Fix What’s Broken
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I did an extensive interview with Kate Welling this week:
Barry Ritholtz, author of the recently published, “Bailout Nation, How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy,”is not a man to mince words. For one thing, he doesn’t have time. Writing is a sideline to his day job as CEO and research director of FusionIQ, an online quantitative research firm and money manager, running about $100 million, long and short, mainly for high net worth individuals. Besides, as the proprietor of a popular financial blog, The Big Picture, he has been chronicling the foibles and follies of financial man for a number of years now and well, just doesn’t suffer fools. His readers know him for clear explorations of even the densest of topics and for honest vitriol when he comes across self-dealing and worse.
There is plenty of both clear prose and pungent language in “Bailout Nation,” as it explores, in gory detail, where we’ve gone wrong in finance and in society. Not to mention, who done it.
My time between its pages left little doubt that Barry, whose legal training at New York’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law focused on economics, anti-trust and corporate law, has more than a few ideas about what should be done.
So when the unveiling of the Obama Administration’s regulatory reform proposals left me asking, “Is that all there is?” I immediately put in a call to Barry.
I wasn’t disappointed. Listen in.
-KMW
June 28th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
PDF here
June 28th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Barry:
Nice interview. Somehow, I hadn’t caught why the mutual funds hadn’t done the corporate governance they were entitled to do. Your answer makes perfect sense.
Not to detract from the fact that you are now a big-time author. When I saw the name on the publication, it reminded my of a remarkable interview you r reprinted last year here:
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/files/053008_Welling_Edwards-Montier_REPRINT.pdf
It was like a roadmap of the past year. Those guys were amazingly accurate across the board, on the green shoots (which hadn’t yet been named), the Fed’s lack of power to control things, lack of decoupling, how the exportering countries would get clobbered (though many are still in denial about China), about the rally in the dollar, oil, and how cost cutting by companies to shore up profits would lead to a collapse in demand because of unemployment.
Do you have any new info from those two?
June 28th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
“So when the unveiling of the Obama Administration’s regulatory reform proposals left me asking, “Is that all there is?” I immediately put in a call to Barry.”
You could as well have called Karl Marx in his grave. Anyone with the slightest hint of intellect would have issues with the proposed regulatory reform.
June 28th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
“These are A-rated banks that stick to their knitting. They lend money to people who can’t afford to repay it”
Say what?
~~~
BR: Typo
June 28th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
maybe we need to make regulations less flexible. as put forth here
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1907147,00.html
since maybe we had enough regulations that weren’t enforced because the regulators wouldn’t. we need more regulations to address things not already done. we just need to make it less flexible so regulators have to do their job.
June 28th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
a British point fo view
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/28/keegan-economics-recovery-recession
June 28th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
and a NIMBY view
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/27/AR2009062701630.htm
June 28th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
So that’s what a swelled head looks like.
June 28th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Good interview and good points. I’m still wading through your book (about half way). It sits right next to the throne, so I don’t get to it frequently, but I find I can concentrate pretty well. Ha! Ha!
June 28th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
I think you should have been more explicit about how you really felt. lol Good work… And thanks for vociferating for all us taxpayers!!