Category: US News

Do as I say, not as I did: Part 2, what I did

4 November, 2009 (16:05) | Capital markets, Finance, Policy, Regulation, TARP, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
Yesterday we had brave words and sound logic from Kenneth Feinberg, Treasury’s ’special master for compensation,’ who as quoted in the Wall Street Journal (quotes in blue Times Roman), hopes his new standards “will be voluntarily picked up” throughout corporate America.
 

You’ll pick it up if you know what’s good for you
 
He [...]

Do as I say, not as I did: Part 1, what I say

3 November, 2009 (12:22) | Capital markets, Finance, Policy, Regulation, TARP, US News | No comments

When we catch someone saying one thing and doing another, the juxtaposition is too much fun to resist – as in this case where the government, with full righteousness, said one thing only weeks after having done the exact opposite.
 
The huge banking institution is giving their new CFO compensation worth as much as $5.5 million. [...]

Microfinance, American style: Part 2, the good

27 October, 2009 (10:43) | Capital markets, Finance, Innovations, Microfinance, Regulation, Subprime, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s post opened the topic of payday lending as exploitive microfinance, designed not to maximize the borrower’s well-being but rather to hold that borrower on the razor’s edge of permanent default, as illustrated by this article from the Washington Post:
 
Meanwhile, big companies are muscling into a sector that [...]

Microfinance, American style: Part 1, the bad

26 October, 2009 (12:13) | Capital markets, Finance, Innovations, Microfinance, Regulation, Subprime, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
In business, does motivation matter?  Or are markets sufficiently rational that our apologias are meaningless, and we should be judged exclusively by our actions?  This philosophical question lies submerged under every new lender and loan product, for every action – extending or denying credit, charging too high a rate – can be [...]

In praise of folly: Part 2, the financials

23 October, 2009 (10:23) | Architecture, Boston, Humor, Redevelopment, Speculation, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
In yesterday’s post, I expended several hundred words in a possibly-unnecessary exercise – intellectually demolishing the feasibility of architectural speculations, presented in the Boston Globe, that I believe even their proponents would concede are whimsical fantasies, never intended to exist beyond CAD/CAM screens and jpegs. 
 
They represent an [...]