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One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks. Women just despise the culture.” Petursdottir still enjoyed finance. She just didn’t like the way Icelandic men did it, and so, in 2006, she quit her job. “People said I was crazy,” she says, but she wanted to create a financial-services business run entirely by women. To bring, as she puts it, “more feminine values to the world of finance.” Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”

Under rules of public financing, a candidate has access to $85 million from a taxpayer-financed fund for the general election, a substantial amount to spend for the roughly two months after this year’s conventions. But this election cycle has shattered fund-raising and spending records and upended expectations.

The setting, which has the feel of an Internet start-up, is emblematic of how Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has been able to raise so much money.

Mrs. Clinton’s operation has also been pushing to improve its efforts online, with her campaign saying Tuesday that it brought in $15 million over the Internet in February, with donations jumping after news broke that she had lent $5 million to her campaign.

9月15日，凯瑟琳·诺(Catherine Naud)查了一下在华盛顿互惠银行(Washington Mutual, 英文简称WaMu)的账户，然后开始了在犹他、亚利桑那和其他几个州为期十天的公路旅行。回到纽约后，身为哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)科学家的诺登录到自己银行的网站。“我收到通知，说我现在是摩根大通(JPMorgan)的客户，华盛顿互惠银行已不存在了，”她说。“我惊呆了。”

这导致该基金的资产净值低于每份1美元的面值。换句话说，该基金已“跌破1美元”(break the buck)

对于此次“通信”是否有高层意图在内的各种猜测，谢登科不予置评。他仅表示，新华社每年都会有特定的策划报道时间，比如半年总结或者中央召开重要会议等，内部都会策划，而采访时也会到各个部门进行核实。这次的《关于中国股市的通信》之所以出炉，是有其必然性的——今年的经济情况非常复杂，而股民开户数量达到了历史最高的1.2亿户，股市已经影响到了全民，再加上地震、冰雪灾害等突发因素，市场需要客观、公正地认识股市。 “讲透成果又不回避问题是我们写作的初衷”，他告诉记者，新华社作为国家级通讯社，在股市遇到如此多问题的时候，是有义务回答一些质疑和问题的。“我们想要表达的是，虽然16年来股市的发展出现了翻天覆地的变化，但问题并不因为指数上涨到6000点上而隐蔽，30年改革开放的成果也不会因为暴跌而被全盘否定。同时，我们呼吁股市的各个方面能够愈发地成熟起来。”

　《东企》：那么，如何重建亚洲人共同的价值观、它们的相互联系和它们的自信心呢？ 　　马凯硕：我在中国看到了很强的信心。我现在担心的是，中国人会不会变得太傲慢了。你知道有信心是好的，而变得傲慢则是不好的。在西方，冷战结束后有太多傲慢存在。有句英国谚语叫：骄者必败(Pride comes before a fall.)。所以对亚洲人来说，信心是重要的，但是不能变得傲慢。我去中国时，见到很多中国的年轻人都对未来很乐观。很多中国人相信，他们的孩子会比自己活得好。但你去欧洲会发现，很多欧洲人都认为下一代不如自己，他们没什么信心了。 　　但如果中国要像美国那样发达，至少还需要50年，因为你们的人口基数太大了。教育需要时间，中国需要更耐心一些。

Suppose that the value of the asset the Fed holds falls to zero after the trade. The trade was permanent, so there's no margin call or anything like that - the Fed owns the asset and it is worth nothing. Then, in the end, it is no different than the Fed simply printing that same amount of money and giving it to the banks as new reserves, it is an increase in the money supply.

If the central bank, or some other government agency, were to act as Market Maker of Last Resort and buy the impaired asset at a price no greater than its fair value but higher than what it would fetch in the free but unfair illiquid market, such a purchase would not be a bail-out. It would also be welfare-increasing...

My feeling is that it's not going to happen, mainly for political reasons. In this particular crisis, the distressed assets the Fed would end up buying would almost certainly be mortgage-backed bonds. But buying up mortgage-backed bonds looks very much like giving money to big banks and investors instead of giving it straight to struggling homeowners: the optics are simply terrible. If the collapse of Bear Stearns is seen as a bailout, this would be much worse. It might be a good idea, but its time

就专业化程度而论，资本市场权力结构的本质，是由众多投资者和多元化的利益集团组成的“资本共同体”。而“资本共同体”存在的重要前提，则是独立的有学识的专家群体的存在。这些专家群体受过共同的专业训练，他们构成了一个权威的资本市场的“解释共同体”。这是任何一个国家资本市场崛起的专业化基础，而这恰好是中国资本市场的“短板”。

要根本改变中国资本市场话语权被国际投行垄断的现状，光靠炮轰“谢国忠们”远远不够。资本市场“蝴蝶效应”的爆发并不是因为这些乌鸦嘴的存在，“谢国忠们”只是公鸡，不管他们叫不叫，天都会亮。解决问题的真正路径还在于提高本土专家的专业化程度和水平，这是中国资本市场“软起飞”的“话语权”保障，亦是中国资本市场崛起的基本要件。 证监会某副主席说，股市不是任何人可以炒的。我补充一句:股市也不是任何人可以冒充专家指导的。

I would suggest that China's January reserves data provides an equally compelling case for a reconsideration of the world's global monetary architecture. An international monetary system that requires this kind of official intervention - and likely will lead to more inflation in the emerging world than the emerging world wants and more government ownership of financial assets in the US and Europe than the US and European public wants -- strikes me as hard to sustain for much longer.

China added $55b to its reserves. Saudi Arabia added $18b to its foreign assets in January. Those two countries combined to add around $73b to their central banks portfolios. That means that those two countries alone could have supplied the $62.5b a month the US needs to sustain a $750b current account deficit and still had a bit left over to buy euros. Or they could have provided enough money to finance capital outflows from the US along with a current account deficit.It kind of makes you wonder why the US goes through the motions of selling Treasury and Agency bonds on the open market rather than doing direct placements with a few big central banks.

The price tally in the latest American Farm Bureau market basket survey of 16 basic groceries was $45.03 in the first quarter, up 9% from the same period last year. Many of the price increases are eye-popping -- a five-pound bag of flour cost $2.69, 26% more than last year.

The surge in food costs has been attributed to several factors, including the increasing number of American farmers who now grow corn to supply the ethanol industry instead of food companies. I

Corn prices have soared, hitting $6 a bushel, up 50% from 2007 and triple the price of three years ago.