Monetary System

Roger Bootle sat down with the Telegraph and ran through a few themesregarding the stock market, the financial crisis, government debt, currencies and compensation in the financial sector.  He has a lot to say, in particular on banks,…

Meredith Whitney downgraded Goldman Sachs from ‘buy’ to ‘neutral’ today.  Previously, Goldman had been her only buy recommended stock, all of the others rated neutral or ‘sell.’  Why did she do it? FT Alphaville has the answer:…

Remember when Paul Krugman asked aloud “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” He had a very well-received answer.  But he left out something. The elephant in the room was debt.  No one seems to have been noticing. Below is a…

A friend sent me the following article from USA Today: The U.S. taxpayers' investments in smaller banks are increasingly at risk. In a sign that more banks are under great pressure from the recession, 34 financial institutions did…

Starwood Capital Group gets the assets in a consortium with TPG capital, Perry Capital and WLR LeFrak (another Wilbur Ross company – this guy is cleaning up in the FDIC private equity bonanza). Here’s the press release: The Federal…

In a 9-page Vanity Fair article “Wall Street’s Near-Death Experience,”giving us a sneak peek into the lives of bankers during the global meltdown last Autumn a hilarious quote of great significance was buried. At issue was the near-death…

Marshall Auerback sent me a link to a recent Simon Johnson missive about Goldman Sachs. I had already seen and liked this article, but his e-mail prompted me to write this post. My question is: Why is Goldman a bank holding company?…

I think it should be abundantly clear that I am bearish on financials given my sell equities call two weeks ago.  After all, it was the banking sector which I was most bullish on in April – August. They are also the stocks that have…

Janet Tavakoli was a recent guest on “On the Edge with Max Keiser” and had some troubling things to say about the state of the present U.S. financial system.  She believes the liquidity pumped into the system will not be sufficient…

Last week I was at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting to listen to their ideas on how to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems like poverty and education. I may have more to say about this topic in a later post, but I…