Atlantic Business Channel

Mike Konczal

Recently by Mike Konczal

Jul 29 2009, 4:39PM

How Health Care is Like Zombie Insurance

by Mike Konczal

If you've been reading a lot about health care, you might have come across a fascinating discussion over health insurance rescission. Rescission is a weird-looking word that describes insurers seeking ways to invalidate your health coverage when you try to take out insurance for expensive health care. The insurance industry claims that this affects no more than one-half of one percent of all cases. Rather than parse that dubious claim, I want to explain how the rescission issue encapsulates some of the absurdities of health care finance, and how we could all understand health insurance better if we simply compared it to a Zombie Armageddon.

More

Comments (0)

Jul 28 2009, 1:10PM

How to Understand High Frequency Trading

by Mike Konczal

High Frequency Trading: You might not have heard of it now, but get ready, because it's going to be everywhere in the next few weeks. After the New York Times' exposed how advanced Wall Street computers can execute impossibly complicated, and possibly unfair, stock trades, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked the SEC to ban certain types of high frequency trading, or HFT. But what is HFT exactly, how does it work?

More

Comments (5)

Jul 13 2009, 1:08PM

Shadow Banking: What It Is, How it Broke, and How to Fix It

by Mike Konczal

We hear a lot of chatter about the shadow banking system and its crucial role in the financial crisis. But rarely do we find time to step back and ask the basic questions: What is shadow banking, where did it come from, how did it operate, what role did it play in this crisis and how do we deal with it going forward?

I hope this Q&A with a very smart professor and economist at Barnard College Professor Perry Mehrling provides answers to each of those questions.

More

Comments (6)