For those of you who haven’t followed the SIV mess closely, Cheyne ran around early on and went into receivership. The Financial Times reports that the receivers have arranged a refinancing and restructuring with Goldman that may serve as a model for the resolution of other troubled SIVs. its attractive feature is that it allows […]
Read more...Consumption: Propensity vs Ability Will Rahal. Courtesy a reader, an interesting post on the significance of durable versus non-durable goods consumption trends and what they portend for economic growth. Housing Rebound Head Fake WSJ Real Time Economics
Read more...Orlando is home to an over-the-top Christmas display courtesy Tony Hansen, a lighting designer. According to the Orlando Sentinel: Using $10,000 worth of professional lighting and sound equipment that he borrowed from his job as a lighting designer, Hansen’s 25,000-light display is synchronized to five songs, which he broadcasts over an FM-radio frequency so passers-by […]
Read more...Merrill made the announcement of its $ 6.2 billion (originally rumored to be $5 billion) cash infusion by the sovereign wealth fund Temasek and New York fund manager Davis Select Advisors today. The firm is raising additional capital through the sale of its commercial finance business to General Electric Capital. From Bloomberg: Merrill Lynch & […]
Read more...Ben Stein is up to his old tricks. Here he gave the impression of being done for the year, having penned an article of a classic end of year type, “what I should do better next year.” But he snuck another piece in this week, “Tattered Standard of Duty on Wall Street.” The article claims […]
Read more...There was some hope that the season’s disappointing retail sales might be somewhat offset by better Internet sales, particularly since nasty weather curtailed visits to stores. Alas, while the results aren’t in, the pattern so far is that Internet activity has similarly been more sluggish than hoped. From Bloomberg: U.S. Internet sales rose at the […]
Read more...The headline above appears in a Financial Times story today. Note that if any such sentiments are voiced in the press in the US, they are discreetly tucked away in the body of the story. Why do we treat people in the officialdom with kid gloves? Paulson put himself front and center on this SIV […]
Read more...Email in the 18th century Low-tech Magazine. It was possible to communicate at surprisingly high speeds even then. The State of the Unions Paul Krugman, New York Times. I’m not sure what to make of this piece. It starts out with a very good discussion of how the marginalization of unions was not an inevitable […]
Read more...Dani Rodrik has managed to be able to debunk the economic orthodoxy, most notably in his area of expertise, namely trade and development, and still retain the respect of his peers. Of course, having tenure at Harvard (Kennedy School) doesn’t hurt. But Rodrik is also unfailingly articulate, fair-minded, and rigorous. His latest post takes issue […]
Read more...FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics Washington Post. Drat. My thoughts of a life of crime must now be abandoned. My fingerprints are too shallow to be recorded (seriously, my then employer tried three times on behalf of the NASD and gave up) but the powers that be are now looking to other methods. Mirror […]
Read more...The report in Financial Times that Saudi Arabia plans to launch a sovereign wealth fund is significant for several reasons. First, it marks a shift in the kingdom’s approach to investing, which heretofore had been conducted via the Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority or privately by members of the royal family. The new entity will be […]
Read more...This article from Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies at VoxEU argues that high priced oil will worsen CO2 emissions, because it will encourage greater use of coal, which releases more CO2 per unit energy than gas. and Once that infrastructure is in place, the switching costs are high. From VoxEU: […]
Read more...We are more that a bit skeptical of whether the New Hope Alliance Plan (the name alone instills doubt) to help a subset of subprime borrowers by freezing their initial interest rate is more about creating photo ops than helping meaningful numbers of overextended borrowers. Why are we so dubious? The last smoke and mirrors […]
Read more...Breakthrough of the Year 2007 Science. A “year’s best” list under a different name. One winner, nine runners up. Shareholders’ Say on Pay: Does it Create Value? Robert Jackson, Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog. A paper by Jie Cai and Ralph A. Walkling of Drexel University suggests it does. Traffic jam mystery solved by […]
Read more...The SV rescue plan touted by the Treasury Deparment and sponsored by Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Bank of America, has finally, officially, had a stake put through its heart today. It dies unmourned and unloved. It wasn’t hard to see that this concept was unlikely to get off the drawing board. But with the Treasury’s […]
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