Ever since every two-bit financial commentator on the planet started complaining that, a year after the start of last year’s financial crisis, almost nothing had been done to prevent the next one, reform trial balloons have been floating skyward. There was the Fed’s pay-regulation scheme, the SEC’s new credit-rating-agency rules, Chris …
I was a little nonplussed this morning when I read the not-very-shocking WSJ article that came with the shocking headline, “Bankers Face Sweeping Curbs on Pay.” In the pre-Murdoch era that would have been a 600-word story on page A24, headlined “Fed Mulls Pay Guidelines.”
What’s happening is that the Federal Reserve is contemplating a …
So I’m looking at what’s new on the old RSS, and I see Felix reminding me that tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Just below it is a post from Long or Short Capital, with this gem from Las Vegas Sands’ second quarter earnings conference call:
Analyst Q: Can I ask about the Sands on the peninsula? All of the revenue
…
After writing my post yesterday wondering why it was news that Ben Bernanke thinks the recession is over, I discovered that the Brookings Institution has online a transcript of the Q&A in which Bernanke said it. In context, he sounds awfully unbullish. Not bearish either, but …
Bernanke’s words came in response to a question from …
Phil Coggan of The Economist tells of a survey by Lipper (I can’t find it online) on mutual fund fees:
The average total expense ratios of US mutual funds are 1.32%, for German funds 1.57% and for UK funds 1.66%. Weight the ratios by asset size (to reflect where the bulk of investor money is held) and the difference is even more stark;
…
Example #389 of why I’m never going to make it in the news business: Yesterday afternoon, TIME.com’s business editor, John Curran, recommended that I take a look at Ben Bernanke’s speech at the Brookings Institution. I glanced at the text, saw that it was an exact repeat of the speech he’d given at Jackson Hole in August, and thought, …
Bruce Judson doesn’t buy the argument, made on the front page of the WSJ last week, that “the deepest downturn in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression may finally shrink the gap between the very best-off Americans and everyone else.” Yes, the highest incomes do tend to drop sharply during market downturns, thus reducing income …
Karen Tumulty has the story of the year:
As you can imagine, Buffett was hearing from a lot of people on that crazy weekend exactly a year ago, when the financial world was falling apart. AIG, desperate to come up with $18 billion, begged him for help. “Don’t waste your time on me,” he told them. “I’m not going to be able to do anything
…
Economist Hyman Minsky, who never got much attention while he was alive, has become one of the big celebrities of this financial crisis. In Sunday’s Boston Globe, Stephen Mihm has the best account of Minsky’s life and significance that I’ve seen so far. A sample:
Today most economists, it’s safe to say, are probably reading Minsky for
…
I’ve got a Lehman Day piece up on TIME.com about what the heck we’ve learned over the past year. Meanwhile, I’m still working this morning on a longer version for the magazine. So if there’s anything egregiously wrong with the online article, please let me know so I can fix it.
The President went to Wall Street today and said … well, nothing new, really. The substance of his speech was that Congress ought to pass all those financial reforms the Treasury Department proposed a few months back. Actually he said near the end of the speech that the reforms “will pass.” Want to put some money on that?
The Big …
That’s Naomi Klein signing books, and me waiting expectantly for someone to bring me a book to sign, at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday (supereditor Ben Loehnen took the photo, with my camera). A few people did ask me to sign their books, and the guy running the Book Court tent asked me to sign the rest of their stock (about four …
