Author

Yves Smith 7 posts 0 comments

Yves Smith has written the popular financial blog Naked Capitalism since 2006. Yves has spent more than 25 years in the financial services industry and currently heads Aurora Advisors, a New York-based management consulting firm specializing in corporate finance advisory and financial services. Prior experience includes Goldman Sachs (in corporate finance), McKinsey & Co., and Sumitomo Bank (as head of mergers and acquisitions). Yves has written for publications in the United States and Australia, including The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Slate, The Conference Board Review, Institutional Investor, The Daily Deal and the Australian Financial Review. Yves is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

Markets

Bitcoin is not a currency

Yves Smith Mar 11, 2014

Japan has just decided that Bitcoin is not a currency, which subjects it to sales and income taxes. This is consistent with the view of the Canadian Revenue Service, which has found Bitcoin to be property and not a legal currency, and the…

Political Economy

Corporatism: A Bi-Partisan Problem in the United States

Yves Smith Jan 10, 2014

One suspects the reason for the sensitivity within the ranks of the Democratic party water-carriers to the “corporatist” label is that Obamacare is a textbook case. Democrats try to undermine this charge by serving up an example of…

Markets

Fed to QE-Exit Whacked Emerging Markets: Drop Dead

Yves Smith Aug 27, 2013

The latest Fed confab at Jackson Hole is demonstrating that central bankers were so keen to avoid taking much blame for the global financial crisis that they also failed to learn critical lessons from it. That lapse in turn is directly…

Markets

Profitless Stocks and Levitating Stock Prices

Yves Smith Aug 13, 2013

Yves Smith argues that the US equity markets have come to play an outsized role in the US from a policy and practical level. And she warns that it is never a good idea to try to assess complex phenomena with a single metric.

Markets

Banks Outbidding PE Funds at Foreclosure

Yves Smith Jul 8, 2013

Banks appear not to have heard the old Wall Street saying, “A position is a trade that didn’t work out.” I suspect they are going to be long their REO for a more protracted period than they anticipate. Stay tuned.

Economy

Apple: Tax gimmicks could hurt the brand

Yves Smith May 30, 2013

One of the striking aspects of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on Apple's aggressive tax-avoidance strategies is the way the Senators bent over backwards to declare Apple love even as they poked and prodded at…

Markets

Fannie Putting Dubious Loans Back to BofA, So BofA Will Stick Them to Freddie Instead

Yves Smith Feb 24, 2012

It looks like someone at Fannie woke up and realized that any case of a guarantor voiding a policy was prima facie evidence that BofA had breached a rep and warranty about loan quality. Look at the examples: inflated appraisals and incomes.