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By Barbara Zigah The findings of the recently published Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission won’t come as any great surprise to those investors who’ve followed the stories of the financial crisis from the beginning.  Succinctly stated, the Commission found – as many individuals have been saying all along – that the crisis could have been averted.  The crisis became, simply because those in the know – regulators from the various governmental agencies, and the so-called, “captains of finance” – failed to take heed of the warning signs, if indeed they even recognized them as such.  The Commission acknowledges that it wasn’t any one particular event which led to the crisis, but a generalized laissez-faire attitude among all of those entities which share the blame. According to the Commission, time and again, those government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the N.Y. Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank – agencies that we...

By Barbara Zigah Growing Eurozone inflation (at 2.4% in January, above the ECB’s target rate of 2%) is expected to be the focus of the European Central Bank’s policy setting meeting which concludes today.  Market players fully expect that the ECB intends to tackle those inflationary pressures head-on, and are hopeful that in so doing they’ll pull out all the stops, including an interest rate hike.  Analysts, however, are highly doubtful that the ECB will take this step – at least not yet. According to a recently conducted survey of economists, it is generally expected that the tone of Jean-Claude Trichet’s statement will indeed be more hawkish, but ultimately, the ECB president will be merely setting the stage for the possibility of a future rate hike.  The current historic low rate of 1% is likely to remain through March, when the ECB considers revisions to their economic Outlook. What may prompt the ECB to finally act on the threat will be increasing inflationary...