Filed under: Economy , Investing I have to hand it to FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair — the former UMass economics professor gets it right on key policy issues. She is right about ending the doctrine of too-big-to-fail , and now she is proposing an idea that I’ve been pushing with no effect for years. That idea is to align the interests of the banks that bundle assets and sell them as securities — so-called asset-backed securities — with those of ABS investors. Before getting into the details of her proposal, I should disclose that I am not entirely objective in analyzing it. I worked with the FDIC back in the early 1980s to help build a system to manage the liquidation of the assets the FDIC gets when it helps find partners to absorb failed banks. And I have posted repeatedly about the idea of putting bankers’ pay in escrow as a way to align the interests of those who create investments with those who buy them. Continue reading FDIC Chair Sheila Bair has it right: It’s time to change bankers’ incentives FDIC Chair Sheila Bair has it right: It’s time to change bankers’ incentives originally appeared on DailyFinance on Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments

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FDIC Chair Sheila Bair has it right: It’s time to change bankers’ incentives

Filed under: Media The evidence continues to pile up that this will be the year newspapers start charging you to access their digital content. The latest news: Journalism Online , the e-commerce start-up created to help publishers monetize their websites, now says that more than 1,000 publications, including both print-based and digital-only titles, have signed on as affiliates. “There’s a remarkable consensus among publishers that, if they do their jobs right, they can generate subscription revenues from roughly the 10 percent most engaged online users,” Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and one of Journalism Online’s co-founders, told me recently. But scratch a little deeper and it becomes clear that publishers, while deeply curious about the idea of charging consumers for digital access, are also deeply ambivalent. For starters, those 1,000-plus Journalism Online affiliates haven’t signed binding contracts yet, just “letters of intent,” which, as Staci Kramer recently pointed out , don’t obligate signatories to anything more than information-sharing. Continue reading Everybody’s talking about thinking about charging for content Everybody’s talking about thinking about charging for content originally appeared on DailyFinance on Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Everybody’s talking about thinking about charging for content