A lot of people are tempted to ride the yield curve, but many get bucked off, and some get trampled underfoot. The ‘yield curve’ is just a graph showing the interest rates earned by bonds that mature at different times…
World set to change how it prices ubiquitous steel
At first reading, the front-page headline in the Financial Times on Wednesday, ‘Steel prices set to soar,’ struck me as sensationalistic. The story dealt with how iron ore producers and steel companies will now set prices differently, but there was…
Financial reform requires global efforts
We live in a global economy and if improvements in financial regulation are not coordinated among the governments of the major economies, they will be less effective than they could be. But the way things are going, changes will be…
Penfield not the best use of federal stimulus bonds
Superficially, the idea of the City of St. Paul using federally subsidized bonds to build apartments and a grocery store downtown seems like a bad one. It’s the sort of ‘government-stepping-in-even-where-private-markets-work-pretty-well’ action that gives ammunition to those who believe that…