I spent most of 2008 and early 2009 completely obsessed with the credit crisis (evidenced by this index of the best crisis coverage I created just over a year ago). Reading this Andrew Ross Sorkin piece in tomorrow's New York Times got me all riled up again: What...
If there is a silver lining to the credit crisis and resulting economic woes, it is renewed energy in the supplier financing space. As a B2B e-payment evangelizer, I’ve long considered dynamic supplier financing a potential “killer app” to drive broad adoption of...
In case you've been wondering where things stand with government bailout funds the WSJ has an interactive graphic. You can sort by program (Automotive Industry Financing Program, etc.), by recipient company, by date, by amount, etc. (hat tip to Barry...
I've been trying to enjoy the little culture skirmish that surfaced last week as media watchdog Jon Stewart of the Comedy Central took comedian Jim Cramer of CNBC to task for failing to warn the public that the valuation of houses, equities, municipal bonds,...
In his New Yorker column this week titled "House of Cards", James Surowiecki writes about how some US credit card issuers are trying to shed some of their existing customers.In effect, they’re trying to follow the advice given by Larry Selden and Geoffrey Colvin in...
Late last week, Thomas M. Hoenig, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, gave a speech in Omaha titled "Too Big Has Failed".A lesson to be drawn from Continental is that even large banks can be dealt with in a manner that...
This week NPR's This American Life adds to it's excellent series of podcasts explaining the credit crisis in every day lay terms with an hour long program on bad banks: The collapse of the banking system explained, in just 59 minutes. Our crack economics team—the...
Amid increased government ownership of Citibank, persistent rumors that BofA is next, and announcement of the Obama administration's budget, there has been increasingly loud debate over bank nationalization. The media pundits and blogosphere are a cry with claims...
The Economist observes that the downfall of the telecom industry (1997-2003) offers foreboding lessons for today's bankers. Just like banks, telecoms had imperial bosses, kamikaze deals and incomprehensible jargon—if collateralised-debt obligations troubled...
Today's Globe and Mail has an interview by its economics reporter, Heather Scoffield, with Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson regarding the current financial crisis. In what is frankly a pretty depressing assessment of the crisis, Ferguson suggests:It is bound to...
