David Sokol, a former Berkshire Executive, resigned on Wednesday. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters) Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway trading scandal could have been a twofer. It appears Lubrizol wasn’t the first time David Sokol, who was until his resignation yesterday a top executive at Berkshire and a leading contender to succeed Buffett, tried to profit from a Berkshire [...]
Warren Buffett could be the latest Wall Street titan to have his reputation trashed. On Wednesday, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that David Sokol, one of the insurance company’s top executives, and until yesterday a possible Buffett successor, purchased $10 million in shares for his personal account of chemicals company Lubrizol just weeks before the company [...]
We got an early indication today of how the giant earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northeastern Japan on March 11 damaged the Japanese economy. And it ain’t pretty. The Markit/JMMA purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for March (which you can find here) shows that some serious hurt was put on Japan’s industrial sector. The PMI, an [...]
(Getty Images) At least for my generation, born in the mid-1970s, that decade still stands as the worst of times. Perhaps because we were only babies when it was happening. And didn’t experience it for ourselves, truly. But souring prices and gas lines and growing crime as told to us by our parents and through [...]
Crossposted from TIME’s Ecocentric blog: Last March, President Barack Obama gave a speech on energy security at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. In it, Obama offered what might be called a “grand compromise” on energy—in exchange for expanded offshore drilling, including in previously untouched areas like north Alaska and the Atlantic, he called for [...]
Tim Geithner should have gotten banks to lend. (Larry Downing/REUTERS) Neil Barofsky, the soon-to-be-former Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program – the government’s $700 billion fund to bailout the banks – was never well liked at the Treasury Department, even though that is technically where he worked. Timothy Geithner reportedly repeatedly tried [...]
Talk about being on the hot seat. The economic fate of Europe and the future course of the euro crisis could very well rest in the hands of Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Why is that? Financial markets are already assuming that Portugal will be the third member of the infamous PIIGS to [...]
(Getty Images) The financial crisis seems to be far from over for the nation’s smaller banks. Two and a half years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the number of banks that are still facing serious financial problems continues to rise, and is now nearing the four digits. According to Calculated Risk, the number of [...]
(Getty Images) Perhaps frugality is back. The American consumer, after seemingly brushing off the Great Recession far faster than expected, seems to be headed back into retreat. And it appears this time not to be the job market that is doing it or the state of the economy, but inflation. So will inflation cause Americans [...]
A few weeks ago, I wrote a story for TIME magazine about Germany’s role in Europe, and how its strong competitiveness was creating imbalances within the euro zone that were at the heart of the current European debt crisis. The solution to that “Germany problem” wasn’t easy – tough reforms in both Germany and its [...]
