Even though I have said some unkind things about the Economist, once you get outside the world of politics, it is a very good guide to leading edge conventional wisdom. What do I mean by “leading edge conventional wisdom?” It is the sort of thinking dispensed by well regarded think tanks and private sector experts […]
Read more...Although riding herd on the Wall Street Journal is one of our favorite forms of recreation, we missed a couple of misstatements that were noticed by more alert eyes. Katie Porter at Credit Slips, caught two instances in two days in which the Journal mischaracterized bankruptcy practices, first pending legislation, and second, an unproven assertion […]
Read more...I assume that a high proportion of readers of this blog also follow Calculated Risk. I nevertheless wanted to comment on a particularly good post by Tanta on a favorite topic of mine, the efforts of the financial services industry to maintain that Suprimes Are Good For The Poor. Extensive news coverage of on-the-ropes borrowers […]
Read more...Hank Paulson must be very unhappy with the Wall Street Journal. While the newspaper briefly fell into line and issued one story that reported that the his pet project, the structured investment vehicle rescue plan, was getting traction, pretty much all its news coverage coverage has been skeptical, and its editorial comments have been downright […]
Read more...I’m pretty amazed at the tone and some of the content of the report on Bloomberg about the fact that Microsoft decided not to appeal the decision of Europe’s second highest court and worked out a settlement. Not only does Bloomberg seem not to appreciate that even Microsoft is subject to the rule of law, […]
Read more...Last Sunday, we made this observation about the SIV rescue plan, the so-called Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit (MLEC), sponsored by Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Bank of America: Yesterday, we voiced doubts that this program could get done. Now that we understand that the primary goals is legerdemain, we think that it is likely that some […]
Read more...An excellent post, courtesy Mark Thoma at Economist’s View, from FactCheck.org, on why its efforts to correct the record are too often counterproductive. In essence, if ideas are falsely linked (say “Saddam Hussein” and “Al Queda”), further discussion preserves the false association. The entire post is very much worth reading; it’s a primer on how […]
Read more...It’s impossible to tell if this is an isolated event or the beginning of a trend, but a page one story in the Wall Street Journal today, “How London Created a Snarl In Global Markets,” labors to paint SIVs as a UK problem. The difficulty with this spin is that anyone with an operating brain […]
Read more...Apologies for having two Financial Times items in succession, but the FT all too frequently has the goods. In a new item that so far had not been picked up by the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times reports that a survey by the National Association of Directors found that two thirds of CEOs said […]
Read more...I must confess I don’t read the Economist as much as I used to. I suppose one factor was my belated recognition of how much to the right it had moved (it was evident to UK readers in the 1990s, but not being a close follower of British politics, I didn’t recognize it until the […]
Read more...“SOS to the SEC,” from the New York Post: Did Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke give away any secrets to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson when the two had an hour-long lunch on Aug. 16? And did Paulson share what he and Bernanke discussed with anyone in the hours immediately after that lunch?Those are two key […]
Read more...After denying the existence of rising disparities in income and wealth on it editorial pages, the Wall Street tells us that income inequality is indeed on the rise. It’s a refreshing change from January, when the Journal misrepresented a speech by New York Fed President Timothy Geithner in which he said that the growing concentration […]
Read more...The problem with being public is that your dirty underwear gets exposed, and if you are an investment bank, that means you have to talk about embarrassing losses. Morgan Stanley announced that it lost $390 million in a single day in August. And of course, it was those pesky quant traders. And even worse, Morgan […]
Read more...The Journal has redeemed itself a bit with a page one story, “The United States of Subprime.,” in which it seeks to understand what type of people would up as subprime borrowers. A caveat: I’m always leery of judging the quality of analytical work if I haven’t looked at the underlying methodology. One issue confounding […]
Read more...The Journal is breathtaking in its propensity to sell stories past their sell-by date as news. The latest example is an article, “Pricing Tactics of Hedge Funds Under Spotlight,” that will appear in the Tuesday “Heard on the Street.” Here’s the opening paragraph: New academic research suggests that some hedge-fund managers may cherry-pick flattering prices […]
Read more...