Monthly Archives: October 2007

Bloomberg Cuts Flowers

A ballsy headline from Bloomberg today: Flowers Sallie Mae Failure Proves He’s No Schwarzman The piece is a long and reasonably measured article about Christopher Flowers and his failing bid for Sallie Mae, complete with laudatory quote from Jon Corzine. … Continue reading

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The Citic Flip-Flop

On Friday, things seemed clear enough, with Citic issuing a clear denial that it would take an ownership stake in Bear Stearns. China Citic Bank, meanwhile, also denied that it was in talks to buy a stake in Bear Stearns. … Continue reading

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Wall Street vs Blogs, Analyst Edition

Bernstein Research media analyst Michael Nathanson is worried about "a new paradigm in how financial markets get information and how that information impacts our markets". He’s been putting out all this research about NewsCorp and MySpace, you see – but … Continue reading

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Ben Stein Watch: October 21, 2007

I’ve never been a big believer in the predictive power of the reversion to mean theory, but at the same time it stands to reason that after a reasonably sensible outing last week, Ben Stein would hand in an utter … Continue reading

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Extra Credit, Sunday Edition

I’ve decided to try a daily links blog, where I can and will go off-topic a little bit, as well as throwing in a lot of those interesting things I run across every day but never get around to writing … Continue reading

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A Subprime Idea from the FDIC

There’s an inventive and potentially good idea from the FDIC’s Sheila Bair in today’s NYT, which should be added to the Baker-Samwick proposal as another weapon in the arsenal being lined up to fight the worst effects of the housing … Continue reading

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How the Rich get Richer, Epicurean Edition

Why does Goldman Sachs always top the M&A league tables, when other banks’ ideas are just as good? Why is Jessica (Mrs Jerry) Seinfeld’s new book suffering from too much demand, when an almost identical book by Missy Chase Lapine … Continue reading

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iVillage for iBankers

Do you have an overwhelming desire to join an online community designed to help women advance their careers? Clearly someone thinks that there’s demand for this kind of thing, because two such websites have just launched: theglasshammer.com and damselsinsuccess.com. Being … Continue reading

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Goldman Simpson?

In the world of M&A, you need a financial adviser (an investment bank) and you need a legal adviser (a law firm). Legal advisers make lots of money. Financial advisors make much, much more – despite the fact that senior … Continue reading

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What is the Point of a Price Target?

What is a price target, and what is it for?
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Counterfeiting Statistics Update

Carl Bialik today joins the good fight against counterfeiting statistics. Welcome to the club, Carl! It can get a little bit lonely here, but at least we have truth on our side. Carl nicely fillets the latest OECD report on … Continue reading

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Can Ratings Agencies be Fixed?

Stanford’s Darrell Duffie is giving a series of lectures at Princeton on capital immobility, which will be turned into a book to be published by Princeton University Press. The Press invited me to dinner with Duffie last night – delicious, … Continue reading

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Greenspan: No Fan of The Entity

Alan Greenspan is not a fan of The Entity. It’s not trying to bail out some troubled firm, he says: rather, it’s trying to artificially support an entire asset class. Which might not be a bright idea: Greenspan argued that … Continue reading

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The Cost of Reporting in Singapore

How much money did the FT save by caving in to the Singapore government’s bullying tactics? In the first instance, about £67,000. Dow Jones’s Far Eastern Economic Review is fighting the Singapore government in a similar case, showing a bit … Continue reading

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Doing Business in an Era of Globalization

Dow Jones has a section in its latest proxy filing giving the history of its takeover by Rupert Murdoch. But it might be 1957, not 2007, for all that the key individuals seem incapable of so much as placing a … Continue reading

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Tim Harford Blogging at FT.com

Tim Harford is now blogging at FT.com, and his very first blog entry there links to me, so of course this is my new favorite blog. Better yet, he’s serving up a full RSS feed. If the FT can do … Continue reading

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The Economics ChatterMeter

I could play with this for hours: Aaron Schiff has developed the Economics ChatterMeter, to see how much chatter there is in the blogosphere about matters economic. Interestingly, right now everything seems to be at or near an all-time low, … Continue reading

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Blogonomics: The Econoblogosphere is Not in Danger

Alarmist thinking from Dani Rodrik today. Econoblogs have been getting better and more numerous over the past couple of years – Rodrik himself being a prime example of an excellent newcomer to the sphere – but might this trend reverse? … Continue reading

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Bank of America: Not Glamorous

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis seems to have finally woken up to the fact that he is not, and never will be, an investment banker: Lewis said during a conference call that the company plans to scale back its … Continue reading

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Live-Blogging Malaria

Martin Edlund is doing a great job live-blogging the Gates Foundation Malaria Forum in Seattle. It’s ambitious – everybody seems keen to talk about eradication – but it’s also realistic: the best hope right now would seem to be a … Continue reading

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The Limits of Empiricism, Revisited

Deirdre McCloskey is in fine fighting form, at least by the standards of statisticians: Good fit is not the same thing as importance. In fact, usually it has nothing to do with importance. I think she’s absolutely right. People who … Continue reading

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Why The Fed Should Embrace Inflation

Tim Duy has another astute FedWatch today, chez Thoma, in which he reiterates that although it’s a close-run thing, he reckons the Fed will stand pat at its next meeting, essentially riding on the bigger-than-expected rate cut in September. On … Continue reading

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The IMF Joins the Econoblogosphere

Simon Johnson, who heads up the research department at the IMF, is now blogging, and in his official capacity, no less. My favorite part of the blog so far is the "about" page, which says that "the aim of the … Continue reading

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Inequality Chart of the Day

From Will Wilkinson: The Gini coefficient is the generally-accepted standard measure of inequality, and the dark-green bars show the amount of after-tax income inequality in 16 OECD countries (click on the chart for a bigger version). The difference between the … Continue reading

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The FT is Spineless and Craven

Never mind going free online; if the Financial Times really wants to be taken seriously it will have to do better than the craven display of gutlessness it presented to the world today, in the wake of a September 29 … Continue reading

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