You have to like Hank Paulson. The Treasury Secretary grew up on a farm in Illinois. Many leaders in American history learned the value of hard work while planting seed and harvesting crop. George Washington was a farmer. Thomas Jefferson was a farmer and envisioned our country as a republic of farmers with a strictly limited federal government. That was when agriculture dominated the economic composition of the United States. Since then, the original federation of thirteen states has grown to fifty while the percentage of the citizenry employed in …

Even the mighty are falling. The last two major independent investment banks on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), have received permission from the Federal Reserve to convert from traditional investment banks into commercial banks or bank holding companies. Plenty of ink, digital or otherwise, has been spilled about the disappearance of investment banks so I won’t dwell much on that. We’ve seen the collapse of Lehman Brothers (LEH) and Bear Stearns. Still somehow, I’m sure there were some who sentimentally held out hope that the two …

Earlier this month, Macquarie Group Limited (ASX:MQG), announced record profits on higher fees earned from deal making and strong equities trading. Macquarie is the leading investment bank in Australia and has intrigued me for quite some time because of its strength in the infrastructure industry. The megatrend of globalization means that infrastructure will play an increasingly important part of a global investment portfolio. Macquarie has carved itself a valuable niche as the leading investment bank for infrastructure assets and is consistently found all over the world making direct investments or …