Daniel Halper writes:  Wealthy Americans who seek to amass political power have always been able to do so with relative ease, as long as they go about it with skill. Until recently, however, it has not been the case (as it is in many countries) that political power has been a precursor to, or a significant factor in, the accumulation of immense wealth.

Peter Schweizer in his important new book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Business Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich writes: When Hillary entered the Senate, and then the State Department, she became the one who had real power, rather than Bill.”

Schweizer sets out to provide a window into just how the former president and former secretary of state (and perhaps future president) left the White House “dead broke,” as Hillary Clinton claimed in a book-tour interview last year, before earning at least $136.5 million in the decade and a half since then.

Bureaucratic or legislative obstacles were mysteriously cleared or approvals granted within the purview of his wife, the powerful senator or secretary of state. Huge donations then flowed into the Clinton Foundation while Bill received enormous speaking fees underwritten by the very businessmen who benefited from these apparent interventions.

Sometimes the money would go directly to Bill Clinton’s personal bank account, other times to the family foundation. There was also the case involving the telecom company Ericsson, which invested in Bill Clinton’s biggest single payday: $750,000 for a 2011 speech in Hong Kong. A week after the speech, “the State Department unveiled its new sanctions list for Iran. Telecom was not on the list.”

There was Hillary Clinton’s push as secretary of state to have Russia buy airplanes from Boeing.   Two months after the American company and the Russians inked the deal, Boeing gave $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Schweizer offers details about a financial windfall after Bill was befriended by those seeking to buy a share of America’s uranium supply and about how the former president helped give prominence and credibility to the strongman in Kazakhstan.

The majority of the examples Schweizer provides are of business conducted in countries ruled by despots. This is because, as he explains, “in places like Germany or Great Britain…business and politics are kept separate by stringent ethical rules and procedures, but in despotic areas of the developing world…rules are very different.”

But there is no definitive proof of any quid pro quo at work in this lawyerly book: Schweizer even allows that in certain instances, it may very well be pure coincidence

There is much talk that Mrs. Clinton would be a pathbreaking president should she win in November 2016. That would surely be true, but it would be as much for her innovations in blurring the lines between political power and personal economic gain as it would be for her gender.

Mohamed el a Erian writes:  Six and a half years after the global financial crisis, central banks in emerging and developed economies alike are continuing to pursue unprecedentedly activist – and unpredictable – monetary policy. How much road remains in this extraordinary journey?

In many ways, Sallie Krawcheck said, women are a larger emerging market than China.

Krawcheck, chairwoman of the Ellevate network for professional women, spoke to the crowd gathered on Monday morning in New York for the IMCA 2015 New York Consultants Conference about the significant opportunity available for financial advisors in the largely untapped market that is women.

“What if I told you there’s a potential client base that holds a majority of wealth in this country, represents 45% of U.S. millionaires, will inherit 70% of the $41 trillion that enters generational wealth transfer over the next 40 years?” Krawcheck said. “Ninety percent of them control their money on their own at some point in their lives; they represent today 60% of college students and a greater percent of graduate students and still growing. They start more businesses at twice the rate of the rest of the population. They’re first-time homebuyers at a greater rate than the rest of the population. They’re breadwinners or co-breadwinners in 60% of households, and they live longer than the rest of the population by 6 to 8 years and they’re healthier while doing so. You’d say, ‘That’s one helluva market, Sallie.’”

This potential client base Krawcheck is talking about? It’s women.

“Women are huge and they’re underserved,” Krawcheck said. Adding, “When we step back and think about it, our business is a business by men, for men. I always say here, ‘I have nothing against middle-aged white guys. I’ve been married to a couple of them.’ But we’re going to have to think differently if we want to attract and approach and engage with this enormous market.”

The majority of woman-held wealth is unmanaged, Krawcheck said, pointing to data gathered by weekly polls of the nearly 34,000 professional women that are Ellevate members.

Just 14% of the women in the Ellevate network said the industry meets their needs well, and three-quarters of Ellevate’s members do not have a financial advisor.

“And these ladies, I’m telling you, are right in the spot of what’s attractive to our industry,” Krawcheck said.

Of the Ellevate members that do have a financial advisor, two-thirds of them said the advisor doesn’t understand them.

“Women report that they feel this industry talks down to them, patronizes them and doesn’t meet their needs,” she said. “It’s no wonder that women rank our industry 33 out of 33 — dead last — of the industries that serve them.”

“Women report back that our industry is way too complex, way too complicated. And the language we use, the jargon we use? Way too much,” Krawcheck said. Women don’t care what an “alpha” is, a “bip” is, a “standard deviation” or a “Monte Carlo simulation” is, she said. “And when we use jargon with them,” she added, “they pull back.”

“Women tell us they’re not interested in talking about IBM stock vs. HP stock, non-issue and large-cap value vs. small-cap value, or this money manager with this performance vs. that one, or this active ETF vs. that managed account,” Krawcheck said.

Most women, according to Krawcheck, aren’t interested in where the stock market is going. “They’re not particularly interested in whether their investments are outperforming because it doesn’t directly matter to reaching their goals,” she said.

Women also aren’t interested in the “whiz-bang products we have, the latest innovation in liquid alts, what an inverse ETF does,” Krawcheck said. What do women want? “They want to be served, not marketed to. Served, not marketed to,” Krawcheck repeated for emphasis, adding, “And they know the difference.”

Overall, Krawcheck said women look to advisors to provide them a safe place.

The New York Federal Reserve comments:  Do riskier banks have more capital?  Banking companies with more equity capital are better protected against failure because they can absorb more losses without becoming insolvent.  How has the relationship between capital and risk evolved over time?

There is not question that banks’ capital policies have become more precautionary in recent years. The Federal Reserve has implemented annual supervisory stress tests which are explicitly designed to remain well-capitalized even under severe macroeconomic downturns.  Improved risk management, greater awareness of downside risks and changes in supervisory practices have also had an impact. Equity capital should be the focus.

Obama has succeeded in persuading the US Congress and other interested parties that Netanyanhu is wrong about Iran.  We have to worry about our long term relationship with the country.  To impose new sanctions as the US thrashes its way through complex negotiations on nuclear materials and nuclear weapons would be a big mistake.

A President who had his legs chopped off six months ago is walking again.