As many readers have pointed out, the IPO drought of the last decade has many causes beyond just decimalization of stock trading. Sarbanes-Oxley has made it significantly more expensive to be a public company than it used to be. Consolidation in the banking and brokerage industries have resulted in fewer specialists and hardly any true investment bankers surviving. The lure of derivatives trading and other rocket science activities on Wall Street have made IPO underwriting look like a staid and prosaic profession, too. Fortunately, people in positions of influence are finally starting to realise that there is no economic future for this country without new public companies.
One requirement of the JOBS Act, passed last April, […]
A couple of years ago, in an obvious moment of poor judgement, the Kauffman Foundation placed this rag on its list of the top 50 economics blogs in America. So from time to time I feel compelled to write about economic issues and this Labor Day holiday in the U.S. provides a good excuse for doing so now. In a sense you could say I inherited this gig because my parents began their careers in the 1940s working for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This first of two columns looks at employment numbers in the current recovery while the second will try to explain why the economy has been […]