The Atlantic (February 4, 2014)
“Lehman conditioned us to always look for the next domino. But sometimes a falling currency is just a falling currency.” Since last May when then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke mentioned tapering, “emerging market currencies have been in a world of pain.” But fundamentals are much stronger than before the Asian Currency Crisis so this needn’t be a repeat of 1997. “The danger isn’t slumping currencies. The danger is overreacting to slumping currencies.”
Tags: 1997, Asian Currency Crisis, Ben Bernanke, Currency, Emerging markets, Fed, Fundamentals, Lehman, Overreacting, Tapering
USA Today (September 26)
The SEC should curtail high-frequency trading, which breeds insanity. Traditional investors act “based on a belief that a company will prosper and that its price will rise, or… on the opposite belief.” High-frequency traders do not care “a whit about a stock’s fundamentals” they simply “buy and sell individual stocks multiple times in a fraction of a second, all in search of micro-profits with each trade.” This increases the risk of yet another flash crash. “These practices undermine the core purpose of markets, which is to raise capital in pursuit of enterprise, profit and economic growth.” The SEC should “slap a small transaction tax on rapid trades, impeding the practice and returning markets to their core purpose…. The only people harmed would be those now putting everyone else at risk.”
