Monthly Archives: October 2007

Blogonomics: Ed Glaeser Is Too a Blogger

Ed Glaeser reads Market Movers! In my post last week about Tyler Cowen on blogonomics, I quoted Cowen on Glaeser, saying that he’s basically a blogger even if he doesn’t realise it. Glaeser has now responded – a very bloggish … Continue reading

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How Imports Help Soccer

Dani Rodrik has a post today on the globalization of soccer, and poses what he calls an "interesting question": One question is what has the presence of foreign players in Europe done to the quality of the national teams. Following … Continue reading

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The Return of Price Controls

In a move described by Dresdner Kleinwort as "even more predictable than the price surge that triggered it", Russia has decided to impose price controls on elected types of bread, cheese, milk, eggs and vegetable oil; the fourth word of … Continue reading

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Fed to Cut 25bp on Wednesday

What was that about Bernanke being unpredictable? The markets might not have known earlier this month what the Fed was going to do at its next meeting, but they’re pretty certain now, with pretty much every house on Wall Street … Continue reading

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When Cash Isn’t King

The WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro has an interesting article about what Jeff Bercovici calls the "Diller-Malone marriage": two media moguls fighting over control of a bunch of internet properties which presently goes by the unwieldy name of IAC/InterActiveCorp. IAC bought also-ran … Continue reading

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Blogonomics: Paying Readers

Wherein I pay my readers.
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Ben Stein Watch: October 28, 2007

If last week’s Ben Stein column was a reversion to mean, a bad column following a vaguely reasonable one, then this week’s is a momentum trade. You thought that Stein couldn’t get any worse than he was last week? Well, … Continue reading

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Extra Credit, Weekend Edition

The Joint Economic Committee report on subprime lending. Notes Calculated Risk: "In 2006, 29% of all mortgage loans were originated through mortgage brokers, but 63% of all subprime mortgages were originated through brokers." The Brazilian stock exchange, at the end … Continue reading

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Subprime: It’s Still Really Bad

Countrywide shares gained more than 32% today: that must mean the market thinks the subprime crisis is over, right? Not at all. For one thing, today’s close of $17.30 a share puts the company’s share price at pretty much exactly … Continue reading

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Who Will Rescue Merrill?

Peter Eavis joins the Tim Price/Lily Tomlin school of investment-banking analysis: It doesn’t look good that O’Neal was allegedly raising the possibility of a sale at a time when the brokerage was about to report over $8.3 billion of losses … Continue reading

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O’Neal and Parsons Both Out?

It’s not a good day to be a black CEO in America: both Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch and Dick Parsons of Time Warner seem to be on their way out, with the shares of both companies soaring as a … Continue reading

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How to Spend $40 Billion

The Sultan of Brunei pays his five PR people $12 million each. But still ends up with really bad press: The total bill was $40 billion. The gifts included $2,570,050 for masseuses and acupuncturists; $14,955,000 for a house supervisor in … Continue reading

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Litigation Datapoint of the Day

In the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce Princeton and the Robertsons, the judge, Neil Shuster, has so far ruled only that Princeton should return the sum total of $62,500. So far, reports the WSJ’s John Hechinger, "the Robertsons have spent … Continue reading

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Regulatory Bureaucracy Datapoint of the Day

Yet another example of a government agency refusing to admit defeat: the FTC still hasn’t given up trying to block the Whole Foods acquisition of Wild Oats, even now the deal is done! Interestingly, the chairman of the FTC thinks … Continue reading

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Counterfeiting: Much Less Prevalent Than You Think

The OECD counterfeiting report is now public, and only 18 months or so behind schedule! As you might recall, there was some pushback from OECD member states when they realized the report would peg global counterfeiting activity at only $200 … Continue reading

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Merrill’s Board Turns on O’Neal

Who told the NYT’s Jenny Anderson about Stan O’Neal’s abortive attempt to float a merger with Wachovia? She sources her scoop to "people close to the beleaguered Wall Street firm," which is not very helpful, but it seems clear that … Continue reading

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Extra Credit, Friday Edition

Fed Plans to Increase Transparency, from Greg Ip. Mark Thoma provides background. 6th Grade Econ Question of the Day: Yes, they try to teach economics to 6th-graders. And yes, they do a very bad job of it. The economics of … Continue reading

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The Globalization of Goldman Sachs

The New York Post tells us today that 57% of Goldman Sachs’s 299 new managing directors work outside the US. But how does that compare to the present cohort? I asked Goldman if they could give me the goegraphical breakdown … Continue reading

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Buiter Blogging at FT.com (If You Can Find Him)

Last week, Lance Knobel noted that you can’t find the FT’s blogs at blogs.ft.com: that’s the home of just one blog, Martin Wolf’s economists’ forum. Instead, the official FT blogs page is www.ft.com/comment/blogs, which points to eight different blogs including … Continue reading

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Solly, 1987: Hero or Villain?

Traders never pay much attention to strategists, and are generally much the richer for it.
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Lily Tomlin, Market Strategist

Tim Price sums up the state of contemporary investment banking in two quotes: “I’ve had all the fun I can stand in investment banking” – Ken Lewis, (current) chief executive, Bank of America. “Things are going to get a lot … Continue reading

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The Carried-Interest Debate Returns

The WSJ’s Sarah Lueck seems to say today that the idea of taxing carried interest – forcing private-equity honchos and hedge-fund managers to pay income tax on their income – is back. Two new taxes targeted at hedge-fund managers are … Continue reading

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The Google PageRank Massacre

Google is now a major – arguably the major – force driving news sites. As a result, sites’ PageRank is utterly crucial for any business model. Right now, Google seems to be slashing the PageRank of a lot of blogs, … Continue reading

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Microsoft: Still No Facebook Insider

What is Microsoft meant to do with its 1.6% stake in Facebook? While it’s easy to get excited about the implied $15 billion valuation for the the social-networking company and start talking about Mark Zuckerberg’s multi-billionaire status, the fact is … Continue reading

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Calculating Housing Losses

The NYT today fronts a big state-of-the-meltdown story, keyed off Merrill Lynch’s losses yesterday. It doesn’t quite come out and say that we’re going to have a recession (David Wessel does that, in the WSJ), but it doesn’t shy from … Continue reading

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