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strategy
by leon on March 1, 2009
We all know the aviation industry is in serious trouble. The global credit crisis has hit demand badly with reports showing that passenger traffic has fallen 5.6% while air cargo shipments plunged 23...
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corporate crime
by leon on February 28, 2009
One year after his incarceration, convicted fraudster Conrad Black seems to be adjusting to life in the slammer. In an interview with the National Post's Theresa Tedesco, done via email, Black sa...
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markets
by leon on February 28, 2009
Barack Obama's rescue package won't fix the problem, says economist James K Galbraith.In his testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, reported here, Galbraith says the problem is ...
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risk
by leon on February 28, 2009
When are they going to take this company off life support? General Motors has lost billions more than we expected with its latest result.The question is whether the funds from the US Government keepi...
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markets
by leon on February 28, 2009
Why do the analysts and forecasters keep getting it so wrong? Going from the predictions, you can see they haven't yet twigged that things are a lot worse than they're making out. The situati...
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markets
by leon on February 27, 2009
Obama's first speech to the joint session of Congress failed to ease the market's concerns about the recession and the outlook of the banking sector. The problem with the speech was that it w...
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corporate governance
by leon on February 27, 2009
Last month, I did a blog entry slagging off at the Apple board and its total failure of corporate governance, keeping shareholders in the dark about Steve Jobs, his health and the likelihood or other...
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risk
by leon on February 26, 2009
And so the death watch watch continues. With the New York Times on the edge, and with Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, which owns The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, and Tribune Co....
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markets
by leon on February 25, 2009
Write it down, store it away and let's take a look at it next year. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke says the US recession could end in 2009 and recover in 2010. That, of course, is assuming...
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strategy
by leon on February 24, 2009
The financial meltdown was not brought on by sleaze and greed. According to writer, Daniel Gross, it was caused by dumb money. Plugging his latest book, he explains more here."The Dumb Money cre...
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markets
by leon on February 24, 2009
Is Obama clearing the way for the nationalization of US banks?Look carefully at the joint statement put out this week by Treasury, FDIC, OCC, OTS and the Federal Reserve."Any government capital ...
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risk
by leon on February 24, 2009
The meltdown from the credit crisis, combined with a 74% drop in oil prices, is hurting Dubai which has the world's tallest building, most expensive hotel suite and largest man made islands. Duba...
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markets
by leon on February 24, 2009
Last week's speculation that Citigroup and Bank of America would be nationalized really hammered the market, prompting White press secretary Robert Gibbs to come out and say the administration wi...
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corporate crime
by leon on February 22, 2009
With the fallout from the goings-on at the Stanford Financial Group, a clear and worrying pattern is emerging. Allen Stanford and Bernard Madoff are the first two big frauds that have come out of thi...
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markets
by leon on February 21, 2009
With billionaire investor George Soros and former federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker saying the global financial meltdown is worse than the Great Depression, it might be time to look at Dent's...
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markets
by leon on February 21, 2009
How bad is the recession? The latest figures from Hormel Foods, maker of Spam, tell us things are bad and getting worse.While Hormel's profit fell 8%, the data showed strong sales of Spam as cons...
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markets
by leon on February 20, 2009
The book from Morris provides some interesting insights into the market's implosion.It's not that we didn't have any warning. Morris makes the point that the collateralised mortgage oblig...
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corporate crime
by leon on February 19, 2009
Barbara Amiel, the big-spending wife of jailed fraudster Conrad Black, has come out with a most extraordinary defense of the banking community. While most of us accept that bankers have created the w...
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markets
by leon on February 19, 2009
Last week, I did a blog entry that said US banks were insolvent and quoting Dr Doom, economics professor Nouriel Roubini, saying that the only answer is to nationalize the US banks.Now we have the hi...
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markets
by leon on February 18, 2009
And so the bailout continues. Last week, I did a blog entry looking at whether GM and Chrysler will go bust. Now the two companies are begging for more, with GM saying it could need as much as $30 bi...
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risk
by leon on February 18, 2009
The world's banking crisis is hitting Eastern Europe with Russian stocks going into free fall.The Financial Times reports that Moody's says Eastern Europe is looking increasingly vulnerable. ...
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markets
by leon on February 18, 2009
The latest book from political and economic pundit Phillips is a sobering reflection of how we got into this mess.Phillips identifies the problem coming from three structural issues. The first is tha...
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risk
by leon on February 18, 2009
Towards the end of last year, I did a blog entry looking at how California was a bigger bankruptcy risk than Slovakia. In retrospect, that was unfair to Slovakia which has been growing quite well, al...
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Ethics
by leon on February 17, 2009
Private military contractor (hush, let's not use the word mercenary) Blackwater is rebranding itself. Its futuristic new name is Xe (pronounced, as my American friends do, like the last letter of...
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corporate crime
by leon on February 17, 2009
We have talked many times about the way the Securities and Exchange Commission had looked the other way and allowed Bernard Madoff to get away with his fraud.Now, the New York Post reports that banke...
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markets
by leon on February 15, 2009
Paul Krugman's book lays it on the line well, with its acute analysis of how things went wrong.One of the most striking features about this book is the way Krugman tracks economic meltdowns over ...
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risk
by leon on February 13, 2009
Trust in the US financial system and in Government has crashed to alarming levels.According to the latest Chicago Booth - Kellog School Financial Trust Index, which surveyed more than 1000 American h...
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markets
by leon on February 13, 2009
The big US banks are technically insolvent. Finance experts say they are like dead men walking, which in itself raises questions about the Obama administration's rescue package.According to the N...
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strategy
by leon on February 12, 2009
All over the world, companies are cutting costs by putting their workers on a four day week. But are developments at KPMG a sign of the future? An Accountancy Age report says that 70% of KPMG staff i...
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corporate crime
by leon on February 12, 2009
How much did Ruth Madoff know about her husband Bernard's shenanigans. According to a New York Times report last month, she might have been completely in the dark, only finding out about her husb...
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Ethics
by leon on February 11, 2009
Hard to believe this is still happening.The Independent reports that northern Ireland's environment minister, Sammy Wilson, has banned ads urging people to fight climate change because he doesn&#...
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regulators
by leon on February 11, 2009
Markets slumped when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled his rescue plan and for good reason too. The fundamental problem is that there just isn't enough detail. The plan is to to purcha...
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risk
by leon on February 11, 2009
Irony of ironies. Will the bailout of US automakers lead to them going out of business? Will it send GM and Chryler bankrupt?That's the question now being raised. As Forbes points out, the compan...
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risk
by leon on February 10, 2009
In his book The Subprime Solution, economist Robert Shiller warns that in good times people are willing to co-operate and accommodate others but when optimism for the future turns sour, they become a...
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strategy
by leon on February 10, 2009
The downturn is changing human behavior and consumer spending patterns. People are learning to live on less and that will change society, and demands on business. It might also open up new wealth opp...
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risk
by leon on February 10, 2009
As if it's not enough that governments in the developed world are headed deep into deficit - the US budget deficit for instance could very well top $2 trillion - to fight the global financial mel...
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risk
by leon on February 9, 2009
The terrible fires that have killed at least 135 people, and the number is rising, and destroyed towns and communities in my home state of Victoria in Australia is a warning to the rest of the world....
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regulators
by leon on February 8, 2009
In a post last week, I talked about the total lack of transparency in the US Government's bank bailout package. The upshot is that it's likely to mean taxpayers' money is going down the d...
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markets
by leon on February 8, 2009
Some seriously scary forecasts from Martin Weiss at Money and Markets. If the forecasts are right, it rebuffs any claim that things are going to get better in the second half of this calendar year. I...
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markets
by leon on February 7, 2009
The US jobless figures are getting worse, which means the country is sinking deeper and deeper. According to the latest Department of Labor statistics , 626,000 Americans filed for jobless benefits l...
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markets
by leon on February 6, 2009
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has reported a massive loss of $6.4 billion. Why the red ink? Because the company took $8.4 billion in write-downs on its intangible assets, mostly related to US...
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Ethics
by leon on February 5, 2009
The White House's nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, is risking enormous potential conflicts of interest with The Wall Street Journal reporting this guy earned...
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strategy
by leon on February 5, 2009
Probably the best testimony of the Bush administration's handling of financial markets, check this interview with ex-Veep Dick Cheney in politico.com.After his ranting about the US being in immin...
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corporate crime
by leon on February 4, 2009
Much has been said about the Securities and Exchange Commission's incompetence over fraudster Bernard Madoff and why it ignored all the red flags. Now whistleblower Harry Markopoulos, who warned ...
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markets
by leon on February 4, 2009
US automakers are in serious trouble with the Financial Times reporting that China has overtaken the US in car sales. According to the FT, annualised US car sales slipped below 10 million last month ...
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risk
by leon on February 3, 2009
If nothing else, the latest events are showing us that Bush's bank bailout strategy was a complete and absolute failure.First, we had the reports last week of four banks closing in January. The y...
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risk
by leon on February 3, 2009
Last week, I did a blog entry looking at whether the riots in Paris would spread around the world. Will the economic meltdown create urban unrest and violence?Apparently it's happening right now....
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Ethics
by leon on February 2, 2009
Citigroup has been in all sorts of strife since receivign a taxpayer funded $45 billion cash injection to keep the wolves from the door.At the end of last month, the world's biggest bank had to d...
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SOX
by leon on February 2, 2009
Offshoring has become more prevalent in recent years. Most firms send part of their operations to cheaper places overseas.But offshoring of audit functions is becoming more popular and, according to ...
