Economy
Negative interest
Modern finance has seen many innovations in the last 20 years. The Black-Scholes-Merton theory promised risk-free investment if it was properly hedged, or insured through market based options. That spawned a whole new category of investment in derivatives, or re-selling of insurance that nearly anything might go wrong.MORE »
Debt supercycle
The challenge came in a moment of weakness born of a position of power. I was up giving a quick talk on the essence of storytelling to a group of students learning about marketing techniques, particularly focused on blog writing. It’s a hot topic lately, but my approach is, as always, that there is really nothing new about it at all. Just as the thought-out schtick was windingMORE »
Somalis close Wells Fargo accounts to protest bank's lack of support
Wells Fargo Bank isn’t backing the Minnesota Somali community’s fight to send money back to their starving families, so some Somalis are pulling their money out of Wells Fargo.MORE »
Obama's job and yours
Will the economy produce a lot more jobs in 2012, or are we stalled looking at permanent unemployment and a new underclass? It’s an important question because the answer to it predicts the course of the election season far more than anything else. It’s the economy, stupid – really it’s the jobs.MORE »
Eating our own farm financial cooking
One winter evening in 1999 I was sitting in on a Farm Beginnings class being held in the southeast Minnesota community of Plainview when a local banker stood up and made a statement that about knocked me out of my chair.MORE »
Growing jobs, revisited
Back in October 2010, job creation was at a complete standstill. The bottom of total employment was hit in February of that year and little had changed since. A simple analysis came through Barataria from Gary Shilling designed to predict when the turnaround might possibly occur – sometime after the economy (as GroMORE »
Wells Fargo told, "Big bank bonuses are outrageous"
Minneapolis community advocates marched from "The People’s Plaza" (also known as Hennepin County Government Center) to the Minneapolis Offices of Wells Fargo Bank to protest end of year big bank bonuses for executives even as they continue to foreclose homes and curtail job creation credit.MORE »
Would Newt Gingrich's idea about poor kids work?
On the subject of poverty and helping people bootstrap their way up and out of it, Louis King is an expert. So who better to talk to regarding Newt Gingrich's now viral remarks about poverty and putting young inner-city kids to work in the schools?MORE »
Fueling the future
News stories on the economy are full of many subjects that would have seemed strange to American readers just a few years ago – European banking, the developing world, clever financial instruments, and so on. There is one word that is strangely absent, however – “Recovery”. This once prominent term has apparently been banished from reporting, possibly because no one believes that thMORE »
The water, energy and food nexus
As I flew back from Bonn last week, on my way back from the Bonn 2011 Nexus Conference (16–18 November), one thing was clear to me. Corporate environmentalism is entrenching itself firmly in the corridors of global governance, and challenging its advance will require new strategies.MORE »
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