Bail-out failure no reason to panick
Not everybody agrees that the bail-out plan was about ‘price discovery’ (as Paul Krugman argued) and it’s failure is a disaster. We don’t agree, but the article makes a few […]
Short positions, even intra-day, have to be disclosed
The plot thickens. We could soon know which funds are short in InterOil. They are likely to be the same that have sold 3.6M shares nakedly short. We might not […]
Wise words on the bail-out
Chris Whalen, the co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics, argues that the Treasury should only pay for the losses on dodgy securities, not buy them up. That seems a good idea […]
Bail-out off to a flying start
That something big was necessary became immediately obvious by the market reaction and the string of bank failures, and subsequent rescues..
Will it work?
The bailout plan seems on track, that’s step one. But another, more fundamental question is, will it work? Opinions differ. Not everybody is enthusiastic, or even optimistic…
An alternative rescue plan
We reported on The Paulson plan and an alternative. The essence of both is that they argue that the markets for those complex financial products are unrealistically pessimistic and prices […]
The great train robbery
We have nothing against capitalism and free markets, quite the contrary. But we have argued that a dogmatic (and, to be frank, rather blind) attachment to market fundamentalism is at […]
Accounting our way in and out of the crisis?
Some people claim that the way we got into this monumental financial mess is an accounting rule, mark-to-market, that forces financial institutions to value things at present market prices, even […]
Regulation, regulation, regulation
We have published several articles that lay the blame of the present financial mess essentially at the table of a lack of proper regulation of financial market (see here for […]
Dr. Patrick Byrne on naked short-selling
Dr. Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock has had more than his fair share of naked shorting. But this is not a guy who lays down and takes it, he fights […]