GlynHolton.com

The SEC’s Problem With the First Amendment

Abolishing Corporate Personhood: Be Careful What You Ask For.

October 19, 2011

Following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United, calls for the abolition of corporate personhood have multiplied. Noam Chomsky, Al Gore and Ralph Nader are advocates. Occupy Wall Street protesters mention it as a possible demand. Move to Amend is a coalition of organizations and individuals pursuing a constitutional amendment. Be careful what you ask [...]

Zombie Glass–Steagall

October 13, 2011

On Tuesday, the FDIC released proposed rules for implementing Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Act—the so-called Volcker Rule. On Wednesday, the SEC did the same. This is a joint effort of the FDIC, Federal Reserve Board, SEC and OCC. Their—largely identical—proposed rules are based on a 79 page study released by Tim Geithner’s Department of [...]

“The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud.”

August 30, 2011

I recently attended a screening of the new documentary Chasing Madoff about a financial analyst, Harry Markopolos, who uncovered Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and spent almost a decade trying to get the SEC to investigate. One of his filing with the SEC was entitled The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud, but that wasn’t enough [...]

Risk Archive: Preserving a Financial Knowledge Base

July 30, 2011

Who remembers RiskChat.com, a forum on financial risk management that I had the pleasure and honor of hosting from 1996 to 2009? It was the go-to website for financial professionals to discuss risk management, trading, financial engineering and a host of related topics. Over its life, the forum accumulated some 15,000 posts, a valuable knowledge base [...]

Economic Interests and the American Civil War

April 11, 2011

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. The ensuing Civil War was a conflict of the industrial revolution. New technologies, such as rifles, railroads and steamships, facilitated bloodletting on a horrific scale. It consolidated power in the federal government in ways the founders had hoped to prevent. [...]

Insider Trading: A Window On Our Economy

April 7, 2011

Insider trading is making more headlines than we have seen since Ivan Boesky was fitted with handcuffs back in 1986. This morning’s newspapers report the arrests of Matthew Kluger and Garrett Bauer, a lawyer-trader pair who have apparently been at it for seventeen years. A third party in the scheme is cooperating with authorities. Yesterday, [...]

CEO Pay at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

April 5, 2011

The inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released a devastating report on executive compensation at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the wake of the government’s $153 billion bailout of those firms.

Test Your Risk Intuition

March 28, 2011

I am dusting off a classic test for risk intuition. If you remember the test from years past, it will be nice to reminisce. If not, take the test now to assess your intuition and look at risk in a new way.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

March 22, 2011

March 25, 2011 marks the hundred year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. One hundred forty-six workers perished in a blaze that engulfed the ten story Asch Building in lower Manhattan. Most were young seamstresses who worked six days a week for a pittance. The tragedy unfolded blocks from where, ninety years later, the twin towers [...]

Stress Testing: A Reminder from Fukushima

March 17, 2011

The eyes of the world are on Fukushima, Japan, where heroic technicians and military personnel struggle to prevent a nuclear armageddon. A massive earthquake spawned a devastating tsunami that knocked out a nuclear power plant’s cooling system. And here we are. This reminds us how low-probability high-impact events tend to be correlated. If a country experiences prolonged draught, [...]

Upside Risk, Downside Risk

March 8, 2011

Risk has two components: exposure, and uncertainty. If either is absent, there is no risk. But some people insist there must be a third component: downside. Let me explain. If you are uncertain about some consequential event, the set of possible desirable outcomes is sometimes called your “upside risk”. The set of possible adverse outcomes is [...]

Financial Reform: Sound Bites and Window Dressing

January 8, 2011

On Thursday, Representative Michele Bachmann (Tea Party Republican of Minnesota) introduced a bill to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform. With the Senate and Obama standing in the way, it won’t go anywhere. But who cares? The 2008 market crisis should have prompted serious reforms. Instead, we got sweeping window dressing. Dodd-Frank left in place the [...]