SMITH BRAIN TRUST --

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Smith Professor Peter Morici says shifting European politics could have a depressing effect on U.S. interest rates. That's because uncertainty about the euro will cause Europeans to send money to the U.S., and that could push up stock prices and push down interest rates.

By Liu Yang SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Executive orders from the White House in 2014 rekindled a decades-long debate about gender pay disparities that persist in corporate America. Some blame the gap on lingering workplace biases that protect the C suite as the domain of men. Others dismiss the problem as overstated, citing the choices that women often make to sacrifice career advancement in favor of family.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Today’s vote by the European Central Bank to print more than 1 trillion euros for buying government bonds and other financial assets would have some benefits, but would not solve the region’s long-term challenges. That is the assessment of two experts from the Center for Financial Policy at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Last week the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly dropped the currency peg they’ve maintained since 2011, a move that bankrupted several retail foreign exchange brokerages worldwide.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- U.S.-based multinational corporations move an average of $12 billion in taxable income back into the country each year, tax free, through complex mergers and acquisitions. That’s according to new research by Emanuel Zur, an assistant professor of business at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, and two coauthors.

By ANIL K. GUPTA

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- President Obama’s proposed fee on big banks would hurt homebuyers and fail to control risk-taking by those firms with more than $50 billion in assets, says Clifford Rossi, professor of the practice at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The proposal, slated for inclusion in tonight’s State of the Union address, would affect about 100 financial institutions.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Since 2008 the United States has had a zombie mortgage-financing system, former bank executive Cliff Rossi writes today in a guest column for The Hill.

Hot Topic Alert: January 15, 2015 The World Bank warns permanent stagflation faces euro-currency countries. Countering the threat, the European Central Bank (ECB) sets to unleash a round of quantitative easing (QE), which means creating money to buy financial assets, including government bonds.