My review of Christopher de Bellaigue's masterful biography of Muhammad Mossadegh http://t.co/tGrHWesY
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Finance & Markets Channel: Latest Posts
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Finance & Markets
Earth to Dimon: Banks Don’t Have a Right to Profit
Cross-posted from the New York Times Room for Debate… Preventing blow-ups like the JPMorgan “hedge” that bears no resemblance to any known hedge isn’t difficult. What makes preventing it difficult is that banks that exist only by virtue of state-granted charters — and more recently, huge transfers from the public — have persuaded public officials [...]
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Finance & Markets
How Facebook Screwed Up Its Own IPO
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man [...]
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Finance & Markets
Jamie Dimon Should Resign from the Board of the New York Fed
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, is a member of the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Mr. Dimon’s role there is sometimes presented as “advisory” but he sits on the Management and Budget Committee; here is the committee’s charter, which includes reviewing and endorsing “the framework for compensation of the Bank’s [...]
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Europe
Weighing the Week Ahead – Any Help from the European Summit?
The turmoil in Greece and the potential contagion have once again taken center stage. While the economic and debt problems are well-known, the question for many is why should Greece be so important? The answer lies in whether there is a threat to global financial stability, or whether the rest of the world will experience [...]
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Europe
Possible Endings for the Greek Drama
I did not set out to write a trilogy about Europe, but the market is telling us that nothing else matters right now. My long-standing position is that Europe is engaged in a normal democratic political process with a very large number of contending parties. In such matters it is difficult to predict the exact [...]
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Finance & Markets
Geithner to Dimon: Resign from the Board of the New York Fed
In an interview Thursday on PBS NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had the following exchange: “JEFFREY BROWN: Do you think Jamie Dimon should be off the board [of the New York Federal Reserve Board]? TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Well, that’s a question he’ll have to make and the Fed will have to make. But again, [...]
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Finance & Markets
Break Them Up
This was unexpected: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said Thursday that banks deemed “too big to fail” should be split up. “We do not need these companies to be as big as they are,” Bullard said. His remarks come a week after J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. disclosed a $2 billion [...]
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Finance & Markets
A Brief History Lesson: How We Ended Glass Steagall
So I am researching the history of Glass Steagall for a new project, and I am continually amazed to learn the details how this law was slowly overturned. It is an informative lesson in tenacity of gradual erosion, how bank lobbyists can slowly sand away rules, with a healthy does of regulatory capture thrown in. [...]
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Finance & Markets
Why Markets Won’t Fix JPMorgan
Jonathan Macey, a former professor of mine at Yale Law School,* recently wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (paywall; excerpts here) arguing that we shouldn’t worry about JPMorgan’s recent trading loss because market forces will ensure that the bank does a better job next time. Here’s a key paragraph: “Thus, far from serving as [...]
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Finance & Markets
Oil and Gasoline Prices
Here I comment on some recent developments affecting oil and gasoline prices. There is no oil shortage in the central United States, and has not been for some time, thanks to increased production from Canadian oil sands, North Dakota, and the Midwest United States: Source: Borenstein and Kellogg (2012). At the same time, demand [...]
