Category: Essential posts

The biggest invisible stories of the decade: Part 6, rule changes with the game in progress

12 January, 2010 (11:17) | Capital markets, Decade, Essential posts, Global news, Innovations, Regulation, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday’s Part 5 and the preceding and Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4]
 
During 2007 and 2008, what we thought merely a sector-restricted problem became a full-blown crisis.
 

That water costs money, you know
 

This is a major, seven-part post, best read in order.
 
If you’ve just arrived, we recommend [...]

The biggest invisible stories of the decade: Part 5, the wrong zags

11 January, 2010 (13:36) | Capital markets, Decade, Essential posts, Global news, Innovations, Regulation, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 4, and the preceding Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.]
 

By 2006, asset slides had crested and were slowly sliding.  It was time for the world to zig.
 

This is a major, seven-part post, best read in order.
 
If you’ve just arrived, we recommend jump back to Part 1 and [...]

The biggest invisible stories of the decade: Part 4, the 2006 crest

8 January, 2010 (11:46) | Capital markets, Decade, Essential posts, Global news, Innovations, Regulation, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday’s Part 3, and the preceding Part 1 and Part 2.]
 
Halfway through the decade, the world as a whole was experiencing perhaps the greatest runup in aggregate global asset prices ever seen; though the situation appeared to be cresting, no one foresaw imminent collapse.
 

This is a major, seven-part post, [...]

The biggest invisible stories of the decade: Part 3, tangles in the financial web

7 January, 2010 (12:34) | Capital markets, Decade, Essential posts, Global news, Innovations, Regulation, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday’s Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]
 
By 2002, as we’ve seen in the two preceding parts, expansionary pressures on global capital were bringing forces into alignment with means, motive, and opportunity to push asset prices up. 
 

This is a major, seven-part post, best read in order.
 
If you’ve just arrived, [...]

The biggest invisible stories of the decade: Part 2, dematerialization of global capital

6 January, 2010 (11:18) | Capital markets, Decade, Essential posts, Global news, Innovations, Regulation, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
In this retrospective on the naughty Aughties, I’m concentrating on the biggest hidden stories, the ones we should have noticed but didn’t.  Yesterday we opened the decade with two of them:
 
2000: David Li publishes On Default Correlation: A Copula Function Approach.
1999: Franklin Raines succeeds Jim Johnson at Fannie [...]