Monthly Archives: October 2007

League Table of the Day

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

"It’s not my fault being the biggest and the strongest. I don’t even exercise." –Fezzick (André the Giant), The Princess Bride The top ten movies on iTunes, with their year of release Rank Title Year 1 The Princess Bride 1987 … Continue reading →

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Location, Location, Location

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

JP Morgan’s Michael Feroli says, in the words of the WSJ’s Real Time Economics blog, that all Fed politics is local. Which Federal Reserve banks wanted a cut in the discount rate? The ones where housing prices were looking weak. … Continue reading →

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Paul Collier in New York

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

I went to a great talk by Paul Collier on Friday, at the Cooper Union. I blogged his new book, "The Bottom Billion," in June, and I was looking forward to hearing him in person: after all, he comes impressively … Continue reading →

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Ag Prices: The Long Hemp, Short Corn Trade

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

A funny thing, government interference in markets. The US government, thanks mainly to the fact that the Iowa caucus is politically very important, is doing its best to encourage the market in corn ethanol. But front-page articles in both the … Continue reading →

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Adventures in Contextual Advertising

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

From Justin Fox’s Curious Capitalist blog:

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The NYT, the Dollar, and the Savings Rate

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

Back in August, the NYT editorial page displayed its economic ignorance by blaming the weak dollar, inter alia, on a low domestic savings rate. It got slapped down by both Greg Mankiw and Dean Baker: a low savings rate causes … Continue reading →

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Commerce Bank: An Expensive Strategic Asset

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

The $8.5 billion acquisition of Commerce Bancorp by Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank is being greeted with something of a shrug this morning. When Commerce CEO Vernon Hill was ousted in June, it seemed only a matter of time before the company … Continue reading →

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More on the NetBank Failure

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

Last night I talked to Chris Coulthrust (not Colthrust) of Applied Cognetics, about the NetBank implosion. Understandably, for someone who’s just lost access to what he thought was money safely in the bank, he’s not a happy bunny. And equally … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: RSS Feeds

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

Have I mentioned that I take requests? Today Sandy leaves a comment for me, asking me to explain the economics of RSS feeds; I’m happy to oblige. The comment keys off my description of FT.com’s decision to truncate its RSS … Continue reading →

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Poetic Justice in NetBank Implosion

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It hasn’t got a lot of headlines, but the US has now officially suffered its biggest bank failure since 1993. NetBank had $2.5 billion in assets, and somehow contrived to lose more than $200 million in 2006. Deposits were insured … Continue reading →

Posted in banking | 1 Comment

Picking an Inflation Measure and Sticking With It

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It’s the Inflation Wars! Barry Ritholtz and Dan Gross and John Wasik and Johnny Debacle and dozens of others are elbowing each other out of the way to proclaim from the rooftops that we have a Serious Inflation Problem and … Continue reading →

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Is Brad DeLong Turning on Alan Greenspan?

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

Now here’s an interesting development in the Greenspan Wars. Brad DeLong, Greenspan’s apologist-in-chief, spends 884 words essentially saying "well, it’s not Greenspan’s fault he’s a political hack". Since Paul Krugman’s chief complaint about Greenspan is that he (Greenspan) turned out … Continue reading →

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Cognitive Dissonance at Skype

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

Here’s what I don’t understand about eBay’s Skype write-down; I’d seriously love it if someone can explain it to me. As I understand it, eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion upfront, with the sellers potentially getting as much as $1.7 … Continue reading →

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The Dow Hits a New Record. Yawn.

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

What craziness is going on in the stock market! The Dow is hitting new highs! The biggest-gaining Dow component is Citigroup, a company which just announced its earnings were going to drop by 60% this quarter! Justin Lahart can’t make … Continue reading →

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FT.com Still Doesn’t Get It

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

What on earth are the executives at FT.com thinking? Instead of boldly following the lead of the NYT and making the site free, they’ve arrived at a weird compromise: articles and data will be free to users up to a … Continue reading →

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The Ingredients of Richard Prince’s Success

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It makes sense that Deutsche Bank is sponsoring the Richard Prince retrospective at the Guggenheim. Prince is the ultimate art-world hot commodity: he was the first artist to break the $1 million barrier for a photograph, one of his cowboy … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 2 Comments

Debt Writedowns: The Universal Banks’ Turn

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It doesn’t make a whole lot of intuitive sense, on its face. The investment banks are up to their eyeballs in structured products and quantitative strategies, while the big global universal banks are heavily diversified among different products and countries. … Continue reading →

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iBrick Update

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It seems that it’s possible to downgrade a bricked iPhone and get it back into its pre-bricked state, complete with third-party apps and everything. But really. Is this whole cat-and-mouse game really necessary? The geeks, the early adopters, the people … Continue reading →

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