The Incentive Bubble (
ungated pdf) - "The fraying of the compact of American capitalism by rising income inequality and repeated governance crises is disturbing. But misallocations of financial, real, and human capital arising from the financial-incentive bubble are much more worrisome to those concerned with the competitiveness of the American economy."
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Apr 3, 2012 -
54 comments
The Higher Education (Debt) Bubble - "[H]igh and increasing college costs mean students need to take out more loans, more loans mean more securities lenders can package and sell, more selling means lenders can offer more loans with the capital they raise, which means colleges can continue to raise costs. The result is over $800 billion in outstanding student debt, over 30 percent of it securitized, and the federal government directly or indirectly on the hook for almost all of it. If this sounds familiar, it probably should...
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on May 17, 2011 -
185 comments
Ken Lay & Enron. Bernie Madoff. Bernie Ebbers & WorldCom. What is it about CEOs that makes them uniquely capable of pulling off the most audacious & expensive kind of white collar crime?
Control Fraud Theory has the answer. Via the ever-enlightening
Bruce Schneier.
posted by scalefree
on Nov 8, 2010 -
37 comments
"What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street" - "
Looting Main Street" Matt Taibbi takes an in-depth look into how finance, deregulation, corruption, synthetic rate swaps, and greed decimated Birmingham, AL.
[more inside]
posted by The Whelk
on Apr 12, 2010 -
42 comments
... one wonders why [Goldman Sachs] and [JP Morgan] were so eager to provide "rescue" financings to virtually the entire distressed media space: both companies knew too well that sooner or later they would end up with full equity control over essentially the most coveted industry: thousands of TV stations, radio channels, newspaper and magazines.
(via) (previously)
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 23, 2009 -
16 comments
I asked Nathan Myhrvold, C.E.O. of Intellectual Ventures and widely considered to be one of the smartest people in technology, if he is brilliant. "If you put yourself in that camp, you might be correct," he teased. "But then, you're also an asshole." The Brilliant Issue profiles Porfolio's picks for best game-changers, upstarts, rebels, connectors and other influencers.
[more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur
on May 2, 2008 -
10 comments
EarthShell, a small Maryland company that makes environment-friendly packaging (
among others) may
wink out of existence thanks to
PIPEs, or private investments in public equities. Who likes PIPEs?
Hedge Funds, mostly. Companies that
take the pipe, as it were, may be sealing their doom.
10 percent of PIPE deals done this year are 'death spirals', where the company's stock price plummets from short selling by the financiers who structured the deal in the first place. And of course it's legal if
you don't get caught shorting the stock naked and covering with the shares from the PIPE.
(BTW, http://www.earthshell.com appears to be on the margins now or I'd have linked it).
posted by nj_subgenius
on Dec 27, 2006 -
24 comments
Plunging into the shadows: "In
thinly traded, lightly regulated and untransparent markets,
the bold can make an awful lot of money—and
they can lose it on an even more extravagant scale... In today's caffeine-fuelled dealing rooms, a barely regulated private-equity group could very well borrow money from syndicates of private lenders, including hedge funds, to spend on taking public companies private. At each stage,
risks can be converted into securities, sliced up, repackaged, sold on and sliced up again. The endless opportunities to
write contracts on underlying debt instruments explains why
the outstanding value of credit-derivatives contracts has rocketed to $26 trillion—$9 trillion more than six months ago, and seven times as much as in 2003."
posted by kliuless
on Sep 24, 2006 -
27 comments
Islamic finance --doing business according to
Shari'a. ...Pious Muslims are not allowed to invest in industries that have ties to tobacco, alcohol, weapons, pornography or pork products. Since the law prohibits banks from charging or paying interest, Noriba and other Islamic Financial Institutions (ifis) instead make money by using a system based on the sharing of capital gains or losses.
But even with post-Sept. 11 suspicions that Islamic banks may fund terrorist organizations, demand for the services of ifis is on the rise from the towers of Bahrain to the streets of London. Indeed, they represent one of banking's hottest sectors. ...
more here
Socially-conscious investing of a different sort?
posted by amberglow
on May 6, 2005 -
15 comments
Qwest Finds Buyer For QwestDex The buyer is a group led by the Carlyle Group and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe.
The question is: Why does an investment firm that primarily deals in Defense Contracts want a phone directory company? Tell me I'm just being paranoid.
posted by bas67
on Aug 20, 2002 -
7 comments
Rukeyser Out at Wall Street Week In Advance of 'Young' Format
The long-time host ever in search of 'value in today's markets' quit rather than accept a diminished role in a revamp of the show's format. Guest hosts will replace him next season until a permanent host is found.
PBS is quietly removing references to elves from the W$W website. The new show will be a co-production with Fortune Magazine. (Ick.) Guess
its Paul Kangas for me!
posted by rschram
on Mar 28, 2002 -
16 comments
