Financial Markets

March 29, 2009 The Civil Heretic By NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of [...]

[Read more →]

Gaussian copula and credit derivatives Steven Hsu, Prof of Physicss, Univ of Oregon Monday, September 12, 2005 This WSJ article describes a mathematical innovation that helped create the now huge market for credit derivatives. Credit derivatives let banks, hedge funds and other investors trade the risk associated with credit defaults (i.e. bankruptcy of bond issuers). Just as [...]

[Read more →]

  MAY 2009 The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of [...]

[Read more →]

Tom’s testimony today Statement submitted By  Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, Senior Managing Director, Enterra Solutions LLC  To  Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee, United States Congress 26 March 2009    I appear before the subcommittee today to provide my professional analysis of the current global security environment and future conflict trends, concentrating [...]

[Read more →]

The Obama Administration and the Former Soviet Union U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration seems to be largely focused on South Asia and the Middle East. Yet one of Washington’s biggest challenges will come from its old foe: Russia. Obama’s team must make some major decisions regarding Russia and American influence in Eurasia — decisions that [...]

[Read more →]

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover Rollingstone.com Back to The Big Takeover The Big Takeover The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution MATT TAIBBI Posted Mar 19, 2009 12:49 PM It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered [...]

[Read more →]

The USA owes China $740B and the USA continues to beg China ad Japan buy more bonds in the next several years while we spend like a profligate drunkard.   Like Chavez (cash has run out), who is telling creditors that he will give them useless paper (like we do bonds) or turn on the [...]

[Read more →]

Excellent review : economics, marketing, politics Seven Reasons Why the Coke-Huiyuan Deal Failed March 19, 2009    David Wolf Just after the Ministry of Commerce announced that it had rejected Coca-Cola’s (KO) bid for Chinese juice-maker Huiyuan, I got a message from a very astute friend of mine who noted “that deal was dead the [...]

[Read more →]

Credit Default Swaps – Exercises in Surrealism March 16, 2009 5:35 AM |  Satyajit Das At the quantum level, the laws of classical physics alter in intriguing ways. In financial markets, at the derivative level, the rules of finance also operate differently.The derivative industry’s indefatigable advocacy of credit default swaps (“CDS”) centers on the fact [...]

[Read more →]

Reform the architecture of regulation Financial Times 17-Mar-2009 By Henry Paulson In the midst of the market turmoil, the pressing priority for US and global policymakers is to repair the financial system and restore the economy. Just as important, however, will be addressing the serious flaws exposed by this crisis. This process of reflection and [...]

[Read more →]