Five agencies sign off but the battle of interpretation has just begun
regulation
Do “Dark Pools” Threaten the Health of America’s Financial Markets?
NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX Group – the corporate parents of the America’s biggest stock exchanges – headed to Capitol Hill this week to lobby regulators about a nefarious-sounding phenomenon spreading across Wall Street …
Has Facebook Jinxed the IPO Market for Everyone?
Facebook’s post-IPO meltdown has certainly been bad news for investors who got into the stock at its initial price — or higher. Is it also bad news for the IPO market as a whole?
The Best and Worst States in America to Do Business
Chief Executive Magazine has released its annual list of best and worse states to do business, and Southern and Mountain-West states dominated the rankings — to the detriment of the two coasts. The top five states in the survey, …
ALEC: What It Does and Why Three Major Corporations Cut Ties
When America’s corporate titans shift their weight, the tremors travel fast. Last week, Coca-Cola, Kraft and accounting software giant Intuit announced that they were ending their membership with a conservative non-profit group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The news sent reporters scrambling to explain what …
How Entrepreneurship Can Fix Young America
The U.S. government is being strangled by partisan politics. Youth employment is at a 60-year low. Student-loan debt is approaching $1 trillion (and default rates are rising quickly).
Yet young Americans are far more …
“I’m a real believer in the power of free markets. But free markets need rules. If those rules aren’t sensible or if they go unenforced, then markets don’t work well.”
Will the U.S. Government Break Up Google?
The power of Google to determine what information we see, and when, is enormous. Apparently, the U.S. government is worried Google has abused that power.
The Federal Trade Commission is on the verge of opening a formal civil investigation to see if Google has stifled competition on the Web. The FTC has been unofficially watching …
“History suggests that business doesn’t always know what’s good for it.”
Don’t Blame Regulators for Stock Drop
The market is down again today and one of the reasons people have cited for the recent 800 point drop in the Dow is that investors are worried about the bank regulations coming out of the Obama administration. The first part of the argument is that Obama’s plan to tax the banks and limit what they can and can’t do will hurt profits of …
Why Bank Investors Should Cheer the Volcker Rule
The consensus seems to be that Obama’s proposal to limit the operations of the banks to lending and securities underwriting, and not proprietary trading and hedge fund investing, if enacted, would be bad for banks and bank shareholders. Many pointed to the so-called Volcker rule to explain last week’s market sell-off. Like Ritholtz, I’m …