Category: Investing

  • Fault Lines : Raghuram G. Rajan

    Another take on the economic crisis: somewhat dry and academic but quite thorough. The most illuminating idea was a refinement of the distorted compensation incentives that poison Wall Street. Rajan’s idea is an employee’s performance bonus held in long-term escrow to ensure it does not blow up a too-big-to-fail bank employer within a year or…

  • Three ways to address innovation in business

    Innovation is the big imperative of the next economy, many say. But so many things currently endemic to the American way of business impede the American way of innovation: Me-tooism. Every smartphone is playing catchup to the iPhone, which was innovative and creative. Any touch-based smartphone that follows, no matter how cool and incrementally beneficial,…

  • Global Metro Summit : Saskia Sassen

    In response to my previous informal overview of the Global Metro Summit I was delighted to receive a comment from one of my favorite panelists. To ensure that it is not buried at the bottom of that very long post, I promote it here so others can find it. I had written: Saskia Sassen of…

  • Global Metro Summit

    The future of cities is the topic of the Global Metro Summit today in Chicago, co-sponsored by Deutsche Bank’s LSE Cities (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Alfred Herrhausen Society as well as by the Brookings Institution. Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank Subtitled “Delivering the Next Economy,” the two-day conference kicked off this…

  • Crisis Economics : Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm

    I am not an economist but part of my job is to explain to everyday investors how it all works — that is, when it does. Of late I have been reading a lot about the economic crisis because I am not convinced that the systemic weaknesses and abuses that led to it have been adequately…

  • The Soros Lectures : George Soros

    Interesting ideas, prosaic text, and a streak of partisanship that is often unwelcome, despite the fact that I agree with him. Report card: C