Justin Fox

From a reader:

1. A ‘scandal’ will surface a few months from now from the headline “TARP recipients giving [50%-150%] raises to replace banned bonuses”.

2. Bank employees in areas where the revenue generated can be directly traced (sales, trading, private banking, money management, maybe investment banking) will now be paid

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John Hempton describes what he thinks should happen after the Treasury’s Public-Private Investment Program is up and running:

I want the regulators to come into the banks and say – now you have a ready – if somewhat subsidized market for your assets then it is no longer tenable for you to say that the market price for them is

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Economist Paul Samuelson says that financial markets are “micro-efficient” but “macro-inefficient.” That is, the great mass of investors and speculators is very good at winnowing out differences in value between similar securities, but not so good at establishing rational values for the market as a whole.

This is, to a large extent, the …

My speech Friday to the assembled geniuses at the Hertz Foundation Symposium in Santa Clara went okay, I think. It was my first-ever PowerPoint presentation, and there was a fraught moment beforehand where my laptop and the projector simply would not—despite the efforts of several first-rate physicists and mathematicians who sprang to …

Marc Gunther asks:

Do you care who in the government knew about the AIG bonuses, and when they knew it? Do you think the AIG executives who collected bonuses deserve opprobrium? I don’t. Although the $165 (or $218) million in bonuses have become a symbol of executive compensation gone wild, pointing fingers at Tim Geithner or Chris

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Here’s my new column. And, just to give you the readers of the Curious Capitalist some added value, I have reproduced the column I originally wrote, then tore up because I didn’t like it, after the break. I’m currently sitting in a semi-comfy chair at the Santa Clara Marriott, which is right across the street from a roller coaster. In a …

I’m currently a couple doors down from the house where I grew up in Lafayette, Calif., mooching off the neighbors’ wifi (thanks, Roger and Jeane!). And I’m trying to figure out what I think about the House of Representatives voting 328 to 93 today to impose that 90% tax on bonuses paid out by companies getting government bailouts.

My …

My TIME colleague Massimo Calabresi reports that:

Though Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congressional leaders Tuesday he only learned of the impending $160 million bonus payments to members of AIG’s troubled financial products unit March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that

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