About Scott Cleland
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You are hereInvestment ResearchPrivacy Will Burst Bubble 2.0Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2011-02-25 12:31Expect privacy concerns to be the eventual catalyst that ultimately bursts the Internet investment Bubble 2.0. It is rare when there is a profound disconnect and suspension of reality between industry behavior/investment expectations and customer wants, needs and expectations, but that is precisely what is at work in Bubble 2.0.
This is deja vu for me. I've seen this movie before when I had a front row seat as the original dotcom Bubble 1.0 wiped away $4 trillion in market valuation in a few weeks. Google Price Index: Insider Trading & Market Failure?Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2010-10-13 11:36Google announced it is working on an economy-wide Google Price Index, but has not decided whether to make it public, per Google Chief Economist, Hal Varian, who spoke at the National Association of Business Economists conference this week.
I. Insider Trading In March, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: "One day we had a conversation where we figured out we could just try and predict the stock market... and then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that." Now any hedge fund (or market regulator not born yesterday) understands that if Google is actively working on a Google Price Index, Google has not stopped trying to use its uniquely comprehensive and timely, repository of sensitive market information to predict information highly useful to predicting the stock market.
Systemic Flash Crash Vulnerability: Financial Crisis Root Causes: Part IVSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2010-10-04 16:48The SEC/CFTC report on the May 6th "Flash Crash" helps confirm that automated index trading technology was a contributing cause of the 2008 Financial Crisis and why recent financial reforms are not enough to address the ongoing destructive systemic vulnerability that automated index trading technology increasingly poses for financial markets going forward.
Systemic Uneconomics: Financial Crisis Root Causes: Part IIISubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2010-01-21 16:03To discern the real “root” causes of the financial crisis of 2008, one must probe beneath the surface and examine the health of the “root system” of our capital markets “forest.” The roots of the capital markets forest are sound economics; the natural market function of automatically equilibrating supply and demand and risk and reward, that is commonly appreciated as Adam’s Smith’s “invisible hand.” We generally assume that the natural market strength of the capital market forest’s root system ensures that all the trees are not in danger of being blown over in the crisis of a storm.
In the fall of 2008, we all were shocked to learn that the root system of our capital markets, that we had always assumed was healthy and strong, was actually frighteningly weak and brittle requiring the slapdash reinforcement of multi-trillion dollar emergency scaffolding of whatever material was close at hand, a TARP, bailout lifelines, capital sandbags, etc. -- to buttress the main market “trees” from toppling over, trees that the Government judged to big to be allowed to fall.
More un-economics nonsense from FreePress: Regulation does not discourage private investmentSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2009-10-22 09:59Does anyone else see the irony of a staunchly anti-business and anti-property activist organization like FreePress -- which openly advocates for an information commons and a broadband public utility model -- attempting to be credible doing private investment analysis for the FCC?
If FreePress does not believe in free enterprise or private property, and does not understand concepts like profit, I am doubtful they can accurately or objectively analyze the economics or the business case for private long-term capital investments. Mr. Turner tries desperately and unsuccessfully to assemble "evidence" to prove the ridiculous assertion that regulation does not deter private investment. “Systemic Risk Laundering” -- Financial Crisis Root Causes -- Part IISubmitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2009-09-08 10:27
How could American taxpayers get stuck with a multi-trillion dollar tab that they weren’t even aware that they were running up? How could that huge tab still be allowed to run up unchecked today? For the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the sad answer is one of the biggest root causes of last fall’s devastating financial crisis and one of the biggest continuing systemic risks to the financial system and the economic recovery.
A decade ago, in what may prove to be the most expensive bipartisan legislative mistake in U.S. history, a bipartisan policy became law that effectively ensured that no Federal regulator had oversight or enforcement jurisdiction over derivative financial instruments. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) created “legal certainty for excluded derivative transactions.” That law allowed a shadow derivative overlay system to be built literally on top of the public financial system, with none of the inherent accountability of the underlying financial system. In other words, a deliberate bipartisan U.S. government policy change a decade ago unwittingly created an unaccountable “black hole” market that sucked enormous value out of public markets, (Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, Fannie, Freddie, securitized sub-prime mortgages, etc.) while laundering the risk to the U.S. taxpayer. Diagnosing the Financial Crisis' Root CausesSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2009-06-11 17:43This is an introduction and background for my new multi-part research series on diagnosing the root causes of the Financial Crisis. |