The Street on Welfare By E. J. Dionne Jr. - Tuesday, March 18, 2008; Page A19 Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy. The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios.
GuruWatch.nl - Dagelijks worden op deze onafhankelijke site alle adviezen over de AEX- en Midkapfondsen van banken, effectenhuizen, analisten en adviseurs geïnventariseerd en getoetst op rendement.
Unconventional View: Valley on an Upswing Posted Apr 21, 2008 03:44pm EDT by Aaron Task in Computers, Tales of the Valley, Information Technology Everyone on Wall Street is braced for the next shoe to drop and Silicon Valley is starting to feel the pinch, according to popular consensus. But Andy Kessler, former hedge manager, All-Star tech analyst, author and Tech Ticker contributor, often bucks consensus and does so again here. Rather than shrinking, he says Silcon Valley is on an upswing with jobs plentiful and smaller companies enjoying the tickle-down effect of growth at big names like Google, as well as big trends like cloud computing.
Reuters - Crisis to affect markets for a decade: JP Morgan Monday April 14, 10:48 am ET - By Richard Barley LONDON (Reuters) - The financial crisis will affect market structure and pricing for at least a decade and lead to greater regulatory powers for central banks in areas at the centre of the turmoil, analysts at JP Morgan said. "Market participants and regulators will focus intensely on controlling the risks that were at the core of the crisis," analysts led by Jan Loeys and Margaret Cannella wrote in a note on Monday. These risks include lending standards in mortgages, leverage in the funding of securitized products, and the use of short-term financing for illiquid long-term assets outside of the regulated banking sector. This will change behavior for market participants "for at least a decade," they wrote, in line with fallout from previous crises.
The Street on Welfare By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, March 18, 2008; ( The Washington Post) Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy. The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios. So they have stopped investing. The biggest, most respected investment firms threaten to come crashing down. You can't have that. It's just fine to make it harder for the average Joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by Congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. But the big guys are "too big to fail," because they could bring us all down with them.
The best contrarian indicator of all: the Labour government - 20.02.2008 - Dominic Frisby his Labour government is fast becoming one of the greatest contrarian indicators in the history of markets. After selling gold at the bottom of the market, they buy an insolvent mortgage lender – Northern Rock - at the top of the housing market. Are they really this incompetent? Or is it that the taxpayers’ interests are low on their list of priorities? Whichever it is – and I suspect it’s the latter - history will give them greater notoriety than the shoeshine boy who convinced Joe Kennedy to sell out of the stock market just ahead of the 1929 crash, when he started giving him stock tips. They’re a bit like a really badly run hedge fund. The fees they charge are extortionate, the performance they deliver is woeful, and investors can’t get their money out.
TODD HARRISON Anatomy of a recession Commentary: Our immediate-gratification mindset's partly to blame By Todd Harrison - Last update: 12:01 a.m. EDT March 12, 2008 "Lately I've been running on faith. What else can a poor boy do?" -- Eric Clapton NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Groucho Marx once said that he didn't care to belong to a club that accepted people like him as members. As the recession ranks swell, truer words have never been spoken. As early as a few weeks ago, politicians and economists stood on soapboxes assuring us the economic malaise was transitory. "I don't think we're headed to a recession," offered President Bush, echoing recent sentiments by Ben Bernanke, the chairman of our Federal Reserve. The conventional definition of recession requires back-to-back quarters of negative GDP growth and through that lens they might be right. We should remember, however, that we never entered a textbook recession at the turn of the century despite the S&P suffering an organic two-for-one split
Financial Times - Audio: Are we in global financial meltdown? Published: February 21 2008 20:11 | Last updated: February 21 2008 20:11 Are we in global financial meltdown? Editorial Intelligence, the Financial Times and Cass Business School hosted a panel discussion on 21 February.
The Working Rich Are Nervous by Tom Van Riper and Kelly Nolan - Tuesday, February 26, 2008provided byForbes Housing has imploded, the market's a yo-yo, recession's in the air. And the "working rich" are learning to do without. So says Russ Alan Prince, president of a private wealth-research firm and author of the book The Middle-Class Millionaire. What does that mean? "They have certain middle-class values," says Prince. "They will continue giving to charity and to send their kids to get the best education, because those are important components to them. They will still buy the high-end luxury car, but not the sports car." Prince's latest research shows that 78% of the "working rich," or "middle-class millionaires," defined having a net worth of between $1 million and $10 million and still working for a living, consider themselves "very or extremely concerned about their ability to maintain their current financial position." He also estimates that 21% of them have already begun pulling back on spending.
