I was travelling into the office today listening to my iPod on shuffle and marvelling at how scratchy and lo-fi Public Enemy’s Don’t Believe the Hype sounds these days, when I started playing with the device in my hands. Having been an initial sceptic about the iPod and asserting it was ‘just another walkman fad’ [...]
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Commissioners of the Commodity Trading Futures Commission (CFTC) which has regulatory over the commodities markets and now, since Dodd-Frank, over derivatives, said the elections didn’t change much. At the Futures Industry Association meeting in Chicago in early November, they said that until Congress changed the terms, Dodd-Frank is the law of the land and they [...]
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The FT’s Michael Skapinker responded to a letter from 17 leading City of London figures saying: “It is essential to restate and affirm the social purpose of financial institutions … Through work we all seek to realise ourselves as people, provide for our dependants and make a contribution to the social good.” What’s it mean [...]
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What does this look like on the ground? Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone went to Florida to find out. The article is available online and will appear in the 25 November issue of Rolling Stone. “When I went to sit in on Judge Soud’s courtroom in downtown Jacksonville, I was treated to an intimate, and [...]
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The November 2 elections in the U.S. brought the greatest change in national politics since the 1940s, according to Peter Hart, a national pollster often affiliated with the Democratic Party. From coast to coast, Democratic states went Republican in elections for Congressional seats and governors. “A category 5 hurricane hit the Democrats.” Voters think the [...]
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I was at the top of the Gherkin last night in London to hear the business secretary, Vince Cable, speak at the launch of the Financial Traders and Brokers Network, a new networking organisation for the City. The Lib Dem MP admitted he was entering the lion’s den somewhat, especially as the other speaker was [...]
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The government’s Comprehensive Spending Review unveiled today by the Chancellor George Osborne has made the bank levy, imposed in the wake of the banking crisis, a permanent feature of doing business in the UK. It is expected to generate approximately £2.5 billion a year in tax, dependent upon bank profits, and to hit overseas banks [...]
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A recent publication from SunGard and senior risk practitioners from International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE) about complexity and financial risk is interesting, although they fail to grapple with some of the key aspects. They defend complexity, as you might expect, with no effort to demonstrate that it provides value beyond the financial services industry. [...]
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Curt Monash, who does a blog about databases and analytical tools writes in some detail about the problems Chase had when its online banking services went down for three days starting around 8 p.m. Monday Sept. 13. The nation’s second largest bank has more than 16 million online banking users who were unable to access [...]
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How often does a bank regulator feature in a rap video? Check this out. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law prof who is now in line to become head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an idea she proposed and Congress recently wrote into its financial reform legislation. Joe Nocera in The New York Times [...]
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