Daily | Barclays Agrees Women Better Investors | Obama Healthcare Upheld by Appeals Court

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When the Subject Is Money

Why Women Are Better at Everything TIME

Yes, the article title is controversial and misleading, because the story doesn’t take up the topic of everything, but rather women in the financial markets. But it was a man — Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch columnist David Weidner who noted that women ‘do almost everything better’ than men — from politics to corporate management to investing.

A new study by Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research found that women were more likely to make money in the market because they didn’t take as many risks. You might say the women had better timing. A 2005 study by Merrill Lynch found that 35% of women held an investment too long, compared with 47% of men. More recently, in 2009, a study by the mutual fund company Vanguard involving 2.7 million personal investors concluded that during the recent financial crisis, men were more likely than women to sell shares of stocks at all-time lows, leading to bigger losses among male traders. It also meant fewer gains when some of the stock values began to rise again.

Overconfidence

Male investors, as a group, appear to be overconfident, said John Ameriks, a co-author of the Vanguard study. “There’s been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they’re doing, even when they really don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

Men want to trade, to be active, to push the digital button.

Writing ‘How Men’s Overconfidence Hurts Them As Investors’, Jeff Sommer added an important qualifier to the discussion, interviewing Brad M. Barber, now at UC Berkeley and an author of the 2001 study titled, ‘Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence and Common Stock Investment.

Of course, gender generalizations must be taken with caution: they clearly don’t apply to all men or all women. “The differences among women and the differences among men are much greater than the differences between men and women,” he said.

Commentary on Christine Lagarde @IMF

Economic ‘prudence is folly’ in strange times Financial Post

Now is no time for “smart, sensible and judicious” financial leaders like Christine Lagarde to steer global economic policy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

Ms. Lagarde, the newly installed head of the International Monetary Fund, could advance a return to conventional economic policy, debt reduction and balanced budgets, Mr. Krugman, a New York Times columnist, told an audience Wednesday at an Economic Club of Canada talk in Toronto.

Business World Not for Feint-Hearted

Women investors held back by low self esteem and weak marketing Business Daily Kenya

Ms Tanya Nduati of Flying Doctors’ Society of Africa said many women were timid, and lacked the confidence to boost their business despite having very viable ideas.

“I have been to many entrepreneurs’ gatherings and I always here the same thing when women entrepreneurs are introducing their ventures, ‘I have this kasmall business’. Why should people listen to a kasmall business? You will never hear a man say that. They see their idea as great and no one can convince them otherwise,” said Ms Nduati.

Brainiac

Obama Healthcare Overhaul Upheld by US Appeals Court Businessweek

A Republican-appointed judge turned aside a challenge to the President Obama’s healthcare plan, voting against the Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center, a Christian-based public interest law firm, which argued that Congress exceeded its constitutional power in imposing the individual mandate.

Not every intrusive law is an unconstitutionally intrusive law,” said Jeffrey Sutton, the first Republican- appointed judge to back the law in litigation across the country.

The federal court ruling sets the stage for the case to reach the Supreme Court by the end of this year. Two other cases in the appeals courts may now go into a holding pattern, waiting for the Supreme Court decision.

Calling The Debt Ceiling Unconstitutional

Is the Debt Ceiling Constitutional? Slate

Is the Debt Ceiling Unconstitutional? The Moderate Voice

The debt ceiling might be unconstitutional, but now is not the time to find out WaPo

Previously, debt ceiling constitutionality has been raised by constitutional experts, but had no traction in the media or mainstream thinking.  idea has previously failed to enter mainstream thinking. The idea of declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional is not limited to just a few Washington, D. C. partisans, but is also beginning to be discussed in the media.

In the senate, the argument is picking up steam among Democratic senators including Chris Coons (D-DE) and Patty Murray (D-WA). The president, likely based on an Attorney General’s opinion, would declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional,  continuing to pay the nation’s debts under the authority of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Subsidizing Ethanol & Global Food Prices

Lots of Talk, Too Little Action NYTimes Opinion

In the last year cereal prices are up by 70 percent, now surpassing price levels that sparked widespread food riots in 2008. According to the World Bank, 44 million more people were pushed into hunger in the second half of 2010.

Agriculture ministers from the 20 largest industrial economies met in Paris to study the problem and to consider bans on agricultural exports by certain producers along with supports for food-based biofuel production.

The United States, Brazil and several other biofuel makers opposed an agreement to cut support for biofuels. This country is the world’s biggest ethanol producer. The 13.5 billion gallons made here last year used about 40 percent of the nation’s corn crop. Government supports include a nearly $6 billion annual subsidy for ethanol makers.