The list of local councils and charities and the amounts they had deposited in Iceland is astounding. But it does raise a big question — where were the sales reps from Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays, et. al. Cheltenham Borough Council: £11 million in Iceland banks … Dorset County Council: £28.1 million … the list goes on [...]
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Amazing how fast this has been moving. The Wall Street Journal has provided excellent coverage with in-depth reporting including the corporate politics that mostly occur well out of sight. (The Journal’s editorial page remains, as it has been historically, mostly a source of comic relief.) Pity the poor weeklies – the news keeps coming over [...]
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There was something a little surreal about this year’s Sibos. While the banking sector’s woes and the demise of Lehman Brothers were on everyone’s mind, it was almost business as usual on the exhibition floor, as vendors announced new products and banks plugged their services, with no shortage of champagne and canapes. The two bankers [...]
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After years of passivity and inaction, the SEC launched a ban on naked short selling of selected financial stocks over a weekend. Compare this to the decades it sat by and let a handful of credit rating agencies enjoy oligopolistic profits as the sole official guardians of investment grading. Now the SEC chairman, Christopher Cox, [...]
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It’s a lot to be proud of, this independent capitalist system that tells the government to get lost. Except when it doesn’t. Headlines yesterday were Fed Chair Ben Bernanke saying the bank will extend its lending facility for investment banks for another couple of months if needed. The Fed is also working with the SEC [...]
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The Fed is reluctantly thinking that it might consider taking action against asset bubbles in future. Chariman Ben Bernanke still says it is hard to determine a bubble. Really? When tech stocks were trading at 50-100X earnings? When people in booming states like California were buying houses at 5-6X their income? When mortgage brokers were [...]
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Last month at The Forum in London, the MiFID conference sponsored by JWG-IT, David Wright, deputy director general, EU Commission, told bankers they should take the current financial crisis seriously. “The firms that created this mess have to step up to the plate. This is not the time for firms to seek de minimus solutions or [...]
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As the equity trading industry gathered at TradeTech in Paris this week to discuss the latest developments in terms of liquidity pools, new trading venues, smart order routing or low latency, it is interesting to note comments made about financial markets by European political and business leaders in recent weeks. The departing chairman of insurance [...]
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The London-based Observer supports bailing out the banks, but with strict conditions. British banks deny that they have messed up and are asking for state rescue, notes The Observer, which disagrees with their assessment. “But the reality is that British banks are guilty of systematic arrogance and complacency. They relied on credit from each other [...]
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US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s proposals are catching a lot of flak from NY Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman Although he works in Princeton, nearly 200 miles from Washington, Krugman routinely beats the pants off the Washington press corps by reading legislation and budgets, paying attention when the Bush administration gives five [...]
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