Monthly Archives: April 2007

Giving Muckraking a Good Name

Chase leaves its customers’ information – names, account numbers, social security numbers, loan applications, you name it – in the trash outside its Manhattan branches.
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In Which I Envy Brad DeLong’s Lunch

Brad DeLong has more interesting lunches than you do.
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Will a Carbon Tax Reduce Developing-Country Emissions?

Is Larry Summers’s Big Idea a carbon tax?
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David Lereah, Not Quite RIP

The NAR’s chief economist leaves his pulpit.
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Finance Ministry vs Central Bank

Agustin Carstens critizes his country’s central bank.
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Carlyle Group Tops Private Equity Table

Carlyle Group, KKR, Goldman Sachs, and Blackstone Group all raised $30 billion or so over the past five years.
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Ken Griffin vs John D Rockefeller

Griffin earns more than Rockefeller did, as a multiple of average earnings.
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BofA Threatens to Sue ABN for Three Gazillion Dollars

Add a $220 billion lawsuit to the ABN Amro craziness.
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Rereading Swiss Profits in Dollar Terms

Weak results in Swiss francs look better in US dollars.
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Larry Summers on Cap-and-Trade

Larry
Summers
has problems with a cap-and-trade approach to reducing carbon emissions.
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Apple Needs Principles

A principles-based approach to regulation would have served the SEC well in the Apple backdating case.
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John Adams at Carnegie Hall

Last night was great: Michelle and I went to an ACO celebration of John Adams’s 60th birthday at Carnegie Hall, with the composer conducting three of his own works. The second half was a positively blistering and wonderful performance with … Continue reading

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More Eye-Popping Executive Compensation

Ronald Moulton’s consultancy agreement.
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Hedge Fund Managers Aren’t Hated For Their Money

Any complaints from hedge-fund managers about the politics of envy risk turning into self-fulfilling prophecies. There’s no sign of such rhetoric thus far.
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RBS Goes Hostile

Fred Goodwin could be the only banker with the stones to launch a major hostile bid in the banking industry.
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When Analysts Don’t Talk to Management

Who are stock analysts for?
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Everyone’s a Currency Strategist Now

Investors in foreign stocks have two ways of losing money, not just one: either their foreign stocks can go down in value, or the dollar can go up in value.
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The Beginning of the End of Imported Bottled Water

Out with imported bottled water. In with reverse-osmosis charcoal filtering systems.
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The End of Balanced Budgets

No Republican president has shown any inclination whatsoever towards
balanced budgets: the allure of further tax cuts is always too great. And now
the consensus among Democrats, too, is very much that balancing the budget is
overrated.
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Macro News Doesn’t Always Move Markets

A GDP number comes out, and the Dow falls 0.04%. Cue headlines!
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Self-Defeating Industries

Truckers and car manufacturers seem not to know what’s good for them.
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Why a Carbon Tax Can’t Replicate a Cap-and-Trade System

Greg Mankiw thinks that a cap-and-trade system where carbon emission rights are auctioned is equivalent to a carbon tax. It isn’t.
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Auto Datapoint of the Day

Ford is worth less than twice Harman International, which makes car stereos.
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Dow 13,000. Yawn.

Should one be angered or simply amused by all the coverage of the Dow 13,000 “milestone”, less than two months after the market “crashed”? (That was Tuesday, February 27, in case you’ve forgotten.)
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Milken Conference Post-Mortem

The Milken conference is probably unparalleled outside Davos for the ability
it affords to observe in their natural habitat the market movers after whom
this blog is named.
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