter was organized in 2006 and hit 6 million registered users by the […]
Read more...The oil-rich countries of the Middle East have some advantages in pursuing the “green” energy market. First, they have pools of investment capital they can turn to this purpose. Possibly more important than access to money is that the funding sources may be willing to take a longer term horizon and lower returns than US […]
Read more...Folks, am just back from a quick turnaround trip to Vienna, which was educational and enjoyable (although I did not have the time to see a Van Gogh exhibition at the Albertina which reportedly has a large number of rarely-exhibited top quality works). Am on the verge of doing a face plant, so forgive me […]
Read more...The people I know in IT (even though they are in New York. they are doing bleeding-edge work) all professed that they were not affected by the stomach-churning market gyrations of the last six weeks: clients were moving ahead with projects underway, prospects still were keen to meet, contracts were being signed. However, if you […]
Read more...Steve Waldman has a longish and very useful post “I sing the praises of financial innovation” in which he seeks to identify some good and bad financial innovation (I very much support Martin Meyer’s observation that, for the most part, what is called financail innovation is finding new technology that makes legal what was illegal […]
Read more...I’m talking platform leverage – the sort of leverage you can get in a proxy battle by putting a page like this in front of millions of people, many of whom may in fact own your stock, the week before the meeting, for free: Or, the leverage in media you can get by interjecting a […]
Read more...A workmanlike piece in the Financial Times, “A re-emerging market?” by Gillian Tett, Aline Van Duyn and Paul Davies gives a cautiously optimistic outlook for the revival of the securitization market. However, it’s a bit disappointing that the article skips over a couple of key elements. The first is that the explosive growth of securitization […]
Read more...I find this simultaneously impressive and a tad repellant (I’m never clear when informed citizenry slips into prurient interest as far as other people’s disasters are concerned). Hat tip Jojo. The state of California now has Google Maps that track fires, although the site dutifully warns visitors that the information is approximate. We can’t embed […]
Read more...A comment in the Financial Times, “Our need to sustain the ‘great moderation’,”by Stephen Cecchetti, professor of global finance at Brandeis, set my teeth on edge. I suspect many readers will react the same way. Let’s start: The US housing market has collapsed, placing severe strains on the financial system and, as a direct consequence, […]
Read more...With the financial system on the exam table, it has been more than a bit troubling, that certain questions are neglected in serious academic/policy debates. The discussion of possible remedies focuses on regulatory solutions, everything from requiring mortgage brokers to be licensed to increasing financial institution capital requirements and having much greater harmonisation, as the […]
Read more...Australian professors John Quiggin (economics) and Dan Hunter (law) in a provocatively titled paper “Money Ruins Everything,” which is coming out in the Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, argue that the nature of innovation is changing, and that in turn means that we need to rethink policies and incentives. Specifically, they note that the […]
Read more...As a resident of New York City, I am acutely aware of the perils of neuroticism. This town is full of it. I am as guilty as anyone, although I try to keep it under wraps. If I wasn’t concerned about looking like a control freak in front of clients and friends, I would grill […]
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