The Institutional Risk Analyst

Banks and the Fed's Duration Trap

The Yellen Put & Market Risk

The Interview: Leland Miller on China & the Coming Trade War

The Volcker Rule, JPMorgan & the London Whale

“While the US and the UK have been mired in political chaos this year, the EU has enjoyed improved economic conditions and some political windfalls. The question now is whether this good news will inspire long-needed EU and eurozone reforms, or merely fuel complacency – and thus set the stage for another crisis down the road.”

Bitcoin: Fake Asset or Security? | 30

US Equities: Unwinding the Yellen Leveraged Buyout

Last week’s action by the Fed was an effort to restore normalcy, but in the context of extraordinary action by the central bank. When you tell markets that the risk free rate is zero, it has profound implications for the cost of debt and equity, and resulting in different asset allocation decisions. Ending this regime also has profound implications for investors and markets.

“Europe is now a continent of widespread economic misery, of financial collapse, of disappearing faith in ‘mainstream’ political parties and rising support for ‘extremist” parties, of a loss of sovereignty and thus of legitimacy and democratic control, and of the destruction of law, both domestic and international, by the judicially larcenous European Court of Justice (sic).” Bernard Connally Rotten Heart of Europe: The Dirty War for Europe's Money 1997/2012 May 16, 2017 |

May 13, 2017 | What do the US residential housing market, the stock market and the dollar all have in common? All of these markets represent bubbles created and driven by the aggressive social engineering of the Federal Open Market Committee. Will live in an age of asset bubbles rather than true economic growth. The investment world is skewed by the latest round of monetary policy experimentation by the Fed, including years of artificially low interest rates and trillion

Over the past decade we have periodically talked to our brother Michael Whalen (MW), Emmy award winning composer, film editor, and now agent to a growing list of performers, about the rapidly changing state of the world of content. With theater admissions and revenues flat, the final break in the Old World of Hollywood came several weeks ago with the major studios announcing a new model for releasing content online almost immediately after the theatrical release. Will we eve

David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital recently proposed that General Motors (NYSE:GM) divide its common equity into two parts, one that pays a dividend and another that captures the appreciation potential of the automaker. This is a demonstrably bad idea from one of the smarter people on Wall Street, thus we ask: What Is David’s game?

Below follows an extended soliloquy by my friend and mentor Fred Feldkamp, who was a partner at Foley & Lardner in Detroit, about how the SEC’s changes to Rule 2-a7 in 1998 caused the failure of LTCM.