Archive for the ‘Bank Management’ Category

The Future Structure of Financial Institutions: Will the Fed Swallow the Investment Banks?

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

In the June 24th WSJ (“Maybe It’s Time to Put the Banks and the Investment Banks Back Together.”) Dennis Berman forecasts the demise of investment banks. I could not disagree more with his thesis, that transaction-based institutions have become obsolete, since their ratios of risk to anticipated return have ...

Four Credit Crisis Fallacies: Why We are Not Solving the Problems of The Financial System

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Most citizens, we are told, take a cynical view of both Wall Street and Washington. It has given life to the candidacy of Barak Obama, perhaps. Do people of experience with The Street trust Washington to fix the problem? I don’t. I’ll tell you why. We are addressing problems we ...

As One Storm Ends, Another Comes: The Australian Merger Melee

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

It was semi-prophetic the way that the big four Aussie banks announced to the world months ago their robust and healthy capital positions, leaving them well placed to secure the smaller, struggling financials when the sub-prime turmoil ended. I began to wonder soon after, however, whether this was nothing more ...

The Shape of Regulators to Come.

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, speaking on March 26th, began to reveal the details of coming regulatory reform. Two factors stand out. First, the regulatory apparatus will be made simpler, probably involving the Federal Reserve swallowing The Comptroller of the Currency and The FDIC and perhaps assuming some of ...