In the 1987 movie classic Wall Street, the sinister protagonist Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas gives this famous quote:

In the last seven deals that I’ve been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Since that time, this quote has become famous as the “Greed is Good” philosophy of capitalism.

I recently switched from a Windows Mobile telephone to an Android-based mobile phone.  When I was making the switch, I had to decide whether I was going with the iPhone, which my wife uses. or to run with Blackberry or Android, a Google-centric operating system (Symbian, which runs Nokia phones, and the Palm-based OS look [...]

Marshall Auerback sent me a link to a recent Simon Johnson missive about Goldman Sachs. I had already seen and liked this article, but his e-mail prompted me to write this post. My question is: Why is Goldman a bank holding company?
Goldman becomes a bank
The reason Goldman became a bank to begin with is because [...]

In light of recent comments made by both living former Federal Reserve Chairmen, I thought it appropriate to look back 22 years to the succession from Volcker to Greenspan.  What follows is a blurb from a New York Times article circa 1987, which highlights the appointment of Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve [...]

Last week I was at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting to listen to their ideas on how to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems like poverty and education. I may have more to say about this topic in a later post, but I wanted to first address the too-big-to-fail issue which became [...]

At issue here is the news that the Obama Administration dropped plans to force financial institutions to offer “plain vanilla” financial products that are simple enough for consumers to understand. My headline is editorial enough on this issue.  So, rather than editorialize this latest announcement, I’ll quote from the press.

The beginning of the end of [...]

In the latest inexplicable move to extricate the U.S. banking system from crisis, the FDIC is reportedly close to asking the very banks it regulates for a loan to top up its balances. The plan is “strongly supported by bankers and their lobbyists” according to the New York Times.
Are you kidding me? This is [...]

Sheila Bair has run out of options to seize banks because the FDIC’s coffers are running dry.  Now she either needs to tap taxpayer money via a loan from the Treasury or she has to raise funds through a special assessment on banks, who are already capital-constrained.
Via Reuters:
U.S. bank regulators are considering tapping a line [...]

The following post appeared on Wednesday at Rick Bookstaber’s new blog. Bookstaber is a market veteran who has long and storied history of achievement. He worked at Bridgewater Associates, ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint Partners and was in charge of risk management at Moore Capital Management amongst other things.
Of particular relevance here, Bookstaber [...]

I am astounded at how quickly we have returned to the pre-crisis days of yore. Credit spreads are down, the stock market is up, volatility is down, earnings are up and bonuses are up.  It looks like happy days are here again.
But, I can’t help thinking this is all too much and too soon.  It’s [...]