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Monthly Archives: August 2008
Cartoon of the Day
Rex Babin, for the Sacramento Bee: (Via Neubert)
Posted in banking
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How Long Will Rick Wagoner Last?
Joe Nocera is taking to blogging like Steve Jobs took to turtlenecks: “Rick has the unified support of the entire board to a person,” the company’s lead outside director, George M.C. Fisher, told Bill Vlasic of The Times in an … Continue reading
Posted in defenestrations, governance, leadership
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Supply and Demand in the Oil Market
Stan Collender just doesn’t believe that the volatile oil price can really be function of old-fashioned supply and demand: It’s not that I’m not a big believer in this most basic rule of economics. It’s just that the higher prices … Continue reading
Posted in commodities, economics
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Good Idea of the Day: Slashing the Structured Product Investor Base
Aline van Duyn reports today that a group of A-list banks — "including JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, HSBC, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley," we’re told, a list which is notable for the non-inclusion of Goldman Sachs — is interested … Continue reading
Harvard Wins
Remember Jack Meyer, the former manager of the Harvard endowment who left to form his own hedge fund, Convexity Capital? Last year, he was a zero, underperforming his benchmark, and Harvard was being peppered with questions about whether they still … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds
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Mexican Peso Datapoint of the Day
Currency conversion is so easy these days. More or less, one US dollar is worth the same as a Canadian dollar, an Australian dollar, a Swiss franc, one hundred yen, one thousand won, and half a British pound. The latest … Continue reading
Posted in foreign exchange
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How to Build a Recovery
Larry Summers has a long and pompous article in the FT today on building a financial recovery. If you can slog your way through the awkward constructions ("consideration should be given to whether the government should establish a mechanism for … Continue reading
Posted in economics, fiscal and monetary policy
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Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition
Hobbit Crisis: The Shire in Foreclosure: Yes. For real. What does the GDP deflator measure? Jim Hamilton explains it all. Ex-UI researcher faces deportation: A prime case of the utter idiocy that is the US immigration bureaucracy. Decline of Aspirational … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Chart of the Day: The InTrade Electoral Map
Electoralmap.net puts the latest InTrade prices into graphical form: Looks like Florida alone isn’t remotely enough to get McCain into the White House. Update: Chris Masse points me to electoralmarkets.com, a sexy flash version of the above. Cool! (HT: Caveat … Continue reading
Posted in charts, Politics, prediction markets
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Hedge Fund Datapoint of the Day
Evan Newmark: Citigroup estimates that in the past 18 months Fortress has lost an astonishing 85%, or $6 billion to $7 billion, in the value of publicly-traded companies in which it holds large positions. It takes an extra-special level of … Continue reading
Posted in banking, hedge funds
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Should You Tap Your Heloc Before it’s Frozen?
The home equity line of credit, or Heloc, is a wonderful thing: the best way of having liquid funds available in case of emergency you could possibly imagine. Your net worth might be tied up in your house, but that … Continue reading
Posted in housing, personal finance
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Retirement: Not as Important as a Dishwasher
Heather Havrilesky has an important piece in Salon about online retirement calculators, and she ultimately ends up in exactly the right place, albeit with a very low level of confidence. The right place, in case you hadn’t worked it out … Continue reading
Posted in personal finance
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Why Big Mortgage Losses are Here to Stay
John Hempton is doing an admirable job teasing out the dynamics of the US mortgage market, and asking whether the losses we’re currently seeing are due to fraud or to broader economic stress. If it’s mainly fraud, he says, that … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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The WSJ’s Broken Subscriptions System
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp today announced a 57% rise in annual profits, to $5.38 billion. Please, Mr Murdoch, spend a tiny, tiny amount of that money on fixing the Wall Street Journal’s horrendously broken subscriptions system. I’m spending the summer … Continue reading
Posted in Media, publishing
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No Changes to Libor
Remember the big Libor makeover, prompted by fears that Libor was increasingly fictional? Well, now that we’ve all pretty much forgotten what the fuss was all about, the BBA has come out and decided to do nothing. In a 14-page … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Blogonomics: Daily Candy Sold for $125 Million
I’ll get this out of the way immediately: Daily Candy isn’t really a blog, it’s more of an email newsletter. But still, this is impressive: after buying the company in 2003 for what seemed at the time to be the … Continue reading
Posted in blogonomics
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Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition
FOMC Statement: No change, as expected. Hovering Above Poverty, Grasping for Middle Class: "The vast majority of those polled said religion or their faith in God plays an important role in helping them through financial straits." Argh. It hurts: "I, … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Meredith Whitney and the Hierarchy of Payments
It used to be that if you were having difficulty making your mortgage payment, you’d end up, one way or another, putting it on your credit card — if only by being unable to pay off much of your credit … Continue reading
Posted in banking, housing, personal finance
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Legalese Datapoint of the Day
The word count for Marc Lefar’s new employment agreement with Vonage? 18,418. The document does say that Lefar will receive up to $50,000 in reimbursement for "reasonable counsel fees incurred in connection with the negotiation and documentation of this Agreement". … Continue reading
Posted in law
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The Economics of Discounting
"Discounting smacks of desperation," says Liz Gunnison. "That’s why brands like Louis Vuitton and Apple don’t do it." Is this a common strategy, or is it a very tough one? All department stores have sales, no matter how high-end they … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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Record Label Valuation Datapoint of the Day
May 2007: Terra Firma buys EMI at a valuation of $6.3 billion. August 2008: Sony buys out Bertelsmann, its partner in the Sony BMG joint venture, at a post-deal valuation of $1.8 billion.
Posted in Media
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How Auctions Drive the Art Market
The first chapter of Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World is on auctions, and it’s a corker. Thornton not only has sharp insights, she also expresses them beautifully: The hammer punctuates and passes judgment. It acts as a … Continue reading
Posted in art
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Timing the Recession
Don Fishback and Barry Ritholtz are shocked — shocked! — that the InTrade recession contract is based on hard GDP numbers rather than, um, something else, maybe an NBER pronouncement the timing of which is entirely unknown. The fact is … Continue reading
Posted in economics, prediction markets
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Merrill: Losing the Expectations Game
Dennis Berman looks today at Merrill Lynch’s earnings per share. With earnings down and the number of shares up, he concludes, reasonably enough, that, in the words of Sanford Bernstein’s Brad Hintz, "it’s extremely difficult to get to the earnings-per-share … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Mobile Banking for the Poor
At a press conference this morning in Mumbai, mobile-banking company Obopay announced an alliance with Grameen Solutions — an alliance with an extraordinarily ambitious goal. In ten years’ time, the companies said, they would like to see 1 billion of … Continue reading
Posted in banking, development, technology
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