Category Archives: Econoblog

Creditflux magazine has some interesting numbers out about the synthetic CDO market, as reported by Paul Davies in the FT today: Sales of public and private synthetic CDOs grew to $450bn in notional terms last year compared with $224bn in … Continue reading →

In a move quite stunning for how sensible it is, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is thinking of selling all or part of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site to developers or private … Continue reading →

Back on Thursday, I mentioned that Citigroup had put coal-heavy utility company TXU on its list of companies which stood to benefit from global climate change. It’s maybe worth quoting the report at some length: “Grandfathering” We discussed various types … Continue reading →

Another Monday, another almost-gossipy piece about the Todd ‘n’ Maria show on the front page of the NYT business section. Two weeks ago it was David Carr; today it’s Landon Thomas, but the Grey Lady remains an expert at what … Continue reading →

Did the world really need yet another mutual-fund gimmick? The Liberty Investment Group seems to think so: it’s launched something called the Index of Economic Freedom Portfolio to no little acclaim. Here’s Mark Skousen: Spath and Kirkscey back-tested the performance … Continue reading →

David Smith has an interesting piece today about the Bank of England. The Bank kept rates on hold at its last meeting, but it could easily have hiked: the markets were on tenterhooks as the annoucement approached. (When was the … Continue reading →

Larry Summers weighs in on the climate change discount rate issue in the Martin Wolf forum: A corollary of Stern’s assumption that marginal utility declines only slowly with income is that risk aversion is not that great. Question for John … Continue reading →

Now here’s an interesting thing: Mike Mandel, on his blog, has managed to avoid the housing mania which seems to have overtaken much of the rest of the blogosphere, myself included. No talk about credit crunches, no talk about housing-led … Continue reading →

Since moving to felixsalmon.com, I’ve tried to lay off the metajournalism. This is meant to be a finance and economics blog, after all, and there’s no reason why people who are interested in finance and economics should want to read … Continue reading →

Hillary Clinton wants to spend oil companies’ profits to subsidize R&D in the energy sector. Al Gore and Richard Branson have another idea: they’re offering $25 million to the person who comes up with the best way of removing carbon … Continue reading →

Travis Daub finds a Pablo Päster column: Producing and shipping one bottle of Fiji bottled water around the globe consumes nearly 27 liters of water, nearly a kilogram of fossil fuels, and generates more than a pound of carbon dioxide … Continue reading →

Greg Mankiw, after watching Hillary Clinton: For some reason, energy is one of those topics that makes politicians sound like Soviet-era central planners. Here’s Hillary’s official site on the subject: Hillary proposed a simple idea to help end the cycle … Continue reading →

I’m pretty impressed with the idea that hedge fund fees are high because hedge funds, as the ultimate capitalist machines, naturally charge whatever the market will bear. In which case, what was Fortress Group doing pricing its IPO at $18.50, … Continue reading →

Floyd Norris, today, devotes his column to a recent paper from a senior SEC executive, Ethiopis Tafara. He’s so unimpressed, indeed, that he doesn’t either link to it or give us its name. Well, I’m here to help: it’s called … Continue reading →

It’s worth reading through to the end of Jenny Anderson’s profile of Tim Geithner today. It’s not just a personal puff-piece (although it’s that too): there’s also some very good reporting, at the end, on how Geithner managed to reduce … Continue reading →

I’ve now got my hands on the UBS climate change report (98 pages, dated January 2007), to accompany the Lehman and Citigroup reports. UBS’s paper doesn’t have much of an equities focus at all, but it does include an interview … Continue reading →

Freddy Mac’s official statistics notwithstanding, HSBC is facing heavy weather in its US subprime operations: The impact of slowing house price growth is being reflected in accelerated delinquency trends across the US sub-prime mortgage market, particularly in the more recent … Continue reading →

Mike Shedlock (Mish) is convinced that mortgage delinquencies are rising, despite finding this chart in a recent Freddie Mac report: That’s Mish circling the footnote: he’s convinced that the explanation for the drop can be found in the footnotes. Essentially … Continue reading →

Robert Shiller has been predicting a housing-market crash for as long as anybody, which is why his piece in the Wall Street Journal today is so interesting: it seems he’s not predicting a crash any more! Here’s the final paragraph … Continue reading →

Dean Baker has been worrying for a while about US productivity. Could it be that he needn’t have worried? U.S. productivity up sharply in 4th quarter The productivity of U.S. workers rose sharply in the fourth quarter and labor cost … Continue reading →

Yesterday I mentioned that Lehman Brothers had released a 145-page research note on climate change. In response, a friendly reader sent me a similar report from Citigroup (120 pages, dated January 19), and said that UBS might have one out … Continue reading →

Larry Summers doesn’t trust the judgment of the market, and thinks the government should step in to intervene – by throwing money into R&D related to the life sciences: In today’s economy, an outstanding graduate of a leading business school … Continue reading →

Matthew Tubin comments, apropos the large increase in bilateral overseas development assistance to Africa under the Bush Administration: Given the geostrategic competition that is emerging over oil (Nigeria, Chad and even the Sudan) and influence in Africa between the United … Continue reading →