The response to volatile markets is not plain-vanilla financial products, but more complex products that use market mechanisms to cope with uncertainty. Plain vanilla can be as ugly as adjustable-rate mortgages.
Robert Teitelman | Posted 10.05.2009 | Business
New York Times' reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin's excerpt microscopically examines the actions of some key regulatory and Wall Street players, in this case during the period immediately after Lehman failed.
Robert Teitelman | Posted 11.14.2009 | Business
The real lesson of the Lehman meltdown and failure may turn out to be that it was not a deep enough shock to change a political and economic system that seems to require liquidity-driven growth.
Robert Teitelman | Posted 11.08.2009 | Business
As a sector, what is the optimal size for finance? And how far should we shrink it down to achieve the kind of real growth that will reduce unemployment and drive incomes across the board?
Robert Teitelman | Posted 09.24.2009 | Business
Were we crazy to believe, or at least fear, that we were heading into a depression in December?
Robert Teitelman | Posted 09.06.2009 | Business
This was a Katrina-like failing. A disaster was clearly building and defenses were weak. What were the Fed and Treasury doing in those key months between Bear and Lehman?
Robert Teitelman | Posted 08.08.2009 | Media
We lean toward advisers and investors, not traders, and I would argue that many business and finance magazines have lost their way because they no longer know whom they're writing for or why.
Robert Teitelman | Posted 08.06.2009 | Media
We should all try harder to write more accessibly. But can the complexity of finance (and economics) be effectively captured by the kind of simple explanations required by an audience that barely knows the basics?
Robert Teitelman | Posted 07.17.2009 | Business
Nobody just announces anything anymore. Before anyone in Washington can get lunch, it has to be leaked, briefed, previewed in speeches, summarized in ...
Robert Teitelman | Posted 07.12.2009 | Business
In the run-up to testimony by Bank of America chief Ken Lewis on the Merrill Lynch & Co. affair, e-mails are suddenly leaking from the Beltway colander, though their ultimate source, strangely enough, is that opaque wonderland, the Federal Reserve.
Robert Teitelman | Posted 06.28.2009 | Business
Will an all-powerful Fed retain its traditional autonomy, or will it take orders from Treasury, the White House and Congress?
Robert Teitelman | Posted 06.19.2009 | Business
The irony of Buffett is that his talent and his will are unfathomable, but his flaws are not. The one thing we can truly understand about him is the part of him that's just like the rest of us.
Robert Teitelman | Posted 10.19.2009 | Business