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Monthly Archives: April 2008
Extra Credit, Thursday Edition
O’Neill Says U.S. `Strong Dollar’ Policy Is `Vacuous Notion’ Food prices: How corn ethanol helps cause riots in Haiti and Bangladesh. A Transit Miracle on 34th Street Merrill’s Muppet Moment
Posted in remainders
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How Jingle Mail Might Help Make Short Sales Easier
Remember youwalkaway.com? It was $995. Sound a bit too expensive? Well, do I have good news for you! Youwalkaway.com now has a competitor, walkawayplan.com, which is only $495! And the new site quotes bloggers, to boot! Apparently, if you go … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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727-727 vs 727
A curious postscript to the post below: both the NYT and Slate have slide shows about the Murakami show. Both of them talk about 727-727, and attempt to illustrate it, on slide 10 of the NYT slideshow, and slide 8 … Continue reading
Posted in Not economics
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A Little Financial Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing
The Citi Smith Barney chap at my local Citibank branch is very sweet. Whenever anybody asks to open a brokerage account, he tells them that he’s not a discount brokerage, and that there are lots of discount brokers like E*Trade … Continue reading
Posted in personal finance
2 Comments
The TED Spread and the Flight to Liquidity
Paul Krugman tries today to explain why he’s so obsessed by the spread between Treasuries and Libor: I got to ask Fed officials about [it], and was told that they preferred the OIS spread, based on Fed funds futures prices. … Continue reading
Posted in bonds and loans
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JP Morgan: $6 Billion Capital Raising is “Routine”
Joe Giannone managed to get someone at JP Morgan to try to explain what on earth is going on with their $6 billion issue of preferred stock: The bank declined to comment on the transaction, but our sources at JPMorgan … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Why do Investors Pay Fund-of-Funds Managers?
Tim Price isn’t impressed with the way that fund-of-funds managers navigated the volatility of the past 12 months: Hedge funds, often erroneously referred to as an asset class (talent class might be more appropriate, only the phrase smacks of leaden … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds
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Welch Gets It: Don’t Criticize Your Successor
Good on Jack Welch for his loud and public mea culpa both on this morning’s CNBC and in Business Week, after he screwed up big time on CNBC yesterday. His criticism of his successor was pretty harsh, but his backtracking … Continue reading
Posted in Media
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JP Morgan’s Really Weird Capital Raise
File under "WTF?": JPMorgan Chase & Co., hours after saying the credit-market crisis is almost over, made plans to raise $6 billion in its biggest offering of perpetual preferred stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The non-cumulative securities priced … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition
Here Comes the Next Mortgage Crisis: Add Mark Gimein to the list of people convinced that prime borrowers will walk away from their homes if they’re underwater. Fannie, Freddie Could Hurt U.S. Credit: S&P makes ominous noises about the USA’s … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Can Restaurants Auction Their Reservations?
Adam Platt’s rave review of Momofuku Ko won’t make it any easier to get a table at the white-hot 12-seater in New York’s East Village. But one of the most interesting things about the four stars that Platt awarded the … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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George Bush Gets Good News on Oil
George Bush, who wants to slow down the growth of US carbon emissions, got great news today: oil’s over $115 a barrel! I look forward to the White House statement embracing the fact that market mechanisms are sure to reduce … Continue reading
Posted in climate change, commodities
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The Limits of Market Capitalization
Kevin Maney today looks at the mooted $17.7 billion valuation of a merged Delta and Northwest, and contrasts it unfavorably with the market capitalization of Yahoo. "It’s almost hard to believe that all those planes, all those people, all that … Continue reading
Posted in stocks
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Merrill’s Six Mistakes
The WSJ has a wonderful narrative today of how Merrill Lynch managed to get so badly hit by the mortgage-bond crisis: apparently it’s going to take even more write-downs in the first quarter, making an unprecedented three successive quarterly losses. … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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WSJ.com Gets its Redesign
Rafat Ali reports today that after spending "millions" on a redesign, the all-new WSJ.com will launch "in the next few weeks", with a simple aim: "to drive more traffic in a bigger way". At the margin, resdesigns can and do … Continue reading
Posted in Media, publishing
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Credit Derivatives Datapoint of the Day
Isda: The notional amount outstanding of credit default swaps (CDS) grew 37 percent to $62.2 trillion in the second half of 2007 from $45.5 trillion at mid-year. CDS notional growth for the whole of 2007 was 81 percent from $34.5 … Continue reading
Posted in bankruptcy, derivatives
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WealthPorn Day Arrives
It’s WealthPorn Day today, also known as the day that Alpha magazine releases its annual list of the top-earning hedge fund managers. Of course, that also makes it a great day for politicians, including Hank Paulson, to call for greater … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds, pay
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The Latest Victim of the Credit Crunch: Libor
Carrick Mollenkamp has a worrying piece in the WSJ today about Libor in general, and the much-benchmarked three-month Libor fixing in particular. Jitters have made many banks unwilling to extend loans to each other for more than one week. As … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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Why Bush Doesn’t Like Cap-and-Trade
You want an argument for why a cap-and-trade system makes more sense than a carbon tax if you want to reduce carbon emissions? Take a look at all the noise surrounding the Bush speech on the subject today. Bush’s goal, … Continue reading
Posted in climate change
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Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition
John McCain’s gas-tax pander A Recluse Lifts the Veil a Little: Sorkin gets an interview with Stephen Feinberg. Apparently he’s no stickler for fine carpeting. Exxon Mobil investor says: stop wasting our time! The activist investor agitating against activist investors. … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Blogonomics: Herb Greenberg Quits Blogging
The insightful Herb Greenberg is leaving journalism to start up "an independent equity research boutique". And all power to him: as Paul Kedrosky says, "he deserves the broadest possible playing field to display and, yes, benefit financially from his talents". … Continue reading
Posted in blogonomics
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How to Respond to a Cease & Desist Letter
Kurt Denke, the president of Blue Jeans Cable, is the Andre Agassi of the audio/video cable industry: he has an absolutely devastating return of serve. You know in the movies where the bully picks a fight with the wrong guy? … Continue reading
Posted in law
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Why Wachovia Needs That $7 Billion
Yesterday, I asked why Wachovia needed another $7 billion in fresh equity, and suggested it might be because it overpaid for Golden West Financial and was considering writing down part of the $25.5 billion acquisition cost. There’s a big problem … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Blogonomics: Ad Network Valuations
Erick Schonfeld reports today that Federated Media, a network which sells ad space on a network of blogs, is raising $50 million at an eye-popping valuation of $200 million. That’s a hell of a lot of money: it’s nine times … Continue reading
Posted in blogonomics
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How Holdbacks Brought Down Frontier Airlines
On Friday I got a bit confused about something called credit card holdbacks, and how they could be used to drive an airline into bankruptcy. It turns out that it all goes back to something known as the Fair Credit … Continue reading
Posted in bankruptcy
1 Comment