Mind Over Market

Hedge fund manager Paul Singer, founder and president of Elliott Management Corporation, on global financial and political issues and the risks they engender. Mr. Singer was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook Conference, December 11, 2014 at 1 World Trade Center, New York.

By Yusuke Horiguchi October 7, 2014 1. In a systemic financial crisis, strong forces of contagion--a virulent form of negative externality--put even the solidest financial firms with no faults of their own at serious risk, because of other firms' plight. This is a notorious example of market failure, providing a justification for public intervention aimed at preventing the financial system's collapse, typically involving taxpayer money. This is a standard economic analysis, widely accepted, at least at this level of generality, and with a straightforward prescription on the general direction of policy to be followed when coping with severe system-wide financial stresses.  It needs emphasis, however, that the prescription is applicable only to systemic crisis situations.  2. The situation of September 2008 and the ensuing few months was none other than that of an epochal systemic crisis. It in fact was the epitome of "unusual and exigent circumstances", in w...

Q and A with James Rickards Part 1 of 3 Part 2  here Part 3  here May 3, 2014 By Robert Stowe England James G. Rickards is a lawyer, economist and investment banker with 35 years of experience on Wall Street. His new book  The Death of Money , published by the Penguin Group, is a New York Times bestseller. His first book,  Currency Wars , published in 2011, and was also a Times bestseller. In his new book he explores further the consequences of the weak dollar policy pursued by the Federal Reserve Bank, coupled with the huge run up in deficits and debt by the United States, and the failure of Congress and the Obama Administration to devise policies that would spur faster economic growth. Rickards is a portfolio manager at West Shore Group, LLC, Haddonfield, N.J., an investment fund set up in 2013, and an adviser on international economics and financial threats to the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community. He g...

Q  and A with James Rickards Part 2 of 3 Part 1 here Part 3 here By Robert Stowe England James G. Rickards is a lawyer, economist and investment banker with 35 years of experience in capital markets on Wall Street. His new book The Death of Money , published by the Penguin Group, is a New York Times bestseller. His first book, Currency Wars , published in 2011, and was also a Times bestseller. In his new book, he explores further the consequences of the weak dollar policy pursued by the Federal Reserve Bank, coupled with the huge run up in deficits and debt by the United States, and the failure of Congress and the Obama Administration to devise policies that would spur faster economic growth. Rickards is a portfolio manager at West Shore Group, LLC, Haddonfield, N.J., an investment fund set up in 2013, and an adviser on international economics and financial threats to the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community. He gained first-hand...

Q and A with James Rickards Part 3 of 3 Part 1 here Part 2 here By Robert Stowe England James G. Rickards is a lawyer, economist and investment banker with 35 years of experience in capital markets on Wall Street. His new book The Death of Money, published by the Penguin Group, is a New York Times bestseller. His first book, Currency Wars, published in 2011, and was also a Times bestseller. In his new book, he explores further the consequences of the weak dollar policy pursued by the Federal Reserve Bank, coupled with the huge run up in deficits and debt by the United States, and the failure of Congress and the Obama Administration to devise policies that would spur faster economic growth. Rickards is a portfolio manager at West Shore Group, LLC, Haddonfield, N.J., an investment fund set up in 2013, and an adviser on international economics and financial threats to the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community. He gained first-hand experi...