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Comment and analysis from Thursday’s FT

Editorial comment: The great asset price controversy
One market bubble may be an accident; two in the space of a decade begins to look like carelessness. Central banks must revisit their response to bubbles – and the possibility of using regulation, not monetary policy, to target them.

Comment: Roger Altman on avoiding bubbles
Market bubbles embody the temporary ascendance of hope and revisionism over experience and the basic rules of finance, says Altman, chairman and chief executive of Evercore Partners and former deputy US Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton. We can’t eliminate them but the question is how to avoid another round of credit speculation. The answer is to understand the worst excesses we have just seen and how the rules of finance have re-established themselves.

The Short View, video: The credit squeeze and recoupling
The credit squeeze has been a great recoupler. A year ago, the fashionable talk in markets was of Europe’s success in decoupling from the problems of the US economy. But it now appears to have remained firmly coupled to the US financial system. Text version here.

News analysis: Mixed response to banks’ capital raisings
A wave of bank rights issues has seen European banks announce plans to raise almost $79bn since the start of 2008, writes banking editor Peter Thal Larsen. The response has been muted – for several reasons.

Business Life: A speculator for the long haul
Bill Perkins is not just any investor. He is a founding trader of Centaurus Energy Advisers, a hedge fund of market makers that has reaped billions betting on record-breaking prices in gas and oil. By investing in the hard assets underlying his gas trades, Mr Perkins is taking on the unusual role of both speculator and producer, invading what has traditionally been the preserve of Big Oil.

Insight: currency shifts and investment opportunities
Brutal changes in currency valuations are posing new challenges for companies and investment managers worldwide, writes Claire Dissaux, global economist and strategist at Millennium Global. But rather than regarding currency shifts as a headache, it is time to grasp the investment opportunities that currencies offer as an asset class in their own right.