Professor Donald J. Boudreaux at George Mason University recently wrote an article arguing for the relaxation of insider trading rules for the Wall Street Journal. For decades, the practice of Insider Trading has been condemned and heavily punished by small investors and prosecutors alike, but are the negative stigma associated Insider Trading economically justified? Or [...]
The California Senate approved a plan to solve California’s $26 billion budget state deficit on July 24th. California’s GDP would make it one of the top 10 nations if it was an independent state, but the current financial crisis has left the state almost insolvent. By February 2009, California was facing a $42 billion budget [...]
Came across this China Daily article, “Britain’s BP, Chinese oil firm win Iraq deals“, recently and read with interest as Iraq held its first auction of its oil fields since the US-led invasion. The sale is the first chance for major foreign companies to gain a hold on the world’s third largest oil reserves since [...]
BlackRock’s $13.5billion acquisition of BGI from Barclays has created the world’s largest investment manager, with roughly $2.8trillion of assets under management (AUM). This is greater than the amount overseen by the Fed!
BlackRock will pay $6.6 billion in cash and the rest in stock for BGI. Barclays will hold a 19.9 percent stake in the combined company. [...]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124000593149930309.html
The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on leveraged ETFs and their effects on the final 30 minutes before the stock market closes every weekday at 4:00pm. ETF is an acronym for exchange-traded fund. An ETF is like a mutual fund but has the benefits of being traded like stock, on a stock exchange, [...]
Please recommend 2 lecturers/professors to speak in the Fall 2009 GIC Lecture Series. The Professors can be from but not limited to the Business School, Econ Department, PolSci Department, Public Policy School. Please include the faculty profile and reasons why we should include this speaker in our Lecture Series. The GIC Executive Board will contact the [...]
On March 26, The Bank of England failed to auction off 1.75 billion pounds of 40-year gilts (the English name for government bonds). This is the first time since 2002 that the Central Bank of England didn’t find enough buyers for its government debt.
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a0UwOQfUC.jw#
So why couldn’t the UK government attract enough bids for the [...]
The credit crisis and the panic in mid-September (Lehman Brothers bankruptcy) triggered the formation of the Troubled Assert Rescue Plan (TARP). After several attempts from the former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to enact the program, the TARP finally won the support of the Senate on Oct. 1st, and was signed by President Bush on Oct. [...]
Citigroup, Inc (NYSE: C) on Thursday, March 5th, traded under $1 per share, thus for a brief period becoming a penny stock. This represents a huge transition for the company, who was once known as the global financial super market. To put the situation in context, at the start of 2007, Citi was the largest [...]
