Mind Over Market

Lecture to Ethics Class Carey School of Business, Johns Hopkins University Legg-Mason Building, Baltimore East Harbor Campus Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland August 27, 2012 By Robert Stowe England It’s nearly four years since the advent of financial crisis. Yet, for most Americans, a thick fog still shrouds its origins Finding the answer to what went wrong is what compelled me to write Black Box Casino. In the end, it was a detective story where even a list of important actors could run into the hundreds. At the center of origins of the crisis is a single industry – the mortgage industry. As senior writer for Mortgage Banking magazine since 1988, I have reported on the vast changes sweeping through the industry for more than two decades. The mortgage industry in 2008 was nothing like it was when I started covering it. Twenty years ago the mortgage industry was disciplined by the free market. It was flexible and innovative. New loan products would appear and...

Wilbur Ross is interviewed on CNBC's Squawk Box August 14, 2012 Rough transcript of interview: Joe Kernen: Restructuring legend Wilbur Ross is here and goes all over the place in search of opportunity, back from a fresh trip to Greece, joins us for the next two hours. Wilbur, it's been probably, has it been six months since I've seen you? Wilbur Ross: A few months, maybe three or four. Joe Kernen: Three or four months, and it's great at this point in time just to hear where you are on things like housing and europe and everything else. In looking at some of the things you said in the preinterview, we were hoping maybe the continent was improving a little. In your view as far as Greece goes we don't know how bad it actually is? Wilbur Ross: I think the continent in general is improving quite a bit. the french gdp figures that were just released for the second quarter were not bad at all. germany was a little bit better than expected, and those...

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at BMO Capital Markets, talks about the outlook for the U.S. stock market and investment strategy. Belski speaks with Tom Keene, Scarlet Fu and Sara Eisen on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance." (Source: Bloomberg)

Rough Transcript: Andrew Ross Sorkin: Ikay, let's talk about dick kovacevich. comments made on this show is still rocking the financial industry, sandy weill's change of heart on financial super markets like the ones he created. take a listen to this for a second. Clip of Sandy Weill: what we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans and have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to fail. the banking system is really very, very important. i think that the problem that was created was created by too much concentration in investments in the banking system, way too much leverage, very little transparentally with lots of off-balance sheath things that didn't really count and i think a lot of those things have to change. i think that there should be transparency and nothing off the b...

Sandy Weill, in an interview on Squawk Box on CNBC July 25, said that Glass-Steagall should be re-instated and that commercial banking and investment banking should be separated. Investment banks should not be allowed to have deposits, they would not be insured, and would be allowed to fail. As the man who put together the mega-merger of Citigroup and Travelers that paved the way for the repeal of Glass-Steagall, this is a stunning turn-around in his views. His concern derives partly from the negative view of banking held by the public. But, he also feels that Dodd-Frank is crippling the ability of investment banks to be the innovators and leaders they have traditionally been and wants the United States to remain the leader in world finance.

Daily Ticker Interview July 20, 2012 America is headed for a fiscal cliff if members of Congress fail to act before the end of the year. Many economists agree that if no action is taken, 2013 will begin with a $600 billion drag on the economy, or a 4 to 5 percent hit to GDP, due to a combination of tax hikes and budget cuts set to take effect. To put that in perspective, the knock to economic growth could be twice as much as current GDP growth forecasts for all of 2012 and more than any annual GDP growth in the last decade. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said this week at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha conference that the impact of the fiscal cliff could be worse than the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, which resulted in the worst recession since the Great Depression. A new report by the American Action Forum forecasts between 2.8 million and 10 million jobs could be lost as a result of falling off the cliff based on a set of GDP eco...

Becky Quick at CNBC Interviews Warren Buffett, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 12, 8:03 am: Rough Transcript: Becky Quick : We are in Sun Valley as you mentioned and we are joined by our dream line-up this morning, Warren Buffett, who has been with us for the last half hour and joining us and sitting down with us right now are former Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff for President Clinton, two gentlemen we have been hoping to get on the program for an incredibly long time, because of Simpson-Bowles, Bowles-Simpson and everything that's happening with the fiscal cliff. Gentlemen we thank you for agreeing to sit down with us this morning. thank you. warren buffett can attest to this, but when we go around and talk to ceos, it is almost universal among them when they say if they had a chance and could vote for bowles-simpson or simpson-bowles, they would put this in immediately and they can't understand w...