accounting

I was reading through an article at Reuters on the problem that public pension plans are having with shortfalls that can only be made up via increased tax revenue, increased investment returns, or decreased benefits. The Reuters article…

The banks are slowly admitting losses, but Bloomberg's summary is of a slow recognition. Even so, writedowns have left the banks stranded: unable to make loans. Up until now, it appears, the banks and the government were able to carry the…

The culture of fraud in economics is a severe problem, and Harvard is a “hot spot” of that culture.

Sandy Weill repudiates his pre-crisis "financial supermarket" legacy in suggesting that banks were too big and too leveraged. He openly advocates re-instituting Glass-Steagall. He also supports mark to market.

I don’t want to be too glib here. I recognize that policymakers are in an extremely difficult position and that there is no longer any easy solution, but railing at the markets rather than trying to understand why they are doing what they…

The US pension bailout fund PBGC is already stretched and may require more taxpayer money. Now it would be taking over pensions that will be even more underfunded, with asset values way below the present value of the liabilities. And more…

Our brains are not calibrated to deal with the unexpected. Most of us believe we are good risk managers but in reality we are not. Most of us trust that risk can always be quantified and expressed through some fancy modelling whereas,…

Given a clearly overbought market, the re-emergence of Europe's sovereign debt problem and the Fed reducing the imminence of QE3, even the bulls concede that a correction is likely. Overall, however, investors remain optimistic, and are…

This weekly newsletter is a gold-level post and follows up on my prediction early last month about 2012 being a period of margin compression in US companies, threatening the rally in stocks and mandating a rotation in investment style or…

That Weidmann now wishes to publicly claim he is concerned about risk associated with the Bundesbank's Target2 credit does not simply mean that this is a truth that has now been "acknowledged". I would guess that the sober Bundesbank…