Monthly Archives: August 2007

Paul Krugman Does a Hail Mary Pass

Krugman recommends that the Federal government buy mortgages to rescue stressed borrowers. Does he realize that the only realistic way to make this happen in our Brave New World of voodoo credit is to expropriate assets?
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Posted in banking, housing, regulation | 1 Comment

The MySpace-WSJ Barbell

WSJ.com had 4.5 million unique visitors in
July
. That’s less than the LA Times, and less than a third of what nytimes.com
gets. Even a second-tier blog like consumerist.com can boast
over 2 million uniques.
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Posted in Media, publishing | Comments Off on The MySpace-WSJ Barbell

Pearlstein Looks for a Fed Bailout

If financial markets are frothy for a while and then revert to sensible levels
but don’t overshoot – then does that constitute a fully-blown
financial crisis?
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Posted in economics, fiscal and monetary policy | Comments Off on Pearlstein Looks for a Fed Bailout

Bear Got a Sugar Daddy?

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism submits: Bloomberg tells us that Bear Stearns’ shares rose 13% on an analyst’s comments that the firm “may” have secured an equity investment. Now events may prove me wrong, but Bear has been out looking … Continue reading

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Carry Trade Unwinding? It Looks Real This Time

Is the long-dreaded unwinding of the carry trade finally happening?
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Posted in foreign exchange | Comments Off on Carry Trade Unwinding? It Looks Real This Time

Our Fragile Financial System

Funny how quickly our financial system went from “robust” and “well-diversified” to “fragile.”
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Posted in banking, derivatives, regulation | Comments Off on Our Fragile Financial System

How Hedge Fund Managers Apologize

Paul Kedrosky has shoved 3,085 words of hedge fund manager
non-apology apologies into Microsoft Word’s Auto-Summarize feature and boiled
them down
to two sentences.
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Posted in hedge funds | Comments Off on How Hedge Fund Managers Apologize

Moody’s: An LTCM Type Failure Possible

Moody’s warns of a possible rerun of the LTCM crisis. We should be so lucky.
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Posted in Portfolio | Comments Off on Moody’s: An LTCM Type Failure Possible

A Wee Introduction

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism submits: As you may know, Felix Salmon has been so kind as to give me the keys to the castle while he is away on holiday for the next few weeks. It’s particularly sporting of … Continue reading

Posted in Announcements | Comments Off on A Wee Introduction

Yves Smith, Market Mover

Introducing a guest blogger.
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When Dynastic Control Fails

Equity Private says that dual-class share structures don’t
do what they’re designed to do
:
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Posted in Media, publishing, stocks | Comments Off on When Dynastic Control Fails

Chart of the Day: Fed Funds

Who says that the Fed hasn’t cut the Fed funds rate between meetings?
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Posted in charts, fiscal and monetary policy | Comments Off on Chart of the Day: Fed Funds

Goldman’s Hedge-Fund Sweetener Revealed

We bloggers like to speculate, and on Monday I hazarded
a guess
that the don’t-call-it-a-rescue injection of liquidity into Goldman
Sachs’s Global Equity Opportunities hedge fund would reward investors with lower
fees than would normally be available to them.
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Posted in hedge funds | Comments Off on Goldman’s Hedge-Fund Sweetener Revealed

Stocks: The Long View

David Leonhardt looks
at p/e ratios
today – but not the p/e ratios we know and love, where
the denominator is this year’s (or last year’s, or next year’s) earnings.
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They’re Both Green, As Well

The new issue of Portfolio
is now online!
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Posted in development | Comments Off on They’re Both Green, As Well

When Cheap Bonds Look Attractive

Henny Sender gets a
little bit ahead of herself
in the WSJ today, although she does pick up
on something important: that as the price of debt falls, it’s starting to become
more attractive, on a relative-value basis, than equity.
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Posted in bonds and loans | Comments Off on When Cheap Bonds Look Attractive

Keeping Dow Movements in Perspective

Kudos to the NYT and WSJ this morning, in the wake of another 200-point drop in the Dow yesterday.
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The $5,000 iPhone Bill

The bill is $5,086.66. For one month’s phone usage.
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Posted in technology | Comments Off on The $5,000 iPhone Bill

Private Equity: The Bankruptcies Begin

Just how smart is Stephen Feinberg, the principal of Cerberus
Capital? Portfolio’s Daniel Roth tells
us
:
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Posted in private equity | Comments Off on Private Equity: The Bankruptcies Begin

How Tight Are Mortgage Underwriting Standards, Really?

The WSJ’s Jonathan Karp wants to tell us "How
the Mortgage Bar Keeps Moving Higher
", in the words of his headline.
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Posted in housing | Comments Off on How Tight Are Mortgage Underwriting Standards, Really?

Tuesday Links Yearn for Liquidity

Sometimes a blogger finds himself with a vast number of tabs open in his web browser, some of which are getting decidedly stale.
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Posted in remainders | Comments Off on Tuesday Links Yearn for Liquidity

Cramer’s Meltdown Spills Into Print

There’s a school of thought that Jim Cramer just plays a screaming
nutcase on
TV
, that in reality he’s actually quite smart and knows his onions.
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Posted in housing, Media | Comments Off on Cramer’s Meltdown Spills Into Print

One Question for David Viniar

What, exactly, was it that saw a 25 standard deviation move?
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Posted in banking, hedge funds | Comments Off on One Question for David Viniar

New York City Gets Federal Congestion Pricing Funds

Great news today: despite the city missing the application deadline, the federal
government has awarded
New York City $354 million
for its congestion pricing plan.
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Posted in cities | Comments Off on New York City Gets Federal Congestion Pricing Funds

Dissecting Hedge Funds

Blessed with the genius of hindsight, Veryan Allen has decreed
that "the recent stat arb problems were almost inevitable".
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Posted in hedge funds | Comments Off on Dissecting Hedge Funds