At Glenbrook, we’ve been watching rising interest rates and vacillating economic conditions over the course of the year; while economists debate the likelihood of further rate hikes and the odds of a near-term recession, we dig into the real impact of these uncertain...
Welcome to the May installment of Payments Post, where we’re highlighting the news that got Glenbrook talking. The common thread that emerged in May was the American consumer. We observed a burst of news highlighting technology reshaping how American consumers make...
Business evolution—whether it’s automotive, bioscience, or in the payments industry—proceeds along a predictable path of incremental improvements and optimization. Until it doesn’t and a step function takes effect. Last year was sleepy compared to what we can expect...
It's the holidays and the online retail sales are… well… who knows? We're seeing data points all over the map. comScore is reporting better-than-they-expected 4% growth over the the previous year. U.S. online holiday spending has grown 4% to nearly $21 billion during...
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 you,...
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...
The December job loss numbers are not pretty and the markets are down. A good summary at MarketBeat and particularly nice graphics at the NYT (the charts are linked by animation at their site).
CFO.com wraps up it's end of the year compilations with a list of the most popular articles on how corporate finance can deal with the crisis and manage its impact on company strategy (much better than rehashing all the bad news!) Well worth exploring: Downturn...
This does not bode well. Fed Statement is here. Coverage: New York Times Wall Street Journal Paul Krugman's Blog Bloomberg
It's official. We entered a recession in December 2007. Read the statement from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) here. Coverage: Wall Street Journal New York Times The Economist Free Exchange Blog Bloomberg
