Monthly Archives: September 2007

Prada’s Underperformance

Is Prada really going public this time? Bloomberg seems to think so. But is it taking advantage of a booming luxury-goods market, or is it having to accept a large discount to the kind of valuation it could have achieved … Continue reading

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Nasdaq is not a Strategic Asset

Matt Cooper today describes a 19.9% stake in the Nasdaq stock exchange as a "strategic US asset" – going even further than Chuck Schumer, the only lawmaker who seems to have any concerns about the deal at all, who said … Continue reading

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Why Goldman Underperformed Bear

Doncha just love commentary on share-price movements? Sometimes it’s just so easy: Is there such a thing as a “buy Goldman Sachs, sell Bear Stearns” trade? If so, it’s happening this morning. Shares of Goldman Sachs were up 2.2% in … Continue reading

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How to Mitigate the Pain of Foreclosure

Equity Private has a bright idea for how to help mitigate the worst effects of the housing mess: include mortgage debt in bankruptcy proceedings. She doesn’t go into a lot of detail – that’s promised for later today – but … Continue reading

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UK Sold to Foreigners

How’s this for a front-page headline? "Foreign Owners May Be Secret of U.K.’s Success" is the first thing you see when you look at the dead-tree WSJ this morning; the headline on the jump is "Foreign Owners Spur U.K. Revival". … Continue reading

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$0 vs $500

By now, there’s a very good chance that most of my readers are quite bored with my explanations of why it’s a Really Good Idea for WSJ.com to go free. But when I read Marek Fuchs yesterday, I couldn’t just … Continue reading

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Bernanke Gets Pwned

The rules of being Fed chairman are simple. When you cut rates you make everybody happy, and when you raise rates you make people unhappy. Your job, of course, isn’t to make people happy, it’s to steer the economy. But … Continue reading

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The Victims of Options Backdating

Sam Gustin, it turns out, contra my earlier assertion, does know who the victims of options backdating are after all. They’re Mr and Mrs Investor Confidence, and apparently they’re both "nebulous" and also "a pillar of the market system". Which … Continue reading

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Hedge Funds: When to Bail Out

Now this is what is known as a sell signal: We are actively working to adjust our process to minimize the negative impact of future market dislocations and position the fund for positive returns going forward. Now there’s an idea! … Continue reading

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Loonie Tunes

There’s a lot of buzz in the blogosphere today about the fact that the Canadian dollar this morning finally reached parity with the US dollar. It’s a big deal for those of us who used to think of Canada as … Continue reading

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The Emerging Markets Bubble

If the Fed’s cutting rates, then it must be blowing another bubble, right? But it’s not going to be tech stocks or housing again, so what’s left? Green technology, obviously, is bubblicious right now, but it’s also tiny: investment of … Continue reading

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The Scandal of Options Backdating

One of the reasons Sam Gustin is underwhelmed by the Fake Steve Jobs book is that its author doesn’t take options backdating seriously enough. It’s "nothing short of an epidemic", he says, and "there is something slightly unfunny about basing … Continue reading

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Bear Earnings Bad, Market Response Good

Bear Stearns’ earnings today were atrocious. Never mind the fact that sales and trading revenue slumped by an eye-popping 88%; Bear also, uniquely, saw its investment-banking revenues fall as well. Interestingly, the bank’s stock is unchanged in early trading, and … Continue reading

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Goldman’s Stunning Earnings

Hank Paulson surely has a hint of a smile on his face this morning. Even as he earnestly tries to protect Main Street from suffering too much as a result of the Wall Street crunch, in the back of his … Continue reading

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Long Term Leases

One idiosyncracy of my native England is that many property owners don’t technically own their homes at all; instead, they have very long-term leases, which are typically initially 99 years long, and which can be bought and sold and speculated … Continue reading

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Civics lesson

Megan McArdle is smarter than I am – or she knows more, at least. Apparently she got 60 out of 60 questions right on this quiz; I got 50 out of 60 and was pleased with that. I blame the … Continue reading

Posted in Not economics | 11 Comments

Rational Exuberance Over Free Content

I’m convinced that WSJ.com, FT.com, along with every other newspaper website, will be entirely free sooner rather than later. Jeff Bercovici, on the other hand, isn’t: Are all the triumphalists ready to rule out the possibility that, somewhere down the … Continue reading

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Why WSJ.com Should Go Free

Sarah Ellison of the WSJ has more detail today on whether or not WSJ.com is likely to go free. Although Murdoch himself seems to see what a good idea it is, he is apparently getting pushback from Dow Jones CEO … Continue reading

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John Cassidy vs Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong is clearly much more important than I am. When I say rude things about John Cassidy, nothing much happens. But when Brad says rude things about John Cassidy, he gets a stinging riposte from Cassidy in his comments … Continue reading

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Jon Stewart vs Alan Greenspan

Jon Stewart last night proved himself a master of the smart and tough question, when Alan Greenspan came onto his show to plug his book in the wake of the Fed’s 50bp rate cut. Stewart put two big questions to … Continue reading

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War/Oil Datapoint of the Day

According to the invaluable CIA World Factbook, US oil consumption is 20.73 million barrels per day. Which works out to 7.57 billion barrels per year. At the new record price of $82.03 per barrel, that would value US oil consumption … Continue reading

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Cheney Responds to Greenspan

Jeff Bercovici asks what I make of Dick Cheney’s (unprecedented?) op-ed in the WSJ today. The answer, I think, is pretty easy when you come across its standard recitation of supply-side principles: Even at a lower rate of taxation, the … Continue reading

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The Sunny Side of Morgan Stanley’s Earnings

Morgan Stanley’s stock price might be down today in the wake of disappointing earnings, but I don’t think that these results really counteract the relatively good news from Lehman brothers yesterday, and I still have that weirdly good feeling I … Continue reading

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Susan Scafidi on Copyrighting Fashion

In the comments of my entry on knock-off fashion, Gerald Joseph told me to check out counterfeitchic.com before writing more on the issue of counterfeits and copies in the fashion industry. It turns out to be a wonderful site, full … Continue reading

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Managers Have No Professional Ethics

After my interesting lunch with Rakesh Khurana (which has also been blogged by Justin Fox), I asked him by email whether business ethics have really declined over the past 30 years, or whether they’re merely perceived to have declined. Next … Continue reading

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