Let’s peel our eyes off of today’s Dow Jones Average for just a few minutes… March has marked a rather curious point in US-Mexican relations, causing many to raise a speculative eyebrow toward our new direction in international trade policy. Is President Obama beginning to draw a dangerously protectionist “line-in-the-sand” in an attempt […]
MEXICO CITY — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mexican president, Felipe Calderon, in its struggle against illegal drug cartels waging heinously violent campaigns at the U.S. border, and admitted America’s demand for illegal narcotics and the gun supply coming from U.S. arms makers were partly to blame for the problem.
Foreign Policy magazines interviews Mohamed El-Erian, Co-CEO & Co-Chief Invesment Officer of PIMCO — an international invesment management firm. Mr. El-Erian’s is also one of the world’s most respected investment managers & economic analysts. His commentary is widely followed quoted on Wall Street. He shares his insights on the realignment of the global economy and why we aren’t prepared to handle it without significant risks of both market accidents and policy mistakes.
China called for the creation of a new currency to eventually replace the dollar as the world’s standard, proposing a sweeping overhaul of global finance that reflects developing nations’ growing unhappiness with the U.S. role in the world economy.
The Ascent of Money By Niall Ferguson (Penguin Press, 2008) For both the financial history enthusiast and the newcomer to the global financial markets alike, Prof. Niall Ferguson offers an excellent survey of the development of money in his latest of financially themed books. Ferguson, regarded as one of Britain’s most noted […]
Question: What happens when an 80% shareholder of a company decides that the $165 million in bonuses contracted to employees prior to the purchase of shares are an abuse of the over $170 billion given in taxpayer bailout? Answer: American International Group CEO, Edward Liddy, asks bonus recipients who received $100,000 or more to return […]
The FOMC today announced plans to buy $300B in treasuries and up to $750B in mortgage-backed securities, effectively agreeing to print a trillion dollars. Well, we knew the money had to come from somewhere. When the federal government wants money, there are four places they can get it: 1) Take from other parts of the […]
In a strange piece of spin, the New York Times says today that the financial crisis will wind up being good for China. It’s an unconvincing position to say the least. It’s true that, unlike the West, China has no trouble with currency exchange or stock markets, which are state regulated, or bank failure, because […]
AIG Executives have been given huge bonuses with taxpayer money, and everyone is furious. AIG claims that they have contractual obligations which predate the largest private sector bailout in history. Politicians say these obligations are secondary to satisfying taxpayers who are keeping them above water. Pundits, smelling blood in the water, have come out in […]
U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, interviewed by Charlie Rose, says Capitalism will be ‘profoundly different‘ going forward. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s comments should come as no surprise. Neither should the fact that a leading global economist recently noted, rather matter-of-fact-ly, that “the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism has failed.” But more on that point later. For […]
The Future of Capitalism
The credit crunch has destroyed faith in the free market ideology that has dominated Western economic thinking for a generation. But what can – and should – replace it? Over the coming weeks we will conduct a wide-ranging debate on this dominant political issue of the day.
President Obama welcomed Brazil’s President Luiz Ignacio ‘Lula’ Da Silva as the first Latin American leader to the White House to discuss, energy, agricultural and economic trade issues between the two hemispheric partners.
A riveting, detailed account of the undoing of Bear Stearns in 2008. ‘How it happened, and why, is the subject of William D. Cohan’s superb narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the world financial system.’
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World By LIAQUAT AHAMED (Penguin Press, 2009) Reviewed by Jose Nocera for the New York Times ‘Book Review’ section, The ‘Lords of Finance’ offers a grand narrative of the events leading up to the Great Depression. Liaquat Ahamed, a former World Bank economist and investment fund manager, […]
“Tight credit markets and the global economic downturn are rapidly swelling the population of U.S. companies with high default risk and weak liquidity. The Bottom Rung, a new Moody’s database and quarterly publication, captures and comments on these low-rated companies.” March 10th marked the inaugural debut of Moody’s newest ratings publication by its Global […]