Litigation is a growth industry these days. US companies with sales over $1 billion now face an average of 556 lawsuits -- and about half of them are sued 50 times a year. Today, the average large corporation spends $10.8 million per year on litigation, up from $8 million in 2005.

This past week the Dow briefly climbed above 14,000 for the first time, led largely by the large manufacturing companies in the index. Although the recent surge has been driven by large multi-national companies, the broader S&P 500 has also seen increases, recently surpassing...

Speaking in Chicago on May 21st, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled that he is concerned with the current state of the debt markets with respect to LBO financing. While his comments may not quite correlate to Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” remark in 1996, industry insiders have begun to acknowledge that the current trend of higher debt multiples and weaker loan covenants is not sustainable. At the same time, many in the private equity community observe that corporate lending has simply matured to a point where there is now an efficient secondary market for all manner of credit risk, and that the incredible liquidity in the market comes from that efficiency.

The markets have declined slightly in recent days as investors await the Fed’s meeting later this week, at which rates are widely expected to remain unchanged. Although inflation concerns have had an impact on the markets, with Treasury yields shooting to a five-year high in early June, there are indications...

The slowing growth of the US economy, which is still feeling the drag of the housing market, has yet to affect inflation or the financial markets. After the Fed kept interest rates unchanged at its most recent meeting, it stated that although economic growth slowed in the first quarter, core inflation remained...