Marshall Lux, former chief risk officer for consumer businesses at JP Morgan, and now senior fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard, believes that regulation which has been enacted in the wake of the financial crisis has disproportionately harmed smaller banks in the United States. Lux has been researching the issue of how recent regulations,… Continue Reading
Leveraged, inverse and inverse leveraged exchange-traded products first came on the scene in 2006. During the financial crisis, however, they rose to prominence as they showed outrageous returns. Many were attracted to the price swings and the opportunity to get amazing returns in a short period of time. Since that period, according to Michael Sapir,… Continue Reading
Last week diplomats from the US and Cuba met for the first time to discuss the way forward after Obama and Castro began the process of defrosting relations between the two countries. Business between the capitalist USA and the communist island to the south east of the US has been in a mummified state for… Continue Reading
The price of gasoline has been falling, falling and falling some more over the past several months, finally reaching its lowest price since April, 2009. The latest price dive, 13.3 cents during the last two weeks, may be the end of the slide, according to a survey by Lundberg released on Sunday. The average price… Continue Reading
President Obama will be delivering the yearly State of the Union Address on Tuesday night not only to Americans, but to a Congress controlled by Republicans in both houses. Nevertheless, Obama has been signaling that he intends to introduce the idea of increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans in order to pay for tax cuts… Continue Reading
The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) released its summary of business travel statistics for 2014 this week, and the news is good. Business travel reached record levels, with about 484.4 million trips made creating some $292.2 billion in spending. The summary, which takes the past trends and projects them into the future, predicts that 2015… Continue Reading
The new position of chief risk officer created by the US Treasury Department will be filled by Kenneth Phelan. Phelan, who is 55 years old, has held similar roles for the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and at Fannie Mae soon after the last US financial crisis. The newly created Office of Risk Management,… Continue Reading
Fear of oil supply disruptions as a result of Libyan violence sent the price of US crude oil up by more than one dollar on Monday in Asian trade. In a reverse of the steady fall in oil prices of late, US crude just barely touched $55.74, up $1.01 on Monday after closing down $1.11… Continue Reading
Despite being mostly out of the debilitating recession of recent years and also being the strongest economy in the world, the United States still can’t seem to get its act together when it comes to making life easier and more productive for businessmen and entrepreneurs. At least that is what Forbes Magazine’s list of Ten… Continue Reading
The continuing decline in the price of oil is bringing the value of the Canadian dollar down with it, as a barrel of oil plummeted to below $60 last week. The price of oil has not been this low since 2009, while the loonie has not reached this price in 5 and a half years.… Continue Reading