The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough regulation. It’s that we have too much bad regulation, specifically, regulation that isn’t designed properly.

When an industry produces “excess” profits, opportunities are created for new entrants who are able and willing to come into the market and accept lower levels of profit (because their cost structure is lower, or because they’re willing to accept lower current profits with the expectation that they will increase margins later on).

But financial services regulations have created barriers to entry, protecting current players’ margins.

2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could create a glut in the debt markets

Both New York-based banks are demanding unequal arrangements with hedge-fund firms, forcing them to post more cash collateral to offset risks on trades while putting up less on their own wagers. At the end of December this imbalance furnished Goldman Sachs with $110 billion, according to a filing. That’s money it can reinvest in higher-yielding assets.

Smart arbitrage actually

Bank of America executives are discussing the need to incorporate locally in China, these people said. It isn't clear how much capital the bank is seeking to inject into the unit, although Beijing requires a minimum of one billion yuan ($146.59 million) in registered capital. Nor is it clear how the bank would use its new powers if approved, though people familiar with the matter said Bank of America more likely would pursue commercial business, rather than the retail banking that is one of its strengths in the U.S.

Banks forgot that their job was to take care of your money

First Child: perfectionist, reliable, conscientious, a list maker, well organized, hard driving, a natural leader, critical, serious, scholarly, logical, doesn’t like surprises, a techie.

Middle Child: mediator, compromising, diplomatic, avoids conflict, independent, loyal to peers, has many friends, a maverick, secretive, used to not having attention.

Youngest Child: manipulative, charming, blames others, attention seeker, tenacious, people person, natural salesperson, precocious, engaging, affectionate, loves surprises.

Only Child: little adult by age seven, very thorough, deliberate, high achiever, self-motivated, fearful, cautious, voracious reader, black-and-white thinker, talks in extremes, can’t bear to fail, has very high expectations for self, more comfortable with people who are older or younger.

Right on for me...

Discounts and promotions are our version of ‘financial weapons of mass destruction.’ They are taxes placed upon brands for being unremarkable.

The problem is how. Google has taken a couple of services that had basically clear privacy expectations — specifically, Gmail (private) and Google Profiles (public) — and combined them in a way that discloses previously private information that many people consider confidential.

Admittedly, indictments of Wall Street and the Fed have become a staple over the last six months. But Stiglitz’s virtue is that he minces few words. Fed policies worked only by “replacing the tech bubble with a housing bubble,” he says. “In virtually every interpretation of the crisis, the Fed was at the center of the creation of this and the previous bubble.” And “in the Frankenstein laboratories of Wall Street, banks created new risk products . . . without mechanisms to manage the monster they had created.” Meanwhile, innovation on Wall Street was “directed at “circumventing regulations, accounting standards and taxation.” Stiglitz, who fears that Wall Street still dominates Washington, is clearly a man outraged.

4) Cadre of generalists. Cash is not the only, or even most critical, resource to reallocate across business units. Portfolio agility requires a cadre of general managers, sufficiently versatile to move from business to business as opportunities arise and decline in different parts of the business. Firms like HSBC (with its International Management career track), General Electric, and Mars invest heavily to develop general managers by giving them P&L responsibility early on, rotating them through functions and business units to expose managers to diverse a range of challenges and contexts, and providing ongoing leadership training. Goldman Sachs rose from a second-tier investment bank to a global leader, in part, through the creation of the Investment Banking Services (IBS), which consisted of generalists responsible for soliciting new business and maintaining client relationships, who could shift from a waning geography or sector into growing one. Portfolio agility does not require everyone in an organization become a general manager. In fact, generalists allow others to increase their specialization. Goldman research analysts and product specialists, for example, could build deeper expertise in a sector or financial instrument, because they knew IBS bankers could bridge their specialized expertise with the client’s needs.