Financial Markets

Displaying 31 - 40 of 915

Playing Games with Stocks

Corporate WelfareCronyism and CorporatismFinancial Markets

Blog03/04/2021

The GameStop saga—can we call it an insurrection?—wants easy heroes and villains. Both are available.

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When Is Short Selling Fraudulent?

Financial Markets

Blog02/24/2021

Shorting more than the total outstanding shares isn’t perverse or fraudulent, whereas naked short selling—depending on the context—might be.

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Economists and Psychologists Are Weaponizing Psychology and the Idea of "Rationality"

Bureaucracy and RegulationFinancial MarketsPaternalismPlanning

Blog02/16/2021

Behavioral economists and psychologists define as irrational anything that doesn't fit into a narrow model of behavior. Anything "irrational"—like buying the "wrong" stock—must be fixed with government regulation.

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In the Culture War, Conservatives Turn against Wall Street

Financial Markets

Blog02/12/2021

For conservative populists, Wall Street now is the Washington establishment, indistinguishable from the oligarchs of Silicon Valley; Washington, DC; and the New York Times.

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There's Nothing Wrong with Short Selling

Cronyism and CorporatismFinancial Markets

Blog02/03/2021

Allowing short selling increases the number of people with an incentive to discover valuable information about firms’ prospects by providing an added mechanism to benefit from information that turns out to be negative. This makes markets more responsive and honest.

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Wall Street Outsiders versus the Hedge Funds

Financial Markets

Blog02/02/2021

When small investors lose their shirts by placing unwise investments, do brokerage firms, hedge funds, big banks, etc., come to their rescue? Not a chance. But there was plenty of talk of "rescue" when hedge funders lost money in the GameStop short squeeze.

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The GameStop Rebels vs. "Too Big to Fail"

Financial Markets

Blog02/02/2021

America has grown accustomed to decades of "too big to fail," which means making sure the Wall Street elite never has to endure any real pain. It's because of this that pundits were quick to claim the GameStop affair was a grave threat to America.

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The ECB Is Playing a Dangerous Game with "Collective Action Clauses" on Bonds

Central BanksFinancial MarketsGlobal Economy

Blog01/29/2021

The ECB is now turning to a new mechanism by which a bond’s value can be legally reduced by the issuer in times of hardship. The purpose is to allow central banks and governments new ways of ripping off the private sector. 

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GameStop, Market Distortions, and Manipulations

The FedFinancial Markets

Blog01/28/2021

With a sound money, none of these distortions would have been possible: the limitations of the currency itself would have forced an unwinding of excessive risk far before it could become a clash between major hedge funds and Reddit trolls.

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Compared to Europe and China, America Is Still a Safe Bet

Financial MarketsU.S. Economy

Blog01/27/2021

There's a lot of excessive optimism about the economy during the next four years in America. However, the US still comes out on top when compared to Europe and China.

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