Mitch Feierstein

An interesting news item recently: When Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme collapsed, the man charged with recovering as much money as possible for the investors he swindled was Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee. In some ways, Picard has done a decent job. Faced with a horrible situation, he has...

Last week, on 21 May, the Financial Times ran a short piece which opened thus: "There has been no official announcement. No terms or conditions have been disclosed. But Greece's banking system is being propped up by an estimated €100 billion or so of emergency liquidity provided by...

Summer's coming. An election campaign's pending. Obama's in favor of gay marriage. Mitt Romney's trying to figure out his vice presidential pick. The mainstream media is trying to second-guess his choices even before they're even made.

But, guys, there are some big issues out here. You know, real ones...

A day at Wimbledon
This week, Mervyn King, the long-standing Governor of the Bank of England, said about the 2008 financial crisis, 'We should have shouted from the rooftops that a system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown...

Facebook is a phenomenal company. Mark Zuckerberg is a remarkable man and an astonishing entrepreneur. He's created something sensational -- something genuinely world-changing -- and he's young enough to be my son.

But Facebook the company is one thing. The mooted valuation of Facebook is quite another. I admire the...

There's a theory that you can't trust any message conveyed by a person's most public expressions and gestures. Instead, the theory runs, you have to study the fleeting look, the involuntary movement. The micro-expression that lasts a second or two, before the welcome smile is fixed in place.

That theory...

The largest, oldest living thing?

Blue whale? Giant redwood? Some kind of deep sea critter? No, no and no. The right answer is the honey mushroom. You'll see the thing growing out of trees in Oregon and Washington. It doesn't look particularly creepy, or at least no creepier than these...

Apple Inc. is a phenomenon. One of the most remarkable companies in history. It makes products which I personally adore. It has revolutionized so many consumer markets, it's hard to overstate the company's effect on our lives. Steve Jobs once said he wanted to put a ding in the universe....

It's OK for firms to make money. That's what they're there to do. But real firms, durable ones, the ones who care about their reputation, their future, and the generations that come after, have figured out...

The Obama campaign has launched a new film. It's beautifully shot. (No wonder: Davis Guggenheim was the director.) It's beautifully narrated. (No wonder: Tom Hanks is behind the mike.) It's got a beautiful story arc. Lighting's great. Hey, I'm no judge of these things, but whoever...

The financial turmoil of recent years has produced an outpouring of op-eds, news stories, books and essays seeking to document and analyze the unfolding disaster. Some of the material has been written by insiders, some by those from the outside. Some by experts, some by astonished laypeople. It's a mass...

It might not feel that way to you, but we've just lived through one of the greatest bull markets in history. Almost exactly three years ago, the S&P 500 stood at 683, a decline of more than half from its highs of 2007.

It wasn't hard to understand that decline....

Last month, gasoline prices hit their highest ever level for February -- an eye-watering $4.69 per gallon in Manhattan. Predictably, since this is an election year, politicians vie to cast the blame onto others.

Barack Obama is most obviously in the firing line: he's been president for three years. Why...

It's odd, life, the way it overturns your assumptions. You think that if everyone knows something isn't going to work, they won't invest a lot in trying to do it. You think if failure is going to be horrendous, people would take steps to avoid failure.

But it's not like...

Oliver Twist famously got in trouble because he had the temerity to ask for more. He made that request in a world where street kids were meant to accept their gruel with gratitude not outrage, and humility not grumbles.

In our modern world, we tend to assume things have moved...

Those of us who comment on matters of business and economics often find ourselves in a strange double-bind. The issues we're commenting on may be among the most pressing, most urgent, most tangled matters in the national journey -- but, to 90 something percent of readers, they're dull. Not only...

You can already check off the foreign affairs issues that are going to dominate this election cycle. Iran. Israel. North Korea. The rise of China. Pakistan. Afghanistan. Global jihad. Drug crime in Mexico. Oil security.

Don't get me wrong. Those things are all important. If the frigid stand-off between Iran...