Huge deficits and ultra-low interest rates should have led to serious inflation by now. The great mystery of the past three years is why they haven’t.
Finance
Bankers: Who Needs Them?
Would the world be a happier place if we just got rid of all the bankers? Well, no. The financial sector, for all of its foibles, is as necessary for the economy as blood is for our bodies: it facilitates trade, allocates …
Should Mitt Romney Embrace His Rich-Guy Image?
Evidently feeling that our political discourse is not silly enough yet, the kind folks at National Review have given us a cover story arguing that Mitt Romney needs to fully embrace his inner Thurston Howell. And that he should …
Junk Bonds: Wall Street’s Newest Bubble?
In an effort to nurse the long-ailing global economy, central banks around the world have maintained near-zero short-term interest rates for many years now. The Federal Reserve has even gone so far as to buy up billions of …
Nassim Taleb: In the Investment Biz, Luck Trumps Skill, So Take Your Talent Elsewhere
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be investment professionals.
That’s the argument Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the investment expert and math whiz who wrote the influential book The Black Swan, is making these days.
Standard Chartered and Why We Must Change the Way We Police Banks
MF Global, JP Morgan’s Whale Fail, LIBOR rate-rigging: The financial services industry has been cranking out scandal like it’s going out of style. The incidence of financial scandal has become so frequent, in fact, that each …
High Frequency Trading: Wall Street’s Doomsday Machine?
Another week, another Wall Street scandal, and another opportunity for pundits to bemoan the incompetence and venality of America’s financial professionals. Last Wednesday’s near collapse of Knight Capital Partners – in which a …
Wall Street’s Robot Uprising Quickly Quelled
Though some day traders referred to yesterday’s software glitch to something out of the Terminator movies, long-term investors have little to worry about.
Hey, At Least Investment Bankers Are Losing Their Jobs, Too
It’s been five years since the 2008 financial crisis upended the global economy, and while corporate profits and national output have recovered, there are still 4.7 million fewer private sector jobs than at the beginning of the …
The Big New Idea for Saving the Euro
Giving Europe’s bailout fund a banking license would provide massive firepower to help flailing states, but proposal must first overcome deep German skepticism
Former Citigroup Head Sandy Weill Calls for Breaking up the Banks
Since the financial crisis of 2008, there have been a host of critics of the banking industry who have called for hard caps on the size of banking institutions, as well as the separation of commercial banking activity like …
LIBOR Rigging: What the Regulators Saw (but Didn’t Shut Down)
Why weren’t the first signs taken more seriously? Has there been a serious failure of regulation, or are there strong mitigating circumstances that could explain and justify the lack of resolute action?
