Pigeons are as clever as 3-year-old children Roland Piquepaille China biggest CO2 emitter last year: Dutch agency PhysOrg A league table of liveable cities Financial Times. My former neighborhood in Sydney, Potts Point, is singled out as world standard. Short changed on short sales? Willem Buiter and FSA move does nothing for City’s reputation Telegraph. […]
Read more...While this Bloomberg story notes that the bath Goldman took on a leveraged loan to Dutch TV producer Endermol was considerably below recent LBO loan haircuts (27.5% versus the typical
Read more...We wondered ever since the Fed established and then repeatedly increased the size of its Term Auction Facility, which now provides $150 billion of support to the US banking system, how the central bank would ever be able to wind down this program. It certainly can’t do it when the financial system is fragile, and […]
Read more...A good paper at VoxEU reaches a conclusion that seems expected, yet has been contested in academic research, namely, that imports have lowered US inflation. As we have discussed in other posts, this has far more important policy implications than obvious at first blush. The Fed has been looking at inflation as strictly a domestic […]
Read more...Visitors flocking to see ‘unicorn’ deer PhysOrg The new stagflation: an Asian export Stephen Roach, Financial Times. Important and not at all reassuring observations. Instead of a wage-price spiral, will we have “import push” inflation? Per Roach: Given Asia’s new-found role as the world’s producer, such an outbreak of surging inflation in this region is […]
Read more...Faithful readers, I hope you don’t mind if I am less chatty than usual today, since I had some competing obligations, plus some of the material on offer stands on its own. In the “pets.com redux” category, a reader pointed out this Wall Street Journal story: Excitement over oil is surging in Brazil…. After creating […]
Read more...Kudos to the New York Times’ Floyd Norris for this little bombshell: On March 18, when the company reported a profit for the first quarter, even as other firms were reporting losses — and just after Bear Stearns collapsed — Lehman had to confront rumors that had sent its share price tumbling. It did so […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports today that refiners are paying prices higher than those indicated by the futures market for the lightest, meaning best, grades of crude oil. This points to an issue raised in an earlier post, namely, that to the extent oil supplies are tight, it’s due to demand for sweet crude, which has […]
Read more...Lehman removed its high profile, recently appointed CFP Erin Callan (who will return to investment banking and its president Joseph Gregory (who will leave the firm) when aggressive PR campaign failed to shore up confidence in the embattled bank. (Correction: the initial information at the Financial Times was wrong, Gregory remains at Lehman) The markets […]
Read more...The US government has gone from being the biggest player in the mortgage market to being just about the only player. Per recent reports sent by an alert reader, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae now finance 80% of all mortgages, and the FHA guarnatees another 10%, so these entities now come close to having mortgage […]
Read more...Are overconfident CEOs born or made? PhysOrg 42 days detention without charge? I favour 48 Willem Buiter Palestinian-Israeli violence: new evidence VoxEU Spitzer’s Next Act: Distressed Real Estate Wall Street Journal Abu Dhabi fund sets sights on Chrysler Building Financial Times. Reminds me of when the Japanese were bought iconic properties at peak-of-the-market prices, although […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal reports today that Citigroup is shutting down Old Lane Partners, a hedge fund started by Vikram Pandit that the bank acquired a mere 11 months ago. The bank decided it couldn’t spare the capital to shore up the struggling hedge fund. The article noted: Old Lane has essentially broken even since […]
Read more...Whether it comes to fruition is to be determined, but taken at face value, Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman’s proposal to bar institutional investors such as pension and index funds from investing in commodities is a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, a significant indicator of Wall Street’s fallen standing. Lieberman has been a staunch defender of the securities industry […]
Read more...Normally, underwriting a public stock offering is a highly profitable, low risk business. In the US, managers and underwriters collect a handsome fee (7% gross spread on IPO, lower on secondary offerings) but assume virtually no risk, because the deals are (usually) pre-sold via investor commitments (circles) before the deal is priced and the underwriters […]
Read more...MBIA’s conduct continues to be shameful, yet the company is not getting the pillorying it deserves, at least from the media. Its latest bit of misbehavior: the company has reversed itself on its decision to remit $900 million of the proceeds of highly dilutive fundraisings to its insurance subsidiaries. Why might that be? Well, the […]
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