0
POPSIn Denial About Financial Reform Also see Dan Indiviglio over at The Atlantic: http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/09/why_is_washington_ignoring_the_real_causes_of_the_crisis.php The danger of putting a lawyer in charge of something like this is, in my opinion, best exemplified by Neil Barofsky, the attorney they put in front of TARP oversight. Barofsky has used his pulpit to put out some really meaningless and misleading numbers. We need real information from these guys, not noisy innumerate numbers. See: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/27/bailout-bad-math-business-washington-barofsky.html
0
POPSExodus Out of the Big Banks There's an intriguing idea here that it's good for the talent to disperse to smaller institutions. That it will be a sort of Darwinian process that whittles big banks down until they're no longer too big to fail. And it creates a more diverse Wall Street in the process. Well, really? It seems to me that's no longer true if a handful of the big banks (say Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan) are able to pay off their TARP funds early. Shrinking Citi and Bank of America to beef up Aladdin Capital and Broadpoint may be dandy and help the too-big-to-fail problem. But aren't we just as likely to be shrinking Citi and Bank of America to enlarge Goldman and JPMorgan? I'm not suggesting anything in particular other than that I'm not sure this talent reallocation really does anything material to the bank size issue.
1
POPSHarvard Business School Examines Its Failure I find it hard to imagine there's really much soul-searching in many MBA programs. Is the metric they focus on still salary-upon-graduation? Where's the incentive there not to chase and inflate the next bubble?
0
POPSWho Will Hire Our Bankers? In the last week I've talked to people who think it's a *great* idea to tax away bonuses of anyone working for TARP recipients. 'But what if it causes all the good people to leave?' I ask. 'Wah wah wah. Where will they go?' 'Here's where.'
2
POPSSpitzer's New Column It's interesting that Eliot Spitzer is writing a column for Slate. An interesting topic too, that doesn't seem to be talked about enough: Why do we allow the creation of firms that are too big to fail? Is that a rational free market policy to allow the creation of firms that, if they fail, require massive government intervention? Would a superior "free market" policy be to actually disallow the creation of firms of such size?
1
POPSThe "miracle" of securitization This quiet little piece is probably the sharpest analysis of what actually went wrong with our financial system that I've read. Here's a money quote: ``Securitization was based on the premise that a fool was born every minute,'' Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York, told a congressional committee on Oct. 21. ``Globalization meant that there was a global landscape on which they could search for those fools -- and they found them everywhere.''
0
POPSBetter, Not Just More, Regulation A lot of people are framing this current mess as "we had too little regulation, now we need more." I tend to think this misses the point. Sarbanes-Oxley was passed six years ago. That's more regulation. Had Sarbanes-Oxley been just beefed up would it have stopped the crisis? Along with this professor, I worry that the discussion about regulation is going to focus on the size of regulation, rather than its quality.
1
POPSEconopoly Note those cities in the front row... Detroit, Riverside... http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/15/economy-housing-recession-biz-beltway-cx_jz_1015econocities_slide.html?thisSpeed=15000
0
POPSFew Options for Next President Am I alone in thinking that the *best* vice-presidential candidate pick for either candidate would have been somebody who genuinely understands, can talk reassuringly, confidently, and clearly, about economics? Am I alone in thinking the campaigns need to start talking *now* about who their Treasury Secretary would be, and start having him or her clued in on these meetings?
Newest Clips
see Newest Clips
1
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update