Robert Teitelman: On Financial Genius and Banking Boo-boos
The columns, blogs, tweets and sober cud-chewing over the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. trading debacle continues. What have we learned? Well, not as much as you'd think, given the notion that the Internet is the greatest investigative reporter since Woodward and Bernstein.
Robert Teitelman: Jonathan Schlefer’s The Assumptions Economists Make
This isn't heading to the bestseller lists -- but so what? Schlefer is waving a flashlight beam in a musty attic. As Alan Greenspan's public persona suggests, economics takes a perverse pride in obscurity and opacity.
Robert Teitelman: The New York Times Worries About Stock Trading
The real problem here is not necessarily the underlying economy -- does anyone really think stock markets accurately reflect the state of the real economy? -- but the structure and dynamics of the markets themselves.
Robert Teitelman: OWS and the Class Struggle Revised
OWS takes the traditional Marxist notion of class, simplifies it and inflates it into two cartoons -- the 99 percent and the 1 percent. In the process, it manages to ignore about 150 years of Marxist discussion and debate.
Robert Teitelman: What Should the Central Banks Do?
In arguing the case for the primacy of economic action, Krugman blithely ignores the difficult situation of central banking in the modern world.
Robert Teitelman: Prizes, Central Banking and Some Thoughts on Equilibrium
The pretense is that through some deliberative and democratic magic, the prize is bestowed correctly. In short, there's equilibrium out there at every moment that the market is reaching for. Unfortunately, for both markets and prizes, humanity makes the call.
Robert Teitelman: Rationalizing Walmart in Mexico
This was not really about the long-term good of Walmart, which will now undergo a long, expensive and destructive scandal that will also suck in a new generation of (possibly) innocent executives, employees and shareholders. This was about personal self-interest in the short term.
Robert Teitelman: Spain, a Housing Bubble and Who Knew What
What was the situation in Spain? The construction bubble was widely recognized, discussed, worried over and even acted upon in the years before the bust.
Robert Teitelman: Stray Thoughts on the Rise of Shareholders
Are we better or worse off economically, socially and politically with shareholders in that pre-eminent a role? Is there a balance point? Have we, in a world of activist hedge funds and high-frequency trading, overshot that point?
Robert Teitelman: Facebook, Instagram and the Disciplines of Mergers and Acquisitions
Facebook is famously paying a cool billion dollars for the two-year-old app-based photo service. Instagram has 13 employees, 30 million users and no revenues. But Mark Zuckerberg decided the social media giant absolutely had to have the startup.
Robert Teitelman: Bloomberg Businessweek on Obama, Economic Steward
Mostly, it seems to mean that if Obama doesn't fully embrace your economic faith, then he has no faith at all, that he's a sort of economic atheist. But that's not the case at all.
Robert Teitelman: Greg Smith’s Warholian Week
Many of the skeptics took the opportunity to speculate freely about this unassuming Greg Smith figure -- even the name has a kind of Goldmanite uniformity -- and his motivations, often to his detriment. Why did he do it?
