$11.5 Trillion Lost In Bermuda Triangle In case you've ever wondered just how much money the mega rich keep nice and tax free in off shore shelters, it's $11.5 trillion.
posted by expriest on May 6, 2005 - 46 comments

Why Stock Markets Crash : Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems. Professor Didier Sornette of UCLA has some very interesting things to say about stock markets. In his book, he explains how his "theory of cooperative herding and imitation [...] has detected the existence of a clear signature of herding in the decay of the US S&P500 index since August 2000 with high statistical significance, in the form of strong log-periodic components." Although his timing has been just a bit early, the theory, the predictions to date and the pictures are all pretty uncanny. This is easily the most interesting book on the stock market I have ever read and provides interesting and believable hypotheses about things I never imagined could have rigorous explanations. For an overview, here is an interview with the author.
posted by muppetboy on May 14, 2004 - 19 comments

It's all about shareholder value. Steve Jobs has received tremendous positive press for only accepting one dollar per year as payment for his CEO services at Apple. How does he do it, you ask? Well, he supplements his income by a) being a billionaire, and b) renting out his corporate jet to Apple, at a cost of over 1.2 million dollars, over the past two years. Which is an exceptionally generous rental fee considering that Apple itself paid $90 million for the jet, which it bought for Jobs in May of 2001. This data was disclosed along in the most recent quarterly report in which Apple announced layoffs of 260 employees, none of whom were given a jet.
posted by jonson on Feb 14, 2003 - 13 comments

Could he be right yet again? : Interview with Bob Prechter (and another one) If he is, we're all in for a world of hurt. In this three part interview, Elliott Wave International president Robert Prechter discusses his new book, “Conquer The Crash: How To Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression.” During the 1980s, Bob Prechter won numerous awards for market timing as well as the United States Trading Championship, culminating in Financial News Network (now CNBC) granting him the title, "Guru of the Decade." In 1990-1991, he was elected and served as president of the nation-al Market Technicians Association in its 21st year. He has also published a seminal book on Elliott wave analysis titled, “Elliott Wave Principle – Key To Market Behavior,” three books on the major practitioners of wave analysis, and books on his own views in Prechter's Perspective and At the Crest of the Tidal Wave.
posted by muppetboy on Feb 13, 2003 - 47 comments

A speculative bubble is created when objectivity, reasoning, and valuation give way to greed and an insatiable desire for profits. On this date in history... October 29, 1929: The date of the stock market crash that marked the start of the Great Depression in the United States. Could it have been averted by the reading of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay?
posted by puddsharp on Oct 29, 2002 - 21 comments

Post a great earnings quarter then cut jobs and send them to India. Nice job Bank of AMERICA
posted by Macboy on Oct 22, 2002 - 21 comments

Ever wonder just who's fattening who's wallet? The Transnational Corporations Observatory [multilingual] seems to know quite a bit. Now if i can only figure out how the ad council gets their money...
posted by phylum sinter on Sep 29, 2002 - 3 comments

Someone we trust says something reassuring. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, arguably the most powerful man in the world, blames "infectious greed" for the recent panic-like tail-spins on Wall Street, but says that the economy is on the way to recovery. One comment held that Greenspan was finally able to let out how he feels about what's going on, without shrouding his opinion in economic jibber-jabber.

"For once he really spoke his mind. He usually tends to obfuscate things quite a bit."

But really, how many of you expected Greenspan to say anything other than "the fundamentals are in place for a return to sustained healthy growth"? Does Greenspan actually feel this way? Could it be that he is actually majorly pessimistic, but is using his soothing sweet-song voice and obvious clout and earned respect to somehow buck recent trends? Bush's speech didn't do much for our faltering economy, but will Greenspan's? Can one man's mere words possibly change the course of history? Well?
posted by Hammerikaner on Jul 16, 2002 - 27 comments

High Finance Run Amok [latimes free reg req] is a Kevin Phillips editorial on the "financialization" of the US economy. "As the financial sector, in short, became too important to fail, the Fed and the Treasury abandoned market economics to embrace socialization of credit risk. No other sector of the U.S. economy, save possibly defense, received such governmental assistance."
posted by electro on Jun 24, 2002 - 13 comments

CEOs Slash Jobs, but Not Their Pay Too many cheifs and not enough indians. An article I found interesting.
posted by bjgeiger on Sep 22, 2001 - 11 comments

Will the rich be nicer to the poor? The way the stockmarket keeps plunging the rich might be asking the rest of us how to survive.
posted by jbou on Sep 21, 2001 - 22 comments

Osama bin Laden and those managing his multimillion-dollar fortune are sophisticated enough to have possibly profited in the markets from last week's attacks, U.S. experts said Monday.
posted by preguicoso on Sep 18, 2001 - 5 comments

Finances can be a sticky issue in relationships
Can you pay my bills?
Can you pay my telephone bills?
Can you pay my automo-bills?
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through

Can I get paid to write stuff like this? And just how would one get started?
posted by 4midori on May 9, 2001 - 18 comments

One million credit card numbers stolen! News at 11! The FBI has gone public with a rather dry account of a huge organized attack on ecommerce sites, exploiting security flaws in NT which Microsoft fixed and offered patches for nearly two years ago.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Mar 9, 2001 - 5 comments

The House has passed the bankruptcy reform bill that Clinton vetoed at the end of the last session. I'm mildly optimistic that it won't pass the Senate, given that the Democratic vote in the House was split. But should we be worried at all? At first glance, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. But so many consumer groups are against it, and it seems to benefit credit card companies while hurting individuals, so I'm inclined to think we should leave things as-is. Especially since personal bankruptcies are down and credit card issuers' profits are up. Anyone know more about this?
posted by aaron on Mar 1, 2001 - 7 comments