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  • Liaquat Ahamed Wins Pulitzer for 'Lords of Finance'

    The 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced yesterday, and an investment manager won in the History category. Liaquat Ahamed , director of Aspen Insurance Holdings, won for his book Lords of Finance , a compelling look back at the economics of World War I and the Great Depression that Janet Maslinm in a New York Times review, said "easily connects the dots between the economic crises that rocked the world during the years his book covers and the fiscal emergencies that beset us today." Ahamed made some of those connections in an interview last year in an interview with David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo: You can also watch a longer talk from Ahamed at Johns Hopkins here .

  • New Bloomberg Poll Reveals Americans Distaste for Bankers, Banks, Execs, and Desire for Regulation--but not Much Faith in Politicians

    Bloomberg has released the results of a new national poll on Americans' attitudes toward Wall Street, bankers, and regulation of financial institutions. The poll shows that Americans are not too fond of anyone at this moment::bankers, insurance companies, Wall Street, corporate executives. And while they favor "punishing banks," nearly 70% say they want the government to regulate consumer protection through currently available means, rather than establish a new agency. John McCormick and Alison Vekshin report: As Democrats and Republicans seek to tap populist ire, the poll shows there may be political advantage in taking on big financial institutions such as Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. , and New York’s Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The majority of poll participants -- 56 percent -- say big financial companies are more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary people, while 40 percent say such firms play a vital role in enabling the economy to grow. At the same time, Americans are divided over the scope of government regulation. More than 40 percent of Americans say the government has gone too far in measures to fix the financial industry; 37 percent say it hasn’t done enough. Almost six out of 10 people say Wall Street hasn’t gone far enough on its own to protect against future emergencies. “Anything the government gets their fingers in, they mess it up,” said poll participant Norman White, 60, a community college electronics instructor who lives in Colfax, Louisiana . “I don’t have a very high opinion of the government running anything.” Read Wall Street Despised in Poll Showing Majority Want Regulation here .

  • Geithner in Istanbul: Reform, Fiscal Stimulus Must Continue or Recovery Will be Halted

    Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner joined other G7 finance leaders in Istanbul to tell members of The Institute of International Finance --representing many of the world's largest bank--that reform is a necessary component of recovery, and to expect "sweeping changes," according to a Reuters report . Reuters quotes Geithner as telling bankers, "We're not going to adopt an approach that does stuff at the margin, and delays any changes that help preserve a bunch of practices that helped make this crisis much more damaging than it otherwise would have been." Geithner also stressed the need to continue fiscal stimulus, as The Wall Street Journal's Andy Jordan and Bob Davis report below:

  • Goldman Sachs Employees' New Accommodations

    If you are visiting Lower Manhattan, you could stay at the Ritz Carlton Battery Park, where you will have fabulous views of the Statue of Liberty, 400 thread-count linens, and a telescope in your room. Or you could stay at the nearby Embassy Suites, where your view will be of Jersey City, your cotton-poly blend sheets will have a thread-count of 250, you will get free Budweiser at happy hour, and your nightly cost will about half the rate of the Ritz. If you are an employee of Goldman Sachs , you'll now be staying at the Embassy Suites, according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal . Goldman Sachs also owns the Embassy Suites hotel, so it has some extra incentive to put up its employees there. But the cheaper hotel rooms are just part of an overall cutback in spending: Goldman people working late can only put in for $20 in dinner costs; the old limit was $25. If Goldman employees want to take a hired car home, they have to wait until 10 p.m., an hour later than before. The firm recently slashed the number of computer printers at its New York headquarters, frustrating employees who now have farther to walk in order to retrieve pitchbooks. "These firms don't want to do anything that harms their ability to produce revenue, but in this environment they have to be incredibly mindful of protecting shareholder value," said Glenn Schorr, an analyst at UBS AG. "If that means buying a hotel like the Embassy Suites and having employees stay there, so be it." Goldman, which accepted $10 billion in federal bank-rescue funds last year, has also taken great pains to not appear profligate, with all the intense government scrutiny over banks' spending on luxuries. It called off its big Miami hedge-fund conference scheduled for the first week in March and moved a three-day technology conference in late February from the Mandalay Bay casino-resort in Las Vegas to the San Francisco Marriott. You can read the full article here .