Today, on its front page, the Financial Times informed its readers of a “call for new global currencies agreement.” The Institute of International Finance, which represents more than 420 of the world’s leading banks and finance houses, warned on Monday that a lack of [a] coordinated rebalancing could lead to more protectionism. Charles Dallara, IIF …
I have been busy lately reading and rereading Hegel; what he wrote and what is written about his philosophy. I had to. Writing a volume on Dialectics of Finance demands having a dialectical method at one’s fingertips and I noticed in certain places I wasn’t up to par. Hence, the need for going back to …
A Commentary on the Joint CFTC-SEC “Flash Crash” Report Read More »
Early this week, the MacArthur Foundation announced the winners of its 2010 “genius awards”. Twenty three geniuses were granted $100,000 a year each for 5 years – no strings attached – to continue doing whatever ingenious work they were doing, free from financial concerns. One genius was economics professor Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley who, according …
According to the Wall Street Journal, “macro forces” in the market are confounding stock pickers. “Big-picture market movers like the economy, politics and regulation” frustrate the efforts of the best and brightest of the stock picture, the Journal informed its readers this past Friday. It said: More and more investors aren’t bothering to pore through …
That The Brilliant Larry Summers Will Leave the Obama Administration to Return to His Tenured Teaching Job at Harvard was the main economic/political news of the week. The first thing you should know about Larry Summers is that he is brilliant. The New York Times uses the adjective brilliant before his name the way it …
One or Two Things You Should Know About Larry Summers Read More »
Today, the yield on the 2-year Treasury note hit the all time low of 46 basis points, or less than .5% Traders talk about the bond bubble (it has a nice ring to it), quantitative easing (QE) or QE2 (the second round of QE. Got it?) They opine how bonds have become attractive in the …
Two years ago Lehman imploded. I was in Alaska on that fateful week of September 15. It took a trip to Alaska for me to see What’s the Matter with Kansas. That, as you may know, is the title of Tom Frank’s 2005 book, in which he argues that through “push button” issues such as …
The elephant-in-the-room of my to-do list is Vol. 4 of Speculative Capital that of late has been demanding the attention it deserves. The manuscript is complete. That is the good news. The bad news is that the time of one page commentaries and “notes to myself” is over. I must now sit down and pull …
Physical destruction could be an end in itself. You destroy a farm, a building or a city and let the ruin stand. End of story. Mission accomplished. Social destruction is different. A social system cannot be destroyed by force or laws and edicts. The only way to destroy it is to replace it. This latter …
Epilogue: The Conspiracy Theory – True Destruction Read More »
Truth precludes contradictions. That’s the meaning of explanation. Explanation, whether of a murder mystery or events in the world of finance, is the resolving of contradictions surrounding a narrative. Take the charter school initiative which I said was being driven by speculative capital. So there are a few hedge fund types behind the charter school …
The Conspiracy Theory – 3: The Mother of All Conspiracies Read More »