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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.
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POPSThe Man Who Blew Up Wall Street I tend toward the camp who says that the software isn't the problem. As one of the commenters says, "Osinski's software wasn't at fault any more than the manufacturer of his computer was at fault."
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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.'
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POPSFinally Bust at Liar's Poker "Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, would be expelled from finance."
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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.''
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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.
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POPSGreat New Hedge Fund Saw this humor site in WSJ's Heard on the Street this morning. Here's one of Strategery's top competitive advantages: "We are not limited to looking for opportunities with positive expected returns and so can cast a broader net across the investment universe, thus extending our efficient frontier beyond what other hedge funds can offer."
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POPSSo what happens if Paulson is a genius? This article elegantly lays out the best-case scenario for the Paulson Plan. Funny how things could backfire. Right now at least some politicians are opposing this thing because of election concerns. They're going to have different election concerns if they voted against a plan that, in a couple years time, stopped a financial meltdown and earned a trillion dollars for the taxpayer.
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POPSBartiromo v. Burnett (I suspect like most men who have CNBC on in the background of the office most of the day) I spend a good portion of the day pondering the Maria Bartiromo v. Erin Burnett question. I think I come down in the Bartiromo fan club. I just think Bartiromo knows her stuff better. I can't point to anything specific. But every now and then you're watching Erin and Jim Cramer, and Cramer goes off on one of his rants, and then Erin asks some odd question that doesn't have much to do with the rant. Maybe she's just trying to bring him back under control, but sometimes I think she doesn't really know what he's talking about.
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POPSLet Hank Get Some Sleep! Whatever your feelings about the bailout you gotta acknowledge this: Paulson is a machine. I have no idea when he's possibly gotten any sleep since the Fannie and Freddie takeover. And he had to have been laying the groundwork for that for at least a week. I'm guessing he's barely slept since August. I hope he's okay.
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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?
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POPSCategory 4 Financial Storm From JP Morgan's congressional testimony a few years after a major bank panic in 1907. An exchange between Morgan and his inquisitor for the government, attorney Samuel Untermyer. Untermyer: "Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?" Morgan: "No sir. The first thing is character." Untermyer: "Before money or property?" Morgan: "Before money or property or anything else. Money cannot buy it...because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."
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POPSHamburger - $175 Kobe beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, foie gras, shave black truffles, golden truffle oil on a sesame seed bun!
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POPSFutures markets and food prices Bloomberg examines the role of crop futures in rising food prices. The rising level of investment in this area has brought unintended consequences for farmers, consumers and the agriculture processors, like agribusiness giant Archers Daniel Midland.
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