Kevin Duffy

Kevin Duffy

He is principal of Bearing Asset Management which he cofounded in 2002. The firm manages the Bearing Core Fund, a contrarian, macro-themed hedge fund with a flexible mandate.

Articles by Kevin Duffy

Defending the Undefendable Investments

The people presented in this book are generally considered villainous, and the functions they perform, harmful. Sometimes society itself is damned because it spawns such reprehensible characters. However, the thrust of this book will concentrate on the following propositions:
They are guilty of no wrong-doing of a violent nature;In virtually every case, they actually benefit society;If we prohibit their activities, we do so at our own loss.                     —Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable, 1976
Three decades ago, I attended the week-long Mises University, the educational experience of a lifetime. Among the many lecturers were three of my libertarian heroes: Murray Rothbard, Walter Block and Sheldon Richman. Professor Block’s class on the environment, in particular, made quite

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Would Stress Tests Have Prevented the Failure of SVB? Probably Not

“This is all about regulation and the fact that at some point in time there was great advocacy for making sure that the regional banks and the smaller banks didn’t have to comply with some of the rules that perhaps would not have allowed them to get into this situation because there would’ve been stress testing and more oversight and more watching of what was going on.”
~ Rep. Maxine Waters (D), Financial Services Committee, March 15, 2023
As fate would have it, Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker lobbied in 2018 to raise the asset bar on the annual Dodd-Frank stress tests from $50 billion to $250 billion. On May 24, 2018, when President Donald Trump signed “the biggest rollback of bank rules since the financial crisis,” SVB’s assets footed to $54 billion. By the end of last year, they had

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Bulls, Bears, and Beyond: In Depth with James Grant

James Grant is editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, which he founded in 1983. He is the author of nine books, including Money of the Mind, The Trouble with Prosperity, John Adams: Party of One, The Forgotten Depression, and more recently Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian.

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