On “The Daily Show” last night, John Oliver reported on what has to be one of the most interesting stories to come out of the financial crisis. I don’t want to ruin too much for you, but it involves a big bank, foreclosure and repo men. I think you will be surprised how this one turns out. (more…)
Last week I wrote a blog criticizing a Wall Street Journal headline that related CME Group to its pork belly contract. I noted how connecting the CME Group to the belly contract was a bit of a cliché and an old and tired one at that. CME Group and the futures industry in general moved well past its agricultural roots decades ago and to keep bringing up that comparison is a sign that you are not keeping up with the industry, which is no longer niche but a vital part of our financial landscape. (more…)
Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s roiled the markets yesterday with a pronouncement that it has placed the United States of America’s “’AAA’ long-term and ‘A-1+’ short-term sovereign credit ratings on CreditWatch with negative implications.”
This comes on the heels of a possible Moody’s downgrade announcement a day prior. “Moody’s Investors Service has placed the Aaa bond rating of the government of the United States on review for possible downgrade given the rising possibility that the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis, leading to a default on U.S. Treasury debt obligations.”
When I started at Futures more than a decade ago I realized that while the futures industry was a big deal in Chicago and for us who worked in it (I already had been working in the industry for more than a decade at the time), I also learned that the wider business media community viewed it as a sleepy backwater and knew little about it.
In the last 10 years, however, things have changed as futures’ volume exploded, exchanges became public companies and big players in mergers and acquisitions, and assets allocated to futures based investment strategies have grown by a factor of 7X.
The Big Bad Wolf got a lot of bad press in fairy tales — just look at the story of the Three Little Pigs. This guy has some lung capacity to go around blowing houses down. Nothing could stop him, until he came to the brick house built on a solid foundation. Based on what’s happening in the U.S. housing market over the last year, maybe we have our own big bad wolf at work. (more…)
While the recovery is beginning to take root, jobs still are an ongoing concern. A number of analysts have talked about how the U.S. government’s accommodative monetary policies are to blame. According to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D, IL), they’re all wrong. He says we only need to look as far as the iPad to explain where all the jobs have gone. (more…)
While most of us were watching from afar the horror unfolding in Japan with the March 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, some people in the industry were near the epicenter.
CME Group Vice Chairman Charlie Carey and colleague Dave Lehman had been in Asia for a Palm Oil conference. After the Kuala Lumpur meeting, they flew to Japan where they held a cocktail party in Tokyo for members on Thursday night, March 10. (more…)
Wheat has been a staple of the human diet for over 10,000 years. Further, it has been a staple of the trader’s portfolio for over 100 years now, since the Minneapolis Grain Exchange was established and began trading in wheat, oats and corn in 1881. Increasingly, though, more and more people are developing gluten sensitivities or allergies according to a study written about in an article in the Wall Street Journal in which gluten triggers an immune response like an enemy invader in some modern humans. (more…)
It is hardly a secret that the Republican Party has assumed control of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress, with a boatload of “freshmen” Congressmen who seem hell bent on reducing the size and power of the “bloated” federal government. Many attribute these gains to a pick-up political movement popularly (or not) known as the Tea Party that appears to want to push that process to its absolute limit. Two potential targets are the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, federal financial regulators that – just a few months ago – were charged by the same Bodies to impose a bear hug on the $600 trillion “swaps” business that had evolved without significant independent oversight for at least a generation and, rightly or wrongly, was put in the line up of perps responsible for the 2008-2009 financial crisis. (more…)
In our October 2010 Futures we had an indepth interview with T. Boone Pickens about his energy vision for the United States. Last night the Daily Show with Jon Stewart had Pickens on as a guest to discuss that plan. We had hoped upon hearing that Pickens would be on the show, the two men would discuss their appearances in Futures magazine (Stewart, as well as Pickens, was recently named in our 25 Most Influential People and Events of 2010). Sadly, that didn’t happen. But Pickens did discuss his plan, which means after the measure fell short last fall, it could be taken up again by Congress.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive – T. Boone Pickens Extended Interview | ||||
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