Research Zeitgeist: Top Posts and Hot Topics
When the wealthiest man in the world speaks, people listen. So it comes as no surprise that Warren Buffett’s comments on the dollar and sovereign wealth funds were featured in the most-read post on Research Recap during the last week.
A lower-profile but intriguing topic - an examination of the growth of Islamic Finance by Moody’s - was also very popular.
Our roundup of the controversial Northrop/EADS Tanker deal drew strong interest and surely will be featured again as the deal comes under the political spotlight.
A well-read report from Audit Analytics showed a sharp drop in financial restatements last year, indicating that post-Enron reforms have kicked in.
Subprime was aagin respresented in the top five through continued interest in the December post based on the International Monetary Fund study of the role of hedge funds.
“Subprime” has certainly entered the zeitgeist in a big way but is it being credited with too large a role in current economic and financial woes? To be sure, the subprime mess is a very real problem and a significant one for a variety of players.
But it still represents a tiny slice of both the credit markets and the broader economy. Yet media coverage frequently tags the subprime crisis as the primary cause of broader troubles. Wasn’t the economic cycle long overdue for a downturn in any case? And once the media jumped on the subprime-recession bandwagon, plummeting consumer confidence was inevitable, reinforcing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In a prescient Research Recap post last August, Footnoted.org growing flagged the propensity for firms to use the subprime mess as a scapegoat for all manner of shortcomings, rightly or wrongly. Expect more of the same.
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