“One of the great ironies of the Greenspan bubbles” was that his free market convictions enabled the Fed to drift “irreversibly into its eventual submission to the Cramerite intimidation,” wrote David Stockman. It turned “a blind eye to lunatic speculations in the stock market, dismissing them as the exuberances of capitalist boys and girls playing too hard.
Companies & Markets
Surveillance Society: If You Drive, You Get Tracked
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Surveillance Society: If You Drive, You Get Tracked
A technology that surreptitiously captures data of people out on the street, combines it with other data, and mines it ad infinitum? Local and federal government agencies love it. It’s increasingly sophisticated and cheap. It’s spreading. And it led a professor at West Point to warn: “We don’t have a police state in this country, but we have the technology.”
3D Printing “A gimmick” with no “Real Commercial Value”
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on 3D Printing “A gimmick” with no “Real Commercial Value”
The Smart Money Sells “Everything That’s Not Nailed Down”
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Smart Money Sells “Everything That’s Not Nailed Down”
It was the day when Private Equity firms – the smart money, the great beneficiaries of the Fed’s bond-buying binge – announced their intentions to the rest of the world. The heavy hitters were there, and they let fly some pungent words. In short, they were “selling everything that’s not nailed down.” Turns out, they weren’t kidding.
Tech Companies And Their Love Affair With NSA and CIA
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Tech Companies And Their Love Affair With NSA and CIA
Keyhole Inc., a venture-capital funded startup, was acquired by Google in 2004. Its product became Google Earth. Its technology filtered into Google Maps and Google Mobile. One of the venture-capital investors? The CIA. It didn’t ruffle any feathers at the time. But now we have NSA leaker Edward Snowden and his media blitz.
The Day The Big Fat Junk-Bond Bubble Blew Up
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Day The Big Fat Junk-Bond Bubble Blew Up
Junk bonds had a phenomenal run. With each truckload of money that the Fed delivered to the markets, valuations soared and yields plunged. Desperate investors, mauled by the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy, took on risks no questions asked. But suddenly the feeding frenzy turned into a brutal rout – a harbinger of things to come in other markets.
H-P’s Big Investors Finally Can’t Take It Anymore
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on H-P’s Big Investors Finally Can’t Take It Anymore
Investors are fuming. But traders, the lucky ones who got the timing right, love it. So do Wall Street firms that shuffle companies around. For decades, Hewlett-Packard did what they wanted it to do: swallow other companies, whole or in pieces, spit out some mangled limbs, and dump tens of thousands of employees. But someone ended up holding the bag.