You would expect that a publication with a libertarian tilt like The Economist would not look favorably at the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. They call it Too big not to fail. Being The Economist, the article argues with the facts on its side. Dodd-Frank: 848 pages Federal Reserve Act of 1913: … Read more »
Tag: The Economist
Telling the Truth During Earnings Calls
Is the CEO or CFO lying during the quarterly earnings call? How can you tell? David F. Larcker and Anastasia A. Zakolyukina of the Stanford Graduate School of Business turned to the rich data set of quarterly calls and subsequent financial restatements. After studying Q&A sections of transcripts of hundreds of calls with CEOs and … Read more »
Taxonomy and Compliance
Compliance often has to deal with a great big piles of data. When tackling a big pile of data, it helps to organize the data into a taxonomy. The taxonomy helps with analysis. Of course, just by choosing the nodes in the taxonomy you are influencing the view of the data. I was struck by … Read more »
The Economist: Special Report on Financial Risk
This week’s The Economist has an excellent special report: The Gods Strike Back. The title comes from Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods: “The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that … Read more »
The Economist Special Report on Social Networking.
“An astonishing amount of time is being wasted on investigating the amount of time being wasted on social networks.” I love reading The Economist because of lines like that. The January 28 issue has a special report on social networking. (The cover image is Steve Jobs dressed like Moses with his new tablet) “Another [report], … Read more »
Iceland’s Meltdown
With all of the focus in the United States on the collapse of Bear Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merril Lynch, we may be a bit myopic in not noticing other issues around the world. Iceland stands out as a country that has really run into trouble. As Michael Lewis wrote in Wall Street on … Read more »
When Markets Turn
The Economist ran a special report on the future of finance last week. One item caught my eye – When Markets Turn: A Parable of How Modern Finance Can Go Wrong. The story looks back at the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. The article puts some of the lessons of that funds … Read more »
Facebook and Airlines
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic both ran into trouble when their employees posted nasty remarks about their customers on Facebook. This raises the question about whether the companies did enough to educate their employees about the proper use of social networking. See: The Economist: Losing Face The Guardian: Virgin Sacks 13 Over Facebook ‘chav’ Remarks … Read more »
From Burden to Benefit: Making the most of regulatory risk management
The Economist Intelligence Unit published an executive briefing: From Burden to Benefit: Making the most of regulatory risk management (executive summary) (full report .pdf). It is an irony of modern business that regulation, a concept designed to reduce risk by protecting the interests of corporates, customers and society at large, has itself become one of … Read more »
Bribery and Corruption Have Become Endemic in Russia
The Economist ran a special report on Russia. The article that caught my eye was Grease My Palm. In looking at the scope of the problem in Russia, the articel cites the corruption market being estimated at $300 billion, which is about 20% of Russia’s GDP. INDEM (a Russian NGO) says 80% of all Russian … Read more »