The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (previously known as the Basle Committee or the Bâle Committee, which always made me think it had something to do with Ba’al) has been meeting this week and plotting to transform the world of banking regulation. The two big changes that the UN Security Council of banking regulators has [...]
I’m sure somebody will eventually be able to convince me that this is a bad idea, but my initial reaction to UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling’s temporary 50% bank bonus tax is why the heck not? No, it won’t raise a huge amount of money (an estimated £550 million, which is about $900 [...]
Fortune’s Colin Barr has an interesting story (it’s almost a week old but I just discovered it via Jim Kim) about why Wells Fargo still hasn’t paid back the $25 billion it borrowed (under duress) from us taxpayers last year, even as Bank of America has and Citigroup hopes to. His main explanation is that, [...]
Here’s a pretty depressing picture, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: This means that, as of November, 19.4% of American men in their prime working years didn’t have jobs. By this measure, the current job situation (for men, at least) is much, much worse than in any downturn since the BLS started measuring this [...]
I haven’t done this in a few months:
It’s been too long since I posted a music video. No Belgians this time, just some Minneapolis boys singing a Minneapolis song:
The unemployment rate is down to 10%. Payroll employment, a more reliable month-to-month indicator, was “essentially unchanged.” That’s Bureau of Labor Statistics lingo for 11,000 fewer jobs than the month before. So the number is still negative, but after 21 straight months of 100,000+ job losses, it’s pretty encouraging news. Now for the usual caveats. [...]
Back in February, my employer, Time Warner, announced the completion of its spinoff of Time Warner Cable, the country’s second-biggest cable system operator. Said Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes at the time: We’re confident that this separation will benefit Time Warner and Time Warner Cable stockholders. Both companies will be better positioned to compete, with [...]
For the fifth week in a row, the number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits has dropped, according to the Labor Department. The number of initial claims came in at 457,000 for the week ending Nov. 28. That’s the lowest level since September 2008. (The data are seasonally adjusted, which tries to account for [...]
Sorry for the lack of posting. Been on the move, and been sleepy. I’m currently sitting in a hotel room in downtown LA, getting ready for a Drucker Business Forum chat with Kai Ryssdal and Paul Zak about rational/irrational markets and then a radio interview on KPCC’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle. And while we’re on [...]
