Monthly Archives: February 2009

Extra Credit, Thursday Edition

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Wells Fargo’s Equity Pumped Up by Squishy Asset: "Exclude the servicing rights and Wells’s price-to-tangible-book ratio soars to about 4.3 times", compared to 1.2 for JPMorgan. AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image: Talk about tone-deafness. First the silly blogfight, … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment

Good News: Brandeis Backpedals

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz has given interviews with both the Boston Globe and the Brandeis student newspaper, the Hoot, in which he starts backpedalling madly on the subject of closing the Rose Art Museum. (As Richard Lacayo notes, the very … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 1 Comment

New York City Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

The Center for an Urban Future has released a startling report on the fate of New York’s middle classes — even as the population of the city continues to grow, its middle class is shrinking, and when it comes to … Continue reading →

Posted in cities | 2 Comments

The Blog Stigma

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Today marks a small step in the acceptance of blogs as legitimate news sources: Mayor Bloomberg took two questions from Gothamist’s Jen Chung during a press conference about a mysterious maple syrup smell. But more than four years after Gothamist … Continue reading →

Posted in blogonomics, Media | 1 Comment

Sachs’s Nationalization Idea

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Jeff Sachs has a slightly peculiar idea for nationalizing banks, which he calls "contingent nationalisation". As best I can work out, it involves the government buying up toxic assets at par, and then selling them off over the course of … Continue reading →

Posted in bailouts, banking | 2 Comments

Summers vs Volcker

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

I didn’t like the idea of appointing Larry Summers to be Treasury secretary, largely because he’s bad at politics. And given his jealous and petty spat with Paul Volcker now that he’s running the National Economic Council, the decision to … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

Why Live Nation Shouldn’t Merge With Ticketmaster

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

I got an interesting email last night from Michael Hershfield, the CEO of ticket site LiveStub, about the proposed Ticketmaster/Live Nation tie-up. If this deal goes ahead, then it seems we might be moving, without even realizing it, to a … Continue reading →

Posted in M&A | 1 Comment

Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Remarks by the President on Executive Compensation: Note that he uses the term "top executives" twice. This quite clearly does not apply to most bankers. SEC Replies: Madoff Hearings Part II Liveblogged: The death throes of the SEC begin. Risk … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment

How Brandeis Has Changed the Museum World Forever

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Donn Zaretsky responds to my post below, which says that museums should have control over their collections: Why must the museum have full control over whether or not a given work is sold? Why can’t the university overrule the museum? … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 2 Comments

Deaccessioning Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

One of the most scandalous aspects of l’affair Brandeis/Rose is the fact that the Rose doesn’t need any money, and is essentially being raped by its parent. Donors to the Rose Art Museum probably never stopped to wonder whether their … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 2 Comments

Earnings Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

Floyd Norris reports today that the S&P 500, in aggregate, is about to report its first quarter ever of negative earnings. Howard Silverblatt, S.&P.’s index maven, reports that with almost three-quarters of the companies in the index having reported fourth-quarter … Continue reading →

Posted in stocks | 1 Comment

Where’s Markopolos’s Blog?

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

Ray Pellecchia is right: if Harry Markopolos had taken all of his evidence about Bernie Madoff and put it on a blog, instead of submitting it to the SEC, there’s a good chance that would have been the end of … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Banker Pay: Salmon vs Barnett

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

I just had this IM exchange with Megan Barnett: Felix Salmon: Hi Megan, I see you’re attacking the cap on bankers’ pay, while I think it’s a good idea. Megan Barnett: Yes, it’s true. We finally disagree on something. Felix … Continue reading →

Posted in pay | 1 Comment

Ticketmaster-Live Nation: Mission Improbable

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

One congressman is already calling for an antitrust investigation of Ticketmaster — and that’s before any merger with Live Nation is even announced. If the Obama administration wants to demonstrate clearly to corporate America that the laissez-faire attitude of its … Continue reading →

Posted in M&A | 2 Comments

Markopolos vs the SEC

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

I’ve spent most of the morning reading Harry Markopolos’s testimony to the House committee on financial services: if you have some time, I’d highly recommend you do likewise. Markopolos isn’t shy about hyperbole: he talks at one point of his … Continue reading →

Posted in fraud | 1 Comment

Bill Keller Examines the NYT Business Model

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

Bill Keller’s musings about online subscriptions are causing something of a storm in the blogosphere, and even making the MSM. But I’d highly recommend you read the long version of Keller’s comments, rather than the soundbite version. Keller spends 2,164 … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Why Capping Pay is Likely to Work

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

The NYT wheels out an executive-compensation expert today, to predictably pour cold water on the Obama administration’s plans to cap top executives’ pay at half a million bucks a year: “That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot … Continue reading →

Posted in pay | 1 Comment

Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

On the Failure of Macroeconomists: They ignore fiscal policy, and are therefore looking quite irrelevant right about now. That luxury item may be ‘Made in China’: Even if it doesn’t say so on the label. Webcomics Business Model: Great stuff. … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 3 Comments

Nonprofit Newspapers: Worth a Try

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Jonathan Weber is not a fan of the nonprofit newspaper. Why not? I think it’s a vague sense that being nonprofit is un-American, a bit like bank nationalization: That newspapers should be run as nonprofit organizations strikes me as a … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

When Newspapers Rewrite Their Online Articles

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Many thanks to Ashley Huston in the Dow Jones PR department for chasing down answers to the questions I posed last week when I asked whether the WSJ was rewriting old articles. In the case of the article about John … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

More Counterfeit Drug Scaremongering

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Are you worried about counterfeit drugs? According to the American Council on Science and Health, you certainly should be: Counterfeit drugs, including fake, substandard, adulterated or falsely labeled (“misbranded”) medicines, have become a real and growing threat to global health… … Continue reading →

Posted in intellectual property, statistics | 1 Comment

The Broken Hedge-Fund Model

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the standard hedge fund incentive model breaks when a fund plunges in value. If the value of a hedge fund is rising, then 2-and-20 works as intended: the fund manager gets paid more the more … Continue reading →

Posted in hedge funds | 1 Comment

Is Foreclosure the Solution?

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Ramsey Su has a novel fix for America’s housing woes: No fix at all! Instead, he says that a wave of foreclosures is the best option. For homeowners, says Su, going through foreclosure is a great way to solve both … Continue reading →

Posted in housing | 1 Comment

10 Questions to Ask Your Fund-of-Funds Manager

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

If you were a client of Access International Advisors, which lost a lot of money with Bernie Madoff, then you would have been told that they "conducted thorough due diligence when selecting outsider fund managers". Which might have been reassuring, … Continue reading →

Posted in hedge funds, investing | 1 Comment

Extra Credit, Monday Edition

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

Coconuts and Bank Prices: What $100 billion buys you, these days. The Economy According To Mint: Aggregated financial data. But without year-over-year comparisons, it’s of limited usefulness. Rahm’s Doctrine And Breaking Up The Banks: This is our one big opportunity … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment