From Financial Astrology by David Williams, 1984:
Many times during my long business career I have been asked: “How did a hard-boiled purchasing agent like you ever get interested in such an occult subject as astrology?”
Harvard economist and blogging newbie Jeffrey Frankel makes an excellent point about Republican political rhetoric of the past quarter century. Most Republican presidential candidates say on the campaign trail that
(a) they favor smaller government
and
(b) cutting tax rates increases revenue.
Put these two together and the only …
My new column is in the issue of Time with a star-spangled pope on the cover and online here. It begins:
Financial regulation is usually born of financial disaster. The Panic of 1907–during which several big New York City banks actually did fail–led to the creation of the Federal Reserve. The Great Depression, unleashed by a market
…
I’ve got the Senate Banking Committee hearing about the Bear Stearns deal on in the background. Life’s too short to liveblog it. But Chris Dodd’s attempt to get somebody to admit that the Fed had ordered that the original sale price be just $2 elicited some interesting responses.
Treasury Undersecretary Robert Steel said that, “There …
Bond market kingpin Bill Gross’s monthly screed is out, and as usual it’s got lots of interesting insights and lots of passages that don’t entirely make sense. Anyway, this may be my favorite part:
I’ve had a famous picture of J.P. Morgan on my office wall for 25 years. Even now, the old man seems to be staring at my back and taunting
…
A very nice analogy from one Chris Cook:
The subject of “peak oil” is usually misrepresented to mean “oil is running out” but in fact means that, “while there may be plenty of oil in the ground, there is a maximum (peak) level of production which we may even have reached”. Peak oil has gradually evolved from a wild “crank” theory to the
…
There’s been lots of talk lately about fixing Wall Street pay so people don’t get rewarded so lavishly for taking crazy risks that blow up later. And there have been some pretty convincing explanations of why that will never work.
But now, in a comment to this very blog, Curious Capitalist regular and Wall Street veteran That Anonymous …
A fun fact from Fun Floyd Norris:
During 2006 and 2007, Lehman spent $5.3 billion — a lot more than it is now raising — repurchasing shares at an average price of almost $72 per share. The shareholders who sold out did well. Those who held on were the losers.
When Lehman repurchased shares that made the number of shares outstanding …
I wrote this more than a year ago, and it strikes me that it’s more timely now than it was then. So in the interest of self-aggrandizement, I’m recycling it (with some minor tweaking):
A little while back, in the august pages of Foreign Affairs, Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby offered a rousing defense of hedge funds. It …
PBS is airing a two-part documentary starting tonight (what time? check your local listings) called Retirement Revolution, and I’m in it. I’m pretty sure I’m not in tonight’s episode, though it’s possible that just I missed myself while fast-forwarding through the podcast. But that doesn’t make it any less edifying.
The show is a pretty …
You read it here first. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard now reports in the Telegraph (via Across the Curve) that the Federal Reserve thinks the Swedes (and Norwegians and Finns) might have something to teach us about financial bailouts:
A senior official at one of the Scandinavian central banks told The Daily Telegraph that Fed strategists had
…
As I write this, Hank Paulson is finally giving his big speech on regulatory reform. But the great wave of reaction has been going on for a couple of days now. There are seven stories on the Paulson plan in today’s WSJ alone.
My quick read of all the reactions is that Wall Street mostly likes the Paulson approach, while lots of …
