John At The Center

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Indeed for me, Markit is a poster child for the cognitive, cultural and expertise chasm that exists between ‘Wall Street’ and ‘the Valley’ (or the ‘City’ and the ‘Roundabout’ to use the less good UK-centric metaphor.) They might as well be on different planets. Indeed bridging this divide is at the core of what we set out to do at Nauiokas Park and was the driver that led Paul Kedrosky and Tim O’Reilly to launch the Money:Tech conference in 2008 (which sadly didn’t survive the financial crisis and quite frankly was met by a deafening indifference by the vast majority of the Wall Street side of the equation.)

via The Park Paradigm – Probably the best start-up you’ve never heard of..

More generally, I haven't understood why the left has so readily embraced Volcker — after all he gained his reputation as a “hard money guy” by creating a recession to fight inflation and many people were quite unhappy about the loss of jobs at the time.

via Economist’s View: Volcker: How to Reform the Financial System.

Now even assuming we wanted a partial reversal (more on balance sheet lending), this is not an quick process. It is costly (as in banks on average would have to have much bigger balance sheets, hence vastly more equity than they possess now. Think of what it would take to reduce the use of plastic by 50% because we now know plastic has nasty environmental consequences. Going back to considerably more on-balance sheet lending would be a similarly large undertaking).

via Volcker Does Not Get It « naked capitalism.

But regardless, in all his comments before, there is a scary failure to mention some critical aspects the modern world of finance. The big reason banks are too big to fail is that they control infrastructure which has become critical to commerce. Most important, they control the credit markets. And credit is essential to any economy beyond the barter stage.

via Volcker Does Not Get It « naked capitalism.

Edgar Online (NSDQ: EDGR), the publicly traded financial information service which we first reported was out there raising money since August last year, has finally closed it: Bain Capital will purchase $12 million worth of 120K convertible Series B preferred stock of the company (at $100 a share). The money will be used to to boost its efforts in XBRL, the open data standard for financial reporting that it has pioneered and now been adopted by SEC, and also invest to expand its data and subscription offerings. At one point during this fund raising process, we had heard a complete sale of the company was on the cards, but it looks like that didn’t happen. More details in the release. Updated: The company has filed an SEC filing with some more specific details of the sale.

via Edgar Online Gets $12 Million Funding From Bain Capital | paidContent.

The Obama administration finally weighed in on Friday at the World Economic Forum, as Lawrence H. Summers, director of the National Economic Council, criticized banks that are resisting regulation even as they dispense lucrative bonuses to their executives.

via Summers Turns Up the Heat on Banks – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.

Wired: What happens if we don’t get the growth everyone expects?

Thiel: If it doesn’t happen, people will go bankrupt in retirement. There are systemic consequences, too. If we don’t have enough growth, we will see a powerful shift away from capitalism. There are good things and bad things about capitalism, but inequality becomes completely intolerable to society when everything’s static.

via Utopian Pessimist Calls on Radical Tech to Save Economy | Magazine.

While we don't typically highlight shifts in analyst sentiment, we found some moves out of Goldman Sachs late last week intriguing as they were out positive on tower stocks. They raised price targets on American Tower (AMT) from $52 to $53, on SBA Communications (SBAC) from $40 to $43, and on Crown Castle (CCI) from $42 to $46. While AMT is rated a 'buy,' SBAC in particular is on Goldman's Conviction Buy List.

via Goldman Sachs & Hedge Funds Bullish On Tower Stocks ~ market folly.

But beyond that, the biggest troubles at the big banks and investment banks had to do activities that were related to serving customers. All those toxic CDOs that weighed down Citi and Merrill and UBS were intended to be sold. It's just that customers stopped buying at some point in 2007.

via Do the Obama administration’s new Wall Street proposals really address the problem? – The Curious Capitalist – TIME.com.