Salient to Investors: Jonathan Weil writes: The reason it’s a good idea to separate securities firms from commercial banks is to protect consumers from brokers selling schlock investments. There are countless tales of banks cross-selling unsuitable investments to unsophisticated customers. Many people trust the advice they get from their local
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William D. Cohan writes: Mary Jo White’s SEC is trying to make Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre the poster child for the financial crisis of 2008. This could not be further from the truth. A low-level vice-president such as Tourre has only one responsibility: to do what he is told
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William D. Cohan writes: What caused the financial crisis remains unheeded and serious trouble is brewing. The debt markets have once again mispriced risk when junk bonds yield a mere 5 percent. Wall Street still suffers from inadequate risk management and improper incentives. Until these problems are
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: If there is a chance to rig benchmark rates in world markets, someone will try. Charles Geisst at Manhattan College said time and again all these markets have been influenced by major market-makers – a polite way of saying they have been rigged. Barclays, UBS, and RBS have been fined $2.5
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: MetLife cut its adviser force by a third, eliminating 2,500 jobs as the company scales back variable annuity sales and turns to other nations for growth. MetLife has 5,000 advisers who sell insurance and investment products, down from 7,500 in February of 2012. Danny Sarch at Leitner
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: within minutes either online William D. Cohan writes: With the expected appointment of Jason Furman as the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Robert Rubin has completed the remarkable feat of placing 5 of his acolytes in key positions of power in the Obama administration. The
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William D. Cohan writes: The CFTC voted May 16 for a watered-down compromise over requiring opaque and hard-to-value swaps and derivatives to be traded on an exchange, allowing dealers – essentially the big Wall Street banks – to continue to set the prices for these financial instruments using their black
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Key things to consider about 401(k)s: Keep total investment fees under 1%; including fund expenses, administration, asset management, and any other silent fees. Over the long-term, few professionally managed funds outperform their peer market index. The hot fund of one year will often be below average in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William D. Cohan writes: Mary Schapiro, the former chairman of the SEC is joining a firm loaded with former government financial-services regulators. Schapiro previously ran FINRA, Wall Street’s self-appointed watchdog. Alan Blinder at Princeton is a co-founder of Promontory Interfinancial Network which offers Insured Cash Sweep, which splits large deposits into
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Barclays paid 9 senior executives $61 million in bonuses, less than a year after the bank was fined for manipulating benchmark interest rates. Barclays awarded 428 workers more than 1 million pounds in 2012, versus 473 in 2011. 45 percent of all investment-bank employees got no bonus for 2012. Read
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