Archive for October, 2009

It seems like it’s taking forever and the zeal for regulatory reform is waning, but “there are a number of ideas being seriously considered in Washington D.C.,” according to Leo Tilman, president of L.M. Tilman & Co. and author of “Fina

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It is 9 o’clock in the evening and the brilliant reflections of Lower Manhattan’s neo-classical buildings stream through the mahogany blinds of a gargantuan office on the 29th floor of 85 Broad. They illuminate, just barely, a middle-aged man with a balding pate. He is pacing, agonizing like a present-day Hamlet about what to do with an amount of money that gives new meaning to what is, unmistakably, an embarrassment of riches. An unlit cigar dangling from the right side of his mouth (he’s no Jimmy Cayne after all), Lloyd Blankfein picks up a Goldman stress ball he picked up at…

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A year after the financial collapse of 2008, indeed some firms are reigning in risky behavior.”But, the rest of the financial industry does not warrant as much optimism,” says Leo Tilman, president of L.M. Tilman & Co. and author of “Fi

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The Dollar Index hit yet another 14-month low early Monday after a Chinese central bank official urged the PRC to diversify its reserves into more euro and yen. A stronger-than-expected GDP report in South Korea also put pressure on the greenback as trade

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The Obama administration’s New Foundation for financial regulatory reform aims to “provide the government with the tools it needs to manage financial crises.” In framing the discussion in terms of “new tools” the proposal implicitly repeats the Great Lie of last year’s bailouts: Namely, regulators lacked sufficient powers to manage the crises.
The perversity of the proposal is evident in the enumeration of powers requested. Under the plan, regulators would be given the authority over bank holding companies to establish receivership, provide loans, purchase…

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Have you ever stumbled on an oxymoron so stunning that it takes your breath away? Try coupling this with a case of chutzpah so revealing that the lack of shame on the part of those involved serves as prima fasci evidence that their elite cultural isolation has rendered them incapable of critical thinking.
Behold the “Independent Journalism Tax.”
In order to preserve independent journalism in the age of the Internet, a national Fund for Local News should be created with money the FCC now collects from or could impose on telecom users, television and radio broadcast licensees, or…

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From The Business Insider, Oct, 23, 2009: Nouriel Roubini believes that a “wall of liquidity” is chasing all
kinds of assets, yet once the economy disappoints expectations, it will
all come crashing down.
Yet for Dr. Doom, gold isn’t the answ

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With all the talk of excessive pay, which Wall Street heavyweights (if any) are worth their keep?Tech Ticker put that question before NY Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin - who chronicles the financial crisis in his new book, Too Big to Fail. …

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In “Too Big to Fail,” NY Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin provides behind-the-scenes details on the scramble of Wall Street during the great credit crisis of 2008.What’s interesting is how much of that scramble occurred before</I&g

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Big Government: Hardly a day passes without the unveiling of some new federal intrusion into our lives. At some point Americans must say “enough’s enough,” or sit silently as all our precious liberties are taken away.
The Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing through the most sweeping changes toward direct government control of our economy since at least the Great Depression. Consider just a few news items from recent days:
• The Senate moves to give the Food and Drug Administration huge new power over what we eat and drink, and what medicine we…

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As emerging-market nations develop into consumer economies, they’ll spawn new global brands that make great long-term investments. Here are 5 stocks with stellar prospects.

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The conditions that led to the October market crashes of 1929 and 1987 simply aren’t there today. But that doesn’t mean a wipeout couldn’t happen again.

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Crude oil prices surged to a 12-month high above $80/barrel Wednesday as the U.S.
dollar tumbled to a 14-month low, prompting investors to embrace hard assets such as oil and gold. (Oil prices slipped under $80/barrel Thursday as the dollar enjoyed a rep

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The last month or so has been a strong one from an M&A perspective, with Cisco making two $3bn acquisitions (Tandberg and Starent Networks), Intuit acquiring Mint for $170m and Adobe acquiring Omniture for $1.8bn – and that is just off the top of my head.

Take this activity and add the rumours circling about tech companies receiving pressure from shareholders to use some of their cash to make acquisitions and one could almost forget that it is only 13 months since Lehman filed for bankruptcy and people were predicting the end of capitalism.

In this context I thought you might be interested in the following list of cash holdings at leading tech companies.

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There is a lot of cash there which needs a home people.

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Ken Feinberg, Treasury’s special pay master for compensation, is cracking the whip on executive pay at the seven firms still getting extraordinary government support: Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, GM, Chrysler and both automakers’ finance units.Feinber

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