There have been two main theories of why things went so wrong at General Motors. One is that the company is run by a bunch of ingrown retreads with no sense of where the automotive business was headed. The other is that the company’s management has been so burdened by commitments (to pensions, to retiree health care, to union work rules) …
Writes Tom Lauricella in a fascinating article in today’s WSJ:
Asset allocation, a bedrock of investing for decades, appeared to fail miserably in 2008. The conviction shared by most investors — that they should spread their money across myriad asset classes to minimize losses — was shaken as nearly all markets tumbled in unison.
The …
This is of a piece with Barbara’s annoyed Monday post about Dan Ariely and Hershey’s kisses. Stephen Laniel, whose entertaining and educational blog I came across because I keep track of online mentions of my book and it’s currently on his reading list (see, narcissism has its uses!) muses about what kind of niche he could fill as an …
A TARP chronology:
Sept. 17, 2008: Lehman Brothers has just gone under, the financial world seems to be collapsing under our ears, and Nick Brady, Gene Ludwig and Paul Volcker propose in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the only thing that can save us is a “mechanism in place to remove” toxic real estate assets from the financial …
The news yesterday that John Meriwether had shut down his latest hedge fund, JWM Partners, wasn’t exactly news. Word got out back in February that the man behind legendary blowup Long-Term Capital Management was again in trouble, albeit of a less spectacular sort than 11 years ago (JWM’s main fund was down 44% from September 2007 through …
So this ad for the Palm Pre comes on TV, and a strangely familiar tune comes on in the background. I think about it for a few minutes, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it comes to me: Doot Doot.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opaeNiiizxo]
Watching Congressional hearings on important topics always seems beforehand like it’s going to be a good idea. You know: Our elected representatives, asking the experts (or the culprits) the questions that need to be asked. Every once in a while it does work out this way: I thought the Senate Banking Committee’s hearings on the banking …
The indispensable Epicurean Dealmaker—whom I would surely hire if (a) I were in need of an investment banker and (2) I could figure out who he is—makes a rare defense of his kind:
I stick by my assertion that we did not create the huge global demand for riskless returns that is at the root of our current predicament. Investment
…
The announcement this morning (pdf!) by Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Gary Gensler that his agency is considering imposing limits on the size of trades by energy futures speculators may amount to something of a landmark (or turning point, or whatever portentous phrase you prefer) in Washington’s relationship to financial …
The WSJ has a story today about growing calls for another stimulus package. Bruce Bartlett has a column in the FT arguing that we don’t need one. Bartlett’s main point is that only a fraction of the stimulus money has been spent yet, and that fraction has been consisted mostly of what, according to the Administration’s own estimates, are …
Okay, now I remember why I don’t do this every month. It took me a while:
