By now, it seems as if everyone has already read Thomas L. Friedman's 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.' It changed the way we think about global business, competitiveness and the implication for far-flung economies, governments, education and more.
What if the slowdown in merger activity isn't cyclical, but secular? What if corporations have learned the lessons of so many companies before them that the odds of a successful merger are no better than 50-50 and probably less? Is it possible that the biggest deals have already been done?
Here's the perversity of Wall Street's psychology: The more Wall Street is convinced that Washington will act rationally and raise the debt ceiling, most likely at the 11th hour, the less pressure there will be on lawmakers to reach an agreement. That will make it more likely a deal isn't reached.
No one suggested Lehman deserved to be saved. But the argument has been made that the crisis might have been less severe if it had been saved, because Lehman's failure created remarkable uncertainty in the market as investors became confused about the role of the government and whether it was picking winners and losers.
In truth, in the fairy-tale version of bailing out Lehman, the next domino, A.I.G., would have fallen even harder. If the politics of bailing out Lehman were bad, the politics of bailing out A.I.G. would have been worse. And the systemic risk that a failure of A.I.G. posed was orders of magnitude greater than Lehman's collapse.
Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a company is not allowed to provide a personal benefit to a decision maker in return for business. But hiring the sons and daughters of powerful executives and politicians is hardly just the province of banks doing business in China: it has been a time-tested practice here in the United States.
The genre of narrative business books that I love so much - the ones that have a you-are-there quality - was invented, or so it is said, in 1982 by David McClintick, who wrote 'Indecent Exposure,' a rollicking good read about a Hollywood scandal and the ultimate boardroom power struggle at Columbia Pictures.
I don't sleep well. I'm a very nervous - by my nature - anxious, almost paranoid person and reporter.
My training really was at the 'New York Times,' you know. When I got there, I was literally supposed to stay there for five weeks, and I got lucky like nobody, you know, like nobody's business.
In many ways, education is a lousy business. Teachers are not normal economic actors; almost all of them work for less money than they might fetch in some other industry, given their skills and advanced degrees.
When you can't lend or trade - and you can't invest with the leverage that juiced returns to support seven- and eight-figure bonuses - how exactly are you going to make money?
In truth, Wall Street is in for a radical makeover. Fewer people, lower margins, lower risk, lower compensation - and ultimately, fewer talented people. It is likely to change the culture of an industry that for nearly a century has been the money center of the world.
Let's start with a basic question: Do we, as a country, want our most highly qualified employees from the private sector to pursue public service? The answer, I would imagine, should be yes.
TARP became so politicized that having money from it was almost like a scarlet letter. There were debates over compensation, worry that the rules were going to get changed. All the banks were desperately rushing to get that money back as soon as possible - in part, so they could pay themselves bonuses without any government restrictions.
There's something called, 'resolution authority,' which gives the government the power to takeover a failing bank - something they didn't have pre-Lehman Brothers.
The rating agencies historically actually did a pretty good job rating regular bonds.
The lesson of 2008 is that ultimately our markets are driven by confidence.
One of Obama's first major acts as president was to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and some of the money in that bill went to Saft.
The economic meltdown that would define every aspect of Obama's economy came to a head well before he became president, of course, and so did the legislation that would be the basis for everything that came after.
Wall Street's biggest fight with Obama was over the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which Obama signed into law in the summer of 2010.
