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Monthly Archives: November 2007
PageRank: WaPo Up, Forbes Down, Portfolio beats WSJ
Remember the Great PageRank Massacre, when the Washington Post saw its Google PageRank drop from 7 to 5 overnight? Well, the good news is that WaPo is back, and stronger than ever – it now has a PageRank of 8! … Continue reading
Posted in Media, technology
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Wall Street Bonus Watch
Jesse Eisinger emails to say that he’s hopeful about winning our bonus bet, in the wake of stories today in the WSJ and the NYT. Both of them report on projections from executive-compensation experts Options Group and Johnson Associates, and … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Privatizing the Sidewalk
Matt Cooper says that he is "not a privatize-the-sidewalks kind of guy". Why not? It seems to be working pretty well in New York: A 150-square-foot sidewalk berth anywhere between 96th Street and Canal Street costs $4,749.29 annually, about $31 … Continue reading
Posted in cities
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The Best Subprime Reporting and Analysis
Jack Flack and Jack Shafer look to the MSM today for help in unscrambling the subprime mess. (Weirdly, however, Shafer asks journalists to nominate the best journalists on this beat, rather than asking genuine housing experts.) In the broader media … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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What is a Deferred Tax Credit Noncash Charge, Anyway?
The NYT is a general-interest newspaper, which should be comprehensible to a broad reading public. And certainly me. But even the NYT can’t seem to explain clearly what’s going on at GM. What does this mean? DETROIT, Nov. 7 — … Continue reading
Posted in stocks
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Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition
GM Watch, Again: Foreclosures and Fees: Tanta on Morgenson. "High rates of foreclosure and bankruptcy are money-losers for mortgage servicers, not profit centers". More Bank, Brokerage Writedowns, Ratings Cuts Inevitable The dollar hits an all-time low against the Deutschmark Price … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Shaukat Aziz as Citigroup CEO!
The Economist places its weight behind Shaukat Aziz as the ideal CEO of Citigroup: The 58-year-old joined Citibank in 1969, and worked in various parts of its global empire—including Britain, Greece and Malaysia—before eventually becoming global head of Citi’s private … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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The Economics of A-Rod, Part 2
Why is it that the best place to find high-level microeconomic analysis in the NYT seems to be the sports section? First there was Ed Wyatt on Tour de France breakaways; now comes Columbia’s Jeffrey Gordon on the A-Rod opt-out. … Continue reading
Posted in sports
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Australia Datapoint of the Day
John Quiggin: On an exchange rate basis, Australia has a higher GDP per person than does the US. Currently US GDP per person is around $US44,000. Australia’s is about $A51,300, which at a market exchange rate of 0.93 converts to … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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Citi: In Defense of Gary Crittenden
Brad DeLong takes a cheap shot at Citigroup’s CFO, Gary Crittenden, who on the Citigroup conference call tried to explain where all those extra write-downs were coming from. Crittenden explained that much of Citi’s subprime exposure was in so-called super-senior … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans, housing
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Lessig at TED
A rare video of one of Larry Lessig’s legendary slide shows on copyright and creativity, this one from the TED conference in March. And this one comes with added Jesus! Enjoy.
Posted in intellectual property
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Electricity: Deregulation Sends Prices Soaring
David Cay Johnston’s headline says it all: "Competitively Priced Electricity Costs More, Studies Show". When states deregulate their electricity sectors, the price of electricity goes up, not down – and the attempts of pro-deregulation advocates to spin the data otherwise … Continue reading
Posted in regulation
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Citi: Is Stuckey Too Constrained?
Jules: You sendin’ The Wolf? Marsellus: Feel better? Jules: Shit Negro, that’s all you had to say. Rick Stuckey is the Winston Wolf of the financial world, screeching into problem areas and cleaning them up with great professionalism and no … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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NYT-Bartiromo: The Comedy of Errors Continues
The NYT has corrected its Bartiromo story from yesterday – the one which invented not only a new Citigroup executive called William Rose, but also an "international investment firm" with $60 billion called "Cutter Associates". But they still don’t have … Continue reading
Posted in Media
3 Comments
WSJ to Lose its Circulation Bragging Rights
Update: I got this wrong. See the correction here. Did you see the pretty charts in the NYT NYT and the WSJ WSJ this morning, showing the total paid circulation of America’s biggest newspapers? There are two clear leaders, USA … Continue reading
Posted in Media
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Mark-to-Model on Wall Street: The Numbers
Nouriel Roubini hoists a nice piece of detective work from his comments: Bernard has gone down the list of Wall Street banks, looking at how much they have in the way of level 3 ("mark to model") assets, compared to … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition
CIBC: Citi’s math doesn’t add up How Messed Up is Citi?: "The SIVs may be why Citi held on to this crappy paper when it should have dumped it. It would have required them to mark the prices down of … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Citigroup Datapoint of the Day
Floyd Norris: We may be approaching a time when Citi’s stock would do better if it did eliminate the dividend… Such a cut would save the company $10.8 billion a year. As it happens, that is just about the amount … Continue reading
Skill vs Luck in Investing
Greg Mankiw seems to think quite highly of a speech that investor Mark Sellers gave to MBA students at Harvard. But although I’m a writer and Sellers says very nice things about writers,most of what he has to say rings … Continue reading
Posted in investing
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Automotive Datapoint of the Day
Shai Agassi calculates that "the cost of the average used car in Europe is now cheaper than the cost of gasoline to drive it for a year": An average clunker across Europe, and there should be 100M or so cars … Continue reading
Posted in climate change
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Name That Stock!
Two years ago, a benefactor donated a slug of stock to the Boys and Girls Club of Pittsfield, Mass. Back then, it was "basically worthless," according to John Donna, the club’s president. In December 2006, that stock was sold for … Continue reading
Posted in stocks
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Las Vegas vs the Law of Large Numbers
Nassim Taleb likes to use Las Vegas as an example of a mathematical odds-based business which exists in economic theory much more often than it exists in real life. If you run a bunch of casinos with hundreds of thousands … Continue reading
Posted in statistics
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Warren Buffett, Derivatives Speculator
There are nice safe hedgy options, and then there are dangerous, volatile, and prone-to-blowing-up options, the kind of things which have a habit of biting Victor Niederhoffer in the ass. It’s these kind of options which Warren Buffett famously referred … Continue reading
Posted in derivatives
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China Datapoint of the Day
Value of PetroChina on Friday: $456.6 billion. Value of PetroChina on Monday: $1.004 trillion.
Citi: Prince’s Ouster Ungags Bartiromo
Maria Bartiromo waited until Chuck Prince had left the building to start criticizing him on the record for his role in bad-mouthing her earlier this year. (You might recall no little innuendo about her relationship with the head of Citi’s … Continue reading