 The Wild Wild World of Wealth |  |
I just watched the 60 Minutes segment on Michael Lewis and his new book, “The Big Short.” He had some terrific sound bites including my favorite about AIG: “…they didn’t know the mistake they were making.” Here’s one reason I’m buying the book. Watch CBS News Videos Online As a stockbroker, I was wary of [...]
Who needs TARP to bail out financial institutions? Your local supermarket carries a retail version at the checkout counter. We know the program as “gift cards.” Last week while I was grocery shopping, the gift-card display piqued my curiosity. So I took a few minutes to read the fine print on back of several packages. [...]
Over the past few days, I’ve spent way too much time inside planes and rental cars. And during my travels, I’ve been thinking about one idiom, the one we keep hearing when Washington discusses Wall Street: “too big to fail.” Do we know what it means? Can songwriters explain the essence? Does TBTF have anything [...]
Taxing Banks for the Bailout On Wednesday night I spoke at the Rotary Club in Boston. We discussed my novel, Top Producer, but concentrated on Wall Street and the topic of bonuses. It seems everybody wants the finance industry to justify its compensation. Bank CEOs have taken their case to the public. But they haven’t [...]
For Bankers, Saying ‘Sorry’ Has Its Perils As a kid and Air Force brat, I didn’t like Catch-22 much. The novel, while laugh-out-loud funny, speared the military and hit too close to home. As a blogger and novelist, however, I admire Joseph Heller’s writing techniques. Especially his use of repetition. In Catch-22, different characters keep [...]
Obama Weighs Tax on Banks to Cut Deficit Wall Street’s public relations are a train wreck. I have no prior experience in corporate communications. But here’s my action plan to clean up the mess: CEOs, fire your PR people. They suck. Shut up, Lloyd, about doing “God’s work.” Nobody buys it, not even the religious [...]
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