This evening’s announcement that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will become bank holding companies and thus cease being investment banks ends the era of banking that dates back to 1933 when the Glass-Steagall act put a wall between the two kinds of banking. As of now there are now large stand alone investment banks. Here’s […]

Let me be clear up front: I do not like this bailout. Having said that something has to be done. We are in the grip of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. So action needed to be taken. The problem is that this plan seems so ad hoc and ill conceived that it […]

This bothers me, it really does. Here is today’s column under the masthead of ‘Freakonomics’ in the New York Times: Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial Upheavals – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog Now I understand the good intentions. The amazingly popular Steve Levitt, author of the Freakonomics column has prevailed […]