Monthly Archives: August 2008

New York Real Estate Datapoint of the Day

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

This full-floor apartment on Park Avenue first hit the market in November 2005 with an asking price of $18.9 million, or $3,000 per square foot. Almost three years later, it’s still unsold. Maybe it’s a function of the $17,138 per … Continue reading →

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The Blitheness of the Art World

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

I’ve written about Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World a couple of times, so I feel I ought to mention what I thought of the book as a whole. Your mileage might vary: by sheerest coincidence the book … Continue reading →

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Hirst Announces the End of an Era

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

Are there too many Damien Hirst paintings? Some people are worried that there are, or at least that Hirst was putting the market in his own works in peril by making so many. Those people are relieved that he’s ceasing … Continue reading →

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When Op-Ed Pages Turn Neutral

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

The Christian Science Monitor has a classic example of "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ" syndrome. It runs a first-rate op-ed by Mark Lange on the invidious and predatory behavior of credit-card companies. It then, however, neutralizes Lange’s piece by … Continue reading →

Posted in Media, personal finance | 4 Comments

Web Features: Don’t be too Ambitious

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

The NYT has the news, this morning: BusinessWeek is adding a feature to its website at the end of September. This is clearly meant to be a big deal: it’s the product of "two years of quiet development," we’re told, … Continue reading →

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London House Price Datapoint of the Day

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

House prices are finally falling in London: Asking prices in London fell 5.3% in August, according to the Rightmove house price survey – equivalent to a ߣ21,000 drop in a single month. Prices in some of the most sought-after suburbs … Continue reading →

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Annals of Deckchair Rearrangement, Citigroup Asia Edition

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

Tony Munroe of Reuters does his best today to report on the latest changes to the Citigroup Asia org chart, but it’s not an easy task — especially when the regional CEO, Ajay Banga, starts talking about bringing "the organizations … Continue reading →

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Borrower Behavior: The Big Unknown

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

Aline van Duyn tells an increasingly familiar story today: that while corporations have a very clear hierarchy of debt payments, with preferred stock, mezzanine debt, senior debt, senior secured debt, and all that, individuals do not — and they don’t … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Monday Morning Edition

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Felix

Hotel Occupancy Rate Rising, Data Show: "In May the average cost of a hotel room in New York climbed to $350 a night from $300 in May 2007." Dr. Doom: Nouriel Roubini gets the NYT Magazine treament. Finally, cities at … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Friday Edition

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Woods Fund Takes a Beating: "This year, the hedge fund was down about 77% through July, which comes on top of a roughly 34% decline last year." Traffic Safety Update: The roads are getting significantly safer — unless you’re a … Continue reading →

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Dan Loeb’s Terrace

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

The main reason to read Paul Goldberger’s article on 15 Central Park West in the new Vanity Fair is for the photos. Here are the developers, posed under the arches on the balcony of the top-floor penthouse — which I … Continue reading →

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Missed Connections, UN-Russia Edition

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Don’t feel bad, Carl Icahn. Remember when you couldn’t get Steve Ballmer on the blower? Well, it happens to the best of us: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has so far been unable to contact Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by telephone … Continue reading →

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Good News for Monolines Wanting to Settle their CDO Obligations

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Whenever a debt issuer runs into distress, it’s a safe bet that there will be legal tussles between holders of junior and senior notes. CDOs are no exception, as Aline van Duyn reports today in the FT. But it turns … Continue reading →

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A Torrid Tale of Love, Lies, and Collateralized Debt Obligations

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Robin Kane might be winning the financial mixed-metaphor contest, but when it comes to tortured similes, Ray Pasimio has the competition truly beat. Ladies and gentlemen, the worthy recipient of a Dishonorable Mention in the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: Carey, … Continue reading →

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How Unregulated Interior Design Destroyed Contemporary Cinema

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Alex Tabarrok takes aim at the American Society of Interior Designers: As Carpenter and Ross point out in an excellent article in Regulation from which I have drawn: In more than 30 years of advocating for regulation, the ASID and … Continue reading →

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GDP Statistics and the 2008 Election

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Is it weird to link to Dean Baker three times over the course of three successive blog entries? Not when he comes out with stuff like this: It is very likely that the third quarter GDP number will be negative. … Continue reading →

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A Brief History of Home Equity Loans

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Louise Story has an excellent history of the home equity loan on the front page of today’s NYT. She talks a lot about the explosion in such products — outstandings rose a thousandfold, to $1 trillion, from the early 1980s … Continue reading →

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The Rise of Medical Tourism

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Dean Baker has long complained that when American journalists and policymakers talk about "free trade" they don’t think to include trade in things like medical care — the price of which could be brought down substantially if foreign-trained doctors were … Continue reading →

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Incentives for Inflation

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Felix

Steve Waldman explains that America’s net-debtor position (both at the sovereign and at the individual level) means that there’s a lot of pressure towards inflation: Inflation helps debtors at the expense of creditors. In democracies where those who can vote … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Thursday Edition

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Felix

Macroblog returns: Yay! The first new post dives straight in to the subject of monetary policy over the past year. Random Observations about the US and/or the Clemson Area: Through the eyes of a recently-arrived Romanian. Alex Kummant, National Stationmaster: … Continue reading →

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When Markets Break

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Felix

How do you know that markets are broken? Sometimes it’s the presence of a clean arbitrage like that in Thomson Reuters shares. But there’s a much bigger weirdness going on right now: as John Carney reports, the spread on long-dated … Continue reading →

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Bringing Back Regulation’s Good Name

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Felix

Jesse Eisinger’s column this month is about the different regulatory structures in London and New York, and how they both failed. I asked him about it: Jesse, you travelled to London for your latest column, and came away with the … Continue reading →

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The Vocation of Leadership

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Felix

According to Dan Hesse, the CEO of Sprint, leadership is a vocation, and he’s certainly not doing it for the money. Kevin Maney asked him why he took the job, and he gave a very long answer. Here’s a chopped-down … Continue reading →

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Who’s Buying Financials?

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Felix

What adjective would you use to describe someone who kept on buying bank stocks even as they fell and fell and fell? I’m not sure if there’s a word in English for "someone who doesn’t learn from his mistakes", but … Continue reading →

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Learning Lessons from Auction Rate Securities

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Felix

Back in February, James Stewart, an investor in auction-rate preferred shares, complained that those shares were illiquid and that he was having difficulty accessing his money. He reckoned that if he couldn’t get his money out of the closed-end fund … Continue reading →

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