Here is the paradox of markets: they are bigger, more liquid and more lucrative than ever but mistakes by a handful of companies send shock waves around the world. All created by complex financial innovation and new fangled forms of money like derivatives.
Profits around the world are on the increase but a Bank for International Settlements study finds it has nothing to do with labor market deregulation. Profits were higher in places where there was more labor market regulation.
You know things are really looking bad on the markets what the central banks start pumping in money to ease the liquidity crunch. But it’s a band-aid solution because no-one where the risks are. It’s a bit like Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”. Do the banks know something we don’t?
Welcome to the Golden Age of insider trading. Investment banks, analysts and experts are in it up top their necks and the Securities and Exchange Commission now has a real battle trying to stop them.
Here's a warning to America. Within the next eight years, London will overtake New York as the world's financial hub, and it will rival Silicon Valley as a technology centre.
Is insider trading back? A Credit Suisse investment banker is arrested and questions are arising out of unsual trading in Dow Jones stock. There are now more opportunities for insider trading with BlackBerries, cell phones, much more access internationally.
Leon Gettler is a blogger and senior business journalist at The Age, specializing on management issues. His latest book, Organisations Behaving Badly focuses on the forces that lead smart executives into making dumb decisions.
