12 Ways Obama Could Make "Occupy Wall Street" Happier

Here are 12 specific actions Obama could take that would make many within the Occupy Wall Street movement happier.

Read the full Forbes post here.

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What the US Might Do About China’s “Go Slow” Approach to Revaluing the Renminbi

China would rather go slow on the yuan revaluation. The US seems to think it has no power to say otherwise on the matter.

Read the full post on Forbes.

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How Do You Fix the Hollowing Out of America's Middle Class?

It's time stop pretending the decline of the middle class isn't happening and propose solutions. It will take fair trade with China, embracing our own elites instead of castigating them, and a more (not less) directive government.

Read my full post at Forbes here.

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Soros' Opinions Given Too Much Weight

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor11/17/10 - 06:00 AM EST

George Soros is arguably the most famous first generation hedge fund manager in the world.

A quick search of the 80-year-old's name yields 2.5 million hits on Google. Julian Robertson, 78, yields 740,000 hits. Carl Icahn, 74, generates 400,000 hits. (If you want to characterize Warren Buffett as also a first- generation hedge fund manager, the 80-year-old wins the popularity contest with 3.6 million Google hits.)

Of the current set of modern hedge fund managers, only John Paulson yields more Google hits than Soros, with 2.6 million hits. Soros has about 10 times the number of hits as the man David Rosenberg calls the best money manager in the world: Paul Tudor Jones. David Einhorn has only 225,000 hits and Bill Ackman generates only 84,000 hits. Eddie Lampert, who was once declared the next Warren Buffett, has only 32,000 hits.

Of course, past performance -- and hits on Google -- by no means indicate future performance. Yet, these hits indicate how often the broader media pay attention to the views of these managers as a part of the public discourse on our financial markets.

Popularity of these managers is why CNBC and other media outlets pay so much attention to their 13-F filings, which disclose how their portfolios change each quarter. For example, earlier this week, we found out that John Paulson trimmed his Bank of America(BAC_) stake last quarter and sold his entireGoldman Sachs(GS_) stake. David Einhorn bought more Apple(AAPL_).

In a Wall Street Journal story yesterday, we also learned that Soros "reduced his direct ownership stake in the SPDR Gold Trust(GLD_)" and he "reported no stake in Best Buy(BBY_)."

To the Journal's credit, it also referenced that it was Soros' hedge fund -- Soros Fund Management -- which made other moves. In one paragraph, the Journal uses Soros and his fund interchangeably: "The value of Mr. Soros's stockholdings was $6.7 billion at the end of the third quarter. The fund reported stockholdings worth $5.1 billion at the end of the second quarter."

However, in an hour long discussion with Reuters' Chrystia Freeland in September, where he discussed his macro views on gold, the U.S. deficit, and Europe's debt problems, Soros admitted during a Q&A session afterwards when asked about one of his fund's stock positions that he wasn't involved in the day-to-day decisions of the fund. Therefore, he couldn't discuss a specific stock.

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[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]

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QE2's Unintended Global Consequences

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor11/10/10 - 06:00 AM EST

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke did the right thing in launching QE2 last week. Nevertheless, it's spawned a rash of criticism from the likes of Kevin Warsh, Germany's finance minister, and Sarah Palin.

On a recent trip to China, I got a chance to read the excellent In Fed We Trust by David Wessell about Bernanke and his recent years at the Federal Reserve. What was clear in the profile is that, while Bernanke acknowledges that he was slow to see the extent of the subprime problem coming in 2006 through the first half of 2008, he has been aggressively doing "whatever it takes" ever since to slay the dragon of a deflation-driven recession.

After a life in academia studying the Great Depression and -- more recently -- Japan's travails from a 20-year deflation slide, Bernanke has good reason to fear an economy falling back into a quicksand pit.

Bernanke knows two things about his public perception. First, he, like politicians, gets no credit for any actions he took that prevented problems from happening two years ago and second, there's an inherent bias that the Fed and certainly among the mainstream press and the public to fear inflation much more than deflation.

As late as early September 2008, Bernanke was fighting fellow Fed governors' hearts and minds against the imminent threat of inflation. Runaway inflation is a much easier concept for Glenn Beck to diagram on a chalkboard compared to runaway deflation. What's the schematic for that?

So, three cheers for Bernanke taking action last week. He and the Fed governors have a dual mandate: full employment and price stability for the US economy. Given the data and where we are in this recovery, the Fed made the right call.

But Ben Bernanke doesn't have responsibility for the rest of the world and, unfortunately, there will be challenging unintended consequences of his actions last week on other emerging economies.

Specifically, China and other economies -- like Hong Kong -- with their currencies pegged to the US dollar will feel added inflationary pressures on their already strong economies. Simply put, Bernanke's explicit prescription for healing the U.S. economy is now gas being poured on to already hot economies who bounced back remarkably quickly from the crisis two years ago.

In a recent letter to his investors, renowned hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones complained about the Chinese yuan's peg to the US dollar: "On January 1, 1994, China devalued its currency by 50% in a single day, and since then has experienced a manufacturing boom. After 15 years of impressive productivity gains relative to its trading partners, though, it now resists the smallest appreciation.... "As someone who has traded foreign exchange since 1980, I believe the RMB/USD rate is currently the single most important of all exchange rates. It not only drives the largest foreign trade relationship in the world, it also drives virtually every other exchange rate globally. Dozens of other emerging market countries suppress their exchange rate against the US dollar because the RMB is effectively pegged to the dollar."

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[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]

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CME Group Conference -- Our Davos

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor10/13/10 - 06:25 AM EDT

CME Group (CME) next week holds its third annual Global Financial Leadership Conference in Naples, Fla. The conference is relatively new but it already has distinguished itself as one of the highest profile annual get-togethers of business and finance leaders in the United States. Think of it as our Davos.

Speakers next week include hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, bank analyst Meredith Whitney, Portuguese Minister of State and Finance Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, author Michael Lewis, formerGoldman Sachs (GS) and Citigroup(C) alum Robert Rubin, and former President Bill Clinton.

I spoke with Anita Liskey, CME's managing director of corporate marketing communications, about the conference, how it came to be and the expected hot topics for discussion next week.

GFLC is now in its third year. Why did you start it and how have you been able to create such a prestigious conference in such a short time?

Liskey: It's our marquee customer event each year for the CME Group. It cuts across all our business segments and draws attendees from all over the world. We just decided that if we're going to do this kind of event we wanted it to be a one-of-a-kind top-tier experience. We are fortunate to have many contacts to thought leaders across business, finance, and government so that when we've asked them to speak, they've immediately said yes. We're happy that the response from attendees has been so positive.

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[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]

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Paul Tudor Jones - 1987 Trader Documentary

If you haven't already seen this, I highly recommend it.

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