News Sweep: June 30

Foxes of Wall Street: New York Magazine's Daily Intel, working with Dealbreaker, hunted down the men they call the hottest bachelors on Wall Street.

The Money Pit: Today, AIG and Goldman Sachs testified in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, warring, once loving factions tied together forever like Tom Hanks and Shelley Long in the 80s classic, The Money Pit. Joe Cassano, late of AIG, was on the stand and MORE

Circuit breakers, yes. But how about the market breakers?

The new plan to stop runaway stocks works, and it works well.  Now to figure out what makes them freak out in the first place.

By Heidi N. Moore, contributor

Imagine this: in a world much like our own, a problem in the markets prompted a Congressional hearing that led to quick action by a major player in the financial markets. The fix worked immediately and prevented further trouble. No year-long studies MORE

Commodities: Fun while they lasted

A trader who drunkenly knocked the oil market for a loop has been banned.  He was tanked - what's everyone else's excuse?

By Heidi N. Moore, contributor

If the markets were a TV sitcom -- and really, they're heading that way -- the episode in which a drunk trader mistakenly bought millions of barrels of oil and raised the price of gas would certainly be the moment at which the whole MORE

Bank reform: Fake it 'til you make it

Much of the Dodd-Frank bill pushes the important decisions until years later. How to tame Wall Street in the meantime?

By Heidi N. Moore, contributor

World Cup soccer fans have become used to player theatrics, where a player who is so much as touched by a rival will immediately hit the turf and writhe around in the throes of completely manufactured agony, hoping to delay their usually inevitable loss.

Giant banks, it turns MORE

News Sweep: June 29

10 ways financial reform misses the mark: Imagine the restraint it took to pick only 10.

The eternal lightness of Treasury staffing: Remember when Neel Kashkari spent months trying to hire enough people to figure out TARP? That's basically still happening.

Breaking news from 2008: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission believes that there may be possibly sort of some kind of tie or something between AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Hulu: The Internet continues MORE

Little victories for state regulators

With the passage of new Wall Street reform, states will have some power to catch financial bad guys again.

By Heidi N. Moore, contributor

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill (should it ever pass) is supposed to be a victory for the little guy. But what few people know is that it's also a victory for the little regulators.

Well, they're not really little; they're the nation's 50 or so state securities regulators. And MORE

Tesla's IPO: False promises for clean tech

Don't get swept up in the hype of the Tesla IPO. Clean tech is not yet ready for prime time.

by Heidi N. Moore, contributor

It's a common convention for horror movies to have at least one character who, cornered by the monster/attacker/murderer/villain, yells to his compatriots, "Go on without me! Save yourselves!" The same phrase should also be common among clean technology companies listing for an initial public offering.

Tesla Motors, MORE

Russian 'spies,' goldbugs and the struggling dollar

as the alleged Russian spying, in part, a commodities or currency play?

When federal officials arrested 11 alleged Russian spies yesterday, it seemed natural that the accused agents would be interested in the CIA leadership, the Obama administration and Afghanistan. But who knew that they were gold bugs?

James G. Rickards, senior director for market intelligence at Omnis, pointed us to the fact that the FBI complaint mentions that the global gold market was one of the key sources of interest of the Russian Federation and its intelligence agency, SVR.

"On a number of occasions, the SVR specifically indicated that information collected and conveyed by the New Jersey conspirators was especially valuable. Thus, for example, during the summer and fall of 2009, Cynthia Murphy, the defendant, using contacts she had met in New York, conveyed a number of reports to [Moscow] Center about prospects for the global gold market."

According to the complaint, the SVR responded in November 2009 that the information on the gold market was very useful and had been forwarded to Russia's Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Economic Development.

If Russia wanted information on the gold market, it would hardly be alone. In 2009, of course, gold jumped 24% in value, closing the year at $1,095 an ounce - a price that seems quaint now that gold is over $1249 an ounce, but was still the biggest story in the financial markets of 2009.

News Sweep: June 28

By Heidi N. Moore, contributor

Uncertainty: The Washington Post says that the death of Sen. Robert Byrd, 92, will further complicate the already byzantine road to financial reform. Related: The American Prospect says nothing, not even Byrd's death, will stop the course of financial reform. Related: At Harvard Business Review, Justin Fox reviews the ideas of financial reform versus its ideals.

Aflac: The insurer ducked disaster by dumping all of its holdings in the MORE

It's hard out here for an economist

For rappers and cartoon orphans, we know it's a hard-knock life. But for money's biggest thinkers?

By Heidi N. Moore, contributor

The indignities of being a macroeconomist in the era of the financial crisis are indeed too many to count, according to a report last week by Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond analyst Kartik Athreya. The piece is titled "Economics is Hard. Don't Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise." And yes: He MORE