Hedge Fund Selloffs Behind Swooning Dow

Top 25 managers cleaned up by betting on bank bailout

(NEWSER) - Betting correctly that the federal government would not let more banks fail after the cruel denouement of 2008, hedge fund managers engineered a record payday for themselves in 2009. The top 25 brought in $25.3 billion, topping 2007’s record by a healthy margin, and the $4 billion taken in by one astute investor is now the personal record. “We bet on the country’s revival,” David Tepper tells the New York Times . More»

Changes will be the most ambitious since the Great Depression

(NEWSER) - President Obama will unveil next week sweeping new changes to the nation’s governance of troubled financial institutions, the AP reports. Unlike Washington’s temporary ownership stake in automakers and major financial companies, the new regulatory protocol will be permanent and will present the most ambitious revision since the 1930s. Most likely to benefit from the changes will be the Federal Reserve. More»

(NEWSER) - The business world’s dependence on its own form of gambling—the “expectations,” or stock market—helped fuel the current financial crisis and the dot-com crash, writes Roger Martin in the Financial Times. “Neither would have happened if our business and capital markets theories had been as robust as those used to govern the NFL.” The league, soundly, instead rewards players and coaches on their “real market” performance—wins, touchdowns, yards. More»

What the government did at GM should be a lesson: get rid of bad leadership

(NEWSER) - Barney Frank was right when he said a retention bonus is “a nice word, it turns out, for extortion,” writes Carl Icahn for the Huffington Post. “Very few managers are irreplaceable, especially in this economy”—so why do they get paid extra to stay with a company they've run into the ground? “In many cases, the companies are better off without them,” Icahn contends. More»

Positive indicators, better policy, historical benchmarks; the time is right for a bottom

(NEWSER) - The tentative rally on Wall Street is reason enough for one economist to feel hopeful: "I’m ready to take another shot at calling the bottom," writes Michael Mandel in BusinessWeek. Since (apparently) bottoming out March 9, stocks have risen 20%, and the reasons behind the climb are genuine. Better policy, signs of economic revival, and historical data all point toward a possible sustained boost. More»