Views on the integrity of global capital markets
Cyprus is ponderously pondering how to fill a gaping financial hole, including whether and how much to appropriate from its depositors, domestic or otherwise. Ohio, having solved its budget crisis, is considering a regular tax on savers and investors to broaden its tax base and prevent a recurrence of the $8.8 billion budget deficit it had eliminated over the past two years. Read more
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When GM’s CEO, Daniel Akerson, arrived to brief Congressional leaders today, he did so in a 2014 C7 Corvette Stingray to emphasize the return of the financial benefits firm, nee automaker. The thing is, the discussion — designed to soothe concerns about the government’s $49.5 billion bailout of the company — raises its own concerns. Read more
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That the New Year’s deal on the so-called U.S. fiscal cliff doesn’t include pre-2003 tax rates on dividends and capital gains is likely fueling a collective sigh of investor relief in the markets that political populism won’t force us to relearn those lessons all over again. Read more
Leave a Comment GM announced it is repatriating 200 million of those shares at an 8 percent premium to current market value, or $27.50. That is a real bargain — for GM, that is — as the price amounts to a little more than half of Treasury’s cost basis at which it purchased them two years ago. Read more
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Jim Allen, CFA, discusses a recent Forbes column that connects the cheating and lying we see in sports, politics, and the financial markets all as indications of “moral rot.” Read more
Leave a Comment CFA Institute has argued that threats to small investors from the U.S. JOBS Act may outweigh any benefits it would provide to small companies. Turns out that several companies itching to take advantage of the Act’s reduced reporting and governance appear to resemble the classic penny-stock scheme: the shell company. Read more
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