Pink Picks

Comment and analysis from the FT

William Cohan: Regulators must reform Wall Street
For the first time in a generation, the world’s most powerful regulators of financial markets – whether around Wall Street or Threadneedle Street – have the undivided attention of the most powerful men in finance. How this resurgent authority will be used is hanging in the air. Will regulators force long-overdue changes to the fundamental ways Wall Street does business or just dab lightly around the edges?

Gillian Tett: Triple-A prices are out of sync
Why have the prices of triple A mortgage-linked securities slumped so dramatically this year? That question has recently caused anguished debate in the banking world. After all, as the credit turmoil enters its ninth month, it has become painfully clear it is not the behaviour of risky debt, such as BBB-rated securities, which is causing the most grief.

Interactive graphic: Auction rate securities unwinding
FT.com’s interactive graphic explains how a dearth of liquidity and loss in confidence has caused the collapse of the $330bn market and its impact on municipal bond issuers and investors.

The Short View, video: Sovereign ratings
Who has real power in world markets? It still seems to be the ratings agencies. Investors in Brazil have not needed much help of late. But Wednesday’s decision by S&P to upgrade its sovereign debt to investment grade was galvanic. Brazilian stocks instantly gained more than 7 per cent in dollar terms.

Lombard: Feeling zik at Barclays
In normal times, Barclays could easily shrug off the departure of Paul Idzik from its board. He had largely completed the task he accepted in 2004 of increasing the bank’s “metabolic rate”. But it is a huge blow to lose your highly regarded chief operating officer in the middle of the credit crunch and when there is speculation that the bank may have to make more writedowns and launch a rights issue.

Bank of England report (1): Martin Wolf – why change is coming
What does the economic turmoil mean for the UK economy? This is not a question about prospects for the next year. It is deeper than that: how well can an economy long characterised by soaring house prices, exploding debt and a dynamic financial sector adjust to a new world?

Bank of England report (II): Editorial comment
The Bank of England’s Financial Stability Report may be right not to expect further spectacular crashes and liquidity crises – and in that sense, the worst may be over; but it does not follow that markets will soon return to normal,

Bank of England report (III): UK Daily View, video anaysis
The FT’s economics editor Chris Giles analyses the Bank of England’s belief the credit crisis could ease over the next few months.