Economists and Opacity
Since the beginning of the Great Financial Crisis, I have met too many PhD Economists to count who accept the idea opacity... Read More
Investment Returns, Timing and Opacity
The Transparency Label Initiative has the potential to significantly improve investors’ returns. Why? Timing. There is a big difference between blindly betting... Read More
Do Investors Know They Have Blindly Bet $3+ Trillion?
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Have asset managers told investors (the people and firms who actually put up the money) they have blindly bet the investors’ money... Read More
“Liquidity Dies in Darkness”
Zero Hedge carried a very interesting post on the increasingly opaque debt markets. Its conclusion: Yet while passive investing dominates on the... Read More
If Investors …
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I am frequently asked “if investors want more information, why don’t they just ask for it?”. The short answer is investors do... Read More
Deutsche Bank Still Relying on “Trust Us” in Setting up Bad Bank
Ultimately, the opacity of Deutsche Bank and the bad bank it is setting up prevents the market from being able to answer... Read More
Morningstar joins rather than disrupts rating firms
Recently, Morningstar announced a large acquisition aimed at making it more competitive with and possibly gain entry into the S&P, Moody’s and... Read More
Opaque Securities and Certificate of Dumb Investment
Bloomberg’s Matt Levine recently wrote about what he calls a Certificate of Dumb Investment that investors should sign before buying certain investments.... Read More
Stress Tests and the Black Hole Surrounding Derivatives
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Regular readers know I have been consistently critical of the Office for Financial Research. Today, courtesy of Pam and Russ Martens, it... Read More
The Arsonists’, aka The Committee to Save the Banks, New Book: Firefighting
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The Committee to Save the Banks (Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner) is out with a new book defending their mismanagement... Read More
Opacity, Derivatives and Financial Crises
In a terrific article, Pam and Russ Martens highlight why opacity is the necessary condition for a financial crisis and how nothing... Read More
Economist Susan Strange and the Opacity Protection Team
Have you ever wondered why shortly after the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis ended transparency wasn’t restored to the opaque... Read More
Economists Admit Financial Crises Originate in the Shadows
MIT’s Kristin Forbes and Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff recently observed risk has migrated beyond the regulatory perimeter into the shadows of the global... Read More
What Will Cause the Next Financial Crisis?
Economist Brad DeLong looked for the source of the next significant economic downturn and shows just how close an economist can get... Read More
The Myth of Financial Regulators Anticipating a Crisis
Financial regulators remind me of the drunk looking for his lost car keys under the street light because that is where the... Read More