The financial-overhaul bill that will be signed into law by President Barack Obama on Wednesday won’t address one of the most far-reaching consequences of the recent crisis: Market power is concentrating in the hands of the nation’s largest banks. Fortified…
When Warren Buffett testifies before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Wednesday, it will be because he was subpoenaed. If you don’t know how a subpoena works, this one begins with capital letters, “YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to appear and give…
Alice Schroeder, author of the recent biography The Snowball: Warren Buffett And The Business of Life (2008), harshly criticized Buffett and the annual meeting on two counts in a piece yesterday for Bloomberg: “Buffett Turns Into One More Corporate Bubble”, Alice…
NOTE: Every week I write a Client Note for my clients. For a limited time, I am allowing non-clients to sign up and receive the Client Note. You can sign up at the top right hand corner of the website. …
Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture has been out in force lately defending the SEC’s case against Goldman. It started last Friday with this post: “10 Things You Don’t Know (Or Were Misinformed) About The GS Case”. That post was…
NOTE: Every week I write a Client Note for my clients. For a limited time, I am allowing non-clients to sign up and receive the Client Note. You can sign up at the top right hand corner of the website. …
Andrew Ross Sorkin has a wonderful piece on the story of Duane Read, the Manhattan based drug store chain with 257 stores in the New York Area that was acquired by Walgreen’s (WGN) last Wednesday, in today’s New York Times:…
We’re not in a recession. We’re in a depression. – Bobby Mahan, a local real estate broker Two years ago, Peter Goodman wrote an award winning piece on the real estate bust in Cape Coral, FL: “This Is The Sound…
The frontier between the state and market has shifted. The realm of the state has been enlarged. – Daniel Yergin, author of 1998’s The Commanding Heights which chronicled the ascent of free market forces starting in the 1980s, quoted in…
The government has moved in next door, and it ain’t leaving. You could fight it if you want, but soceity wants change. And government is not going away. – Jeff Immelt, CEO, General Electric, in June at the International Economic…