regulation

In the 1987 movie classic Wall Street, the sinister protagonist Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas gives this famous quote: In the last seven deals that I’ve been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a…

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?…

In light of recent comments made by both living former Federal Reserve Chairmen, I thought it appropriate to look back 22 years to the succession from Volcker to Greenspan.  What follows is a blurb from a New York Times article circa…

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…

At issue here is the news that the Obama Administration dropped plans to force financial institutions to offer “plain vanilla” financial products that are simple enough for consumers to understand. My headline is editorial enough on this…

In the latest inexplicable move to extricate the U.S. banking system from crisis, the FDIC is reportedly close to asking the very banks it regulates for a loan to top up its balances. The plan is “strongly supported by bankers and their…

Sheila Bair has run out of options to seize banks because the FDIC’s coffers are running dry.  Now she either needs to tap taxpayer money via a loan from the Treasury or she has to raise funds through a special assessment on banks, who…

The following post appeared on Wednesday at Rick Bookstaber’s new blog. Bookstaber is a market veteran who has long and storied history of achievement. He worked at Bridgewater Associates, ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint…

I am astounded at how quickly we have returned to the pre-crisis days of yore. Credit spreads are down, the stock market is up, volatility is down, earnings are up and bonuses are up.  It looks like happy days are here again. But, I…

Marshall Auerback here. I have been posting at an interesting new site called New Deal 2.0. You may have seen Edward linking out to articles on the site. Edward saw an article I wrote there recently and asked me to post it here as well…