Top Financial Stories 2012

I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months, in business/financial news.

Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and italicize the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story.

Further, I don't rank them, as in a top ten list. I assign one top story to each of the twelve months.

All that said, here is this year's list.

January: Continuing Recession. Iconic chemicals-and-photography company Kodak files for bankruptcy.

February: Eurozone tensions. Europe manages a restructuring of Greek debt -- private bondholders take a deep haircut. [Speaking more broadly, there has been a change in tone over the course of 2012. The year began with a lot of talk about the breakup of the common currency zone. Greece might have withdrawn and started printing drachmas. For better or worse, there is much less of such talk now.]

March: IP Law. The US Supreme Court decides important patent-law case, Prometheus Labs, re-invigorating an old principle against the patenting of the laws of nature, thereby expanding the intellectual commons.

April: Continuing Recession. Another household name company in trouble? Sony announces plans to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide, though whether it is in Kodak-style trouble is not clear.

May: Banking controversies. JPMorgan's losses on 'hedging' trades out of London by virtue of a "whale" of a trader re-shape the debate over the Volcker rule.

June: Power to tax. The US Supreme Court decides the Obamacare case, upholding most of the provisions of the complicated legislation, invoking the tax power for this purpose.

July: Banking controversies. Barclays bigwigs resign in the face of a Libor-fixing scandal, which soon widens to become a central bankers' scandal. What did the Fed and the Bank of England know and when did they know it?

August: Oil trade. After a good deal of back-and-forth, Sudan and the new (landlocked) country of South Sudan conclude an agreement on the transit of the latter's oil. South Sudan, within days, is discussing with Kenyan a new pipeline that will give it an alternative means of export.

September: Tablet market. Among the (mostly) US based corporations competing to sell us all glowing rectangles, a flurry of competing announcements about new products: from Nokia (Finland), Google, Amazon, and of course from Apple. Evidently not in this picture, Canada's RiM and the long-promised new Blackberry.

October: Power to default. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals finds against Argentina in a much watched dispute over a pari passu clause in the bond documentation.

November: Money market funds. A federal district court jury found two managers of the Reserve Primary fund, an MMF, not liable for the losses of their clients when their fund "broke the buck" in the fall of 2008.

December: US fiscal difficulties. Talks about the looming "fiscal cliff" in the US - various unpalatable tax increases and budget cuts set to come into play automatically unless Congress did something about it, and the manci-depressive chronicles of such talks day by day, dominate financial news all month.

I wish I could leave this year with more of a note of closure, but then: what has concluded, that we should draw conclusions?

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