Best of the Moment
business-economics
Josh Reich | BankSimple Blog | 18 March 2010
Promoter of banking start-up attacks jargon, tricks, fees used by big banks to charge and overcharge account holders. "A confused customer is a profitable customer"
Hasnain Kazim | Spiegel | 16 March 2010
Pakistan town makes 60m hand-stitched footballs a year—using child labour, until sports firms demanded ban. Now children make bricks instead
Martin Wolf | FT | 16 March 2010
Surplus countries want deficit countries to go on buying, cut borrowing. Incoherent. Can't deflate your way to prosperity. Time to fear for future of open global economy, eurozone
Eliot Spitzer | Slate | 16 March 2010
Belief in regulation has made shareholders lazy. They must use their latent power. Ownership trumps regulation, litigation, as means for controlling corporate behavior
Paul Krugman | NYT | 16 March 2010
Attack on China's trade surplus, call for America to react, with duties if necessary. "Never before in history has a nation followed this drastic a mercantilist policy"
Wolfgang Münchau | FT | 14 March 2010
Germany's talk of European Monetary Fund is a decoy. Real aim is to ensure weak countries leave eurozone without leaving EU. Greek bailout will be first and last of its kind
Elena Moya | Guardian | 12 March 2010
World's biggest bond-market investor is fiscal conservative, social liberal. Won't buy Greek, British debt. Says bankers should be taxed more heavily.
Wall Street Journal | 12 March 2010
Nuggets from 2,200-page investigation by US bankruptcy-court examiner. Scathing. Only Warren Buffett emerges looking good: refused to put money into Lehman unless its own executives did likewise
Gideon Rachman | Rachmanblog | 12 March 2010
German finance minister's proposals for reinforcing eurozone are contradictory, hypocritical, verging on hysteria. Gives impression Germany favours chucking weak countries out of common currency
Felix Salmon | Barnes & Noble Review | 12 March 2010
"Probably the single best piece of financial journalism ever written", says Salmon, reviewing Michael Lewis's book on the banking crisis. Equally strong on financial detail, and on human dimension