Whenever there is a big event like the Olympics, you always see business reporters stretching to try to find an angle. Some of it makes for good journalism. The Wall Street Journal’s story on Wednesday on how the luge accident was driven by a desire to maximize profits for the track and its owners is an excellent piece of journalism. …
How much does a snow storm cost? Every year, on days like the one we are having today on the East Coast and in the Midwest (according to this map 63% of the United States is covered in snow today), economic forecasters try to estimate the impact of all the white stuff falling from the sky. The numbers are always huge. And they are always …
The market is down again today and one of the reasons people have cited for the recent 800 point drop in the Dow is that investors are worried about the bank regulations coming out of the Obama administration. The first part of the argument is that Obama’s plan to tax the banks and limit what they can and can’t do will hurt profits of …
Back in October, I wrote that Citi was basically a big garage sale, willing to sell any part of the bank that wasn’t nailed down (they had already gotten rid of the nailed down stuff). At the time, the PR folk denied that most of Citi was up for sale. They said the bank had made a detailed and logical plan of what was for sale and what …
After reading the Journal today and watching the grilling of Tim Geithner, I had to wonder what you need to do to be a Treasury Secretary and get noticed by the general public. While I do share some of their distaste of Geithner, the Congressmen who think they are winning votes by bashing poor Timmy on CSpan should take note. This from …
So far it appears the most noteworthy document of the 250,000 pages obtained by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, which is holding a hearing on Wednesday on AIG’s government bailout, is a 44-page powerpoint presentation put together by bond firm Blackrock analyzing the insurer’s ability to negotiate haircuts on its …
The consensus seems to be that Obama’s proposal to limit the operations of the banks to lending and securities underwriting, and not proprietary trading and hedge fund investing, if enacted, would be bad for banks and bank shareholders. Many pointed to the so-called Volcker rule to explain last week’s market sell-off. Like Ritholtz, I’m …
