Zachary Goldfarb, a Washington Post staff writer, discusses (p. A10, “SEC Moves to Limit Short Sales of Stocks”) this SEC proposal - sympathetically.  The article is naïve - buying the complaint of “High-profile Wall Street executives” that short sellers “played an outsized role in crashing the stock values of several major financial services companies.”  Now, it is certainly true that when an asset value is falling, some will anticipate further declines and sell short - just as many will anticipate…

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The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Timothy F. Geithner tonight, but the vote was closer than expected with more “nays” than any previous nominee of President Barack Obama. The 60-34 confirmation was also the first nomination vote of the Obama administration with any Democrat voting no.

Because of the nagging questions remaining about Geithner’s failure to pay four years worth of self-employment taxes and his role in designing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, four members of the Democratic caucus joined…

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When news broke of Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion worldwide Ponzi scheme, news accounts first protrayed him as a shadowy hedge fund manager outside the scope of regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But as the sheer magnitude of the fraud became clearer, so did the picture of Madoff’s place in the Wall Street-Washington world.

Madoff’s businesses were actually subject to a variety of financial regulations, something Madoff would actually use as a selling point to investors. Last year in…

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Here’s some insightful comments from Thomas Haynes, a friend of CEI’s:

There’s a very interesting debate that could be conducted on who’s the madam, who’s the john and who’s the pimp in the relationships between the executive branch, the legislative branch and the financial services industry, but only so much of that debate can take place on Internet.

I did, however, want to note to those involved in the debate over TARP that my experience as a borrrower, plus some candid…

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How do you find work as a financial wizard today?

My friend and former colleague Radley Balko posts a video that captures the new economic reality in America.

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