Mitt Romney no doubt appreciates the million bucks his former Bain Capital protégé Edward Conard has donated to his election SuperPAC. He may not appreciate quite as much the shout-out he gets in the acknowledgements of …
Finance
President to Oil Speculators: Cut It Out
President Obama has taken a lot of heat from Republicans in recent weeks over high gas prices, and what he coulda, shoulda done to keep them lower. The debate reached a fever pitch during the rejection of the Keystone pipeline, …
America Loves to Watch Its Too-Big-To-Fail CEOs Squirm
If there’s one thing this cantankerous nation can seem to agree on these days, it’s our hatred of too-big-to-fail banks and their well-compensated, if less-than-fearless, leaders. Likewise, the American media is rarely …
Beware of Falling Trees: The Best and Worst Jobs in America
Lumberjacks are celebrated in folklore (hello, Paul Bunyan) and in song (hello Monty Python), but as a career choice lumberjacking leaves something to be desired. At least according to the Jobs Rated 2012 report released earlier …
The JOBS Act Signing: A Giant Step for Entrepreneurship in America
At the White House yesterday, I had the pleasure of watching one of the most forward-thinking pieces of pro-business bipartisan legislation to date signed into law by President Obama: the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) …
Will the JOBS Act Live Up to Its Name?
President Obama just affixed his signature to the JOBS Act in a public signing ceremony you may have caught on CNN. The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which passed both houses with bipartisan support, sounds like a win for …
Are Female Board Members Breaking the Banks?
The conventional wisdom — not to mention a good deal of research — suggests that women are less inclined than men to take big risks with money. That’s why a new discussion paper prepared by three economists for the German …
Break Up The Banks! Dallas Fed President Calls for The End of “Too Big To Fail”
Since 2008, there have been plenty of calls to forcibly dismantle the “Too Big To Fail” (TBTF) Banks, but few of those calls have come from those in positions of real power. But the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President, …
7 Ways of Seeing Goldman Sachs
The business press descended upon Greg Smith’s New York Times Op/Ed with a predictable alacrity. Since the financial crisis, the nation has been embroiled in a debate about our financial system, and Greg Smith is that debate …
The Government Bond Market Is Nervous That the Recovery Is Real
We’ve been getting pretty good economic news for the past couple of months – unemployment claims are trending lower; nonfarm jobs are creeping up; consumer confidence is rising as stock prices climb.
So, of course, for the …
Should We Find Comfort in the Fed’s Stress Tests Results?
The Federal Reserve announced late Tuesday the details of its latest “stress test” of major American financial institutions, and the markets greeted the results with qualified optimism. Nineteen banks submitted capital plans to …
What Went Wrong with Microfinance?
Long before “99%” became a symbol of Occupy Wall Street, the microfinance industry used the number to describe the share of its clients — poor entrepreneurs shunned by traditional banks — who repaid their micro-loans on time. …