Category: Finance

Anthony Sanders: A voluntary private market solution

If the federal government really wants to stem the financial crisis, it must decisively address the huge — and still growing — number of delinquent and soon-to-be-delinquent mortgages, according to finance and real estate Professor Anthony Sanders. "The underlying core of the economy’s problem is that the housing and mortgage market is still collapsing at record speeds," he said. Sanders proposed a voluntary private market solution in a December speech before the Dean’s Council of 100, an advisory group at the W. P. Carey School of Business.  

Tom McCabe: Asia positioned for post-recovery strength

The pain of the newly-declared recession knows no boundaries, and the Asian economies are not immune, but that region is positioned to rebound faster than the U.S. and come out stronger than before, according to Tom McCabe, managing director of Standard Chartered Bank PLC. Speaking from the perspective of more than a decade in the banking industry in Asia, McCabe told an audience of executives in Phoenix that Asia will be the world’s engine of growth in the next 50 years, driven by India and China.

The devil’s in the details of the financial market crisis, and he’s wearing a green eyeshade

In the last month, financial markets came as close to collapsing as they have since the Great Depression, and the root of their woes was frozen credit markets. The crisis sparked several weeks of furious and futile improvisation by U.S. regulators and lawmakers. By early this week, the proposal — nicknamed the Paulson plan after Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson — appeared to be bringing relief, said financial experts at the W. P. Carey School of Business and in the investment business. Even so, only time will tell whether Paulson’s plan can solve the underlying problems, the experts said. As always, the devil’s in the details, and this time around, he’s wearing a green eyeshade.

Grappling with a global confidence crisis

It’s been called a crisis of confidence. It started with bad real estate loans and highly leveraged bets on those loans. Now it has frozen credit markets. Banks aren’t lending to each other. Businesses can’t get the short-term loans they need to finance day-to-day operations. If it stays this difficult to access credit, the financial crisis threatens to become a real economic one. And it’s global. Welcome to what Thomas Friedman calls the "flat" new world.

Good intentions, iffy choices paved road to credit crisis

It’s said the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and some people sweating through the credit-market meltdown might agree. Underlying the wreckage are decades of regulatory and legislative decisions that opened the door to today’s financial woes. Some policy choices were high-minded, some were deregulatory, and some just seemed like a good idea at the time. But, with passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), we’re on the right track now, aren’t we? Maybe not. According to Anthony Sanders, professor of finance at the W. P. Carey School of Business, TARP falls short as a deterrent to future financial troubles.

Paulson and Bernanke’s banking bailout: The devil’s in the details

Within the span of a week, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have gone from saviors to Satans. First, their plan for bailing out failing financial companies and thus shoring up a shaky economy was heralded as overdue medicine for a fast-spreading and perilous financial flu. Then, within days, it came to be lambasted as a gift to their friends on Wall Street and a power grab by the Bush administration. Financial experts at the W. P. Carey School of Business say Paulson and Bernanke’s plan is neither as divine as its early proponents claimed nor as dastardly as its detractors now allege. It is, they say, necessary to reassure skittish investors and bankers around the world. But as is so often the case when Washington meddles in markets, its ultimate success will depend on critical details that are still being hammered out.