Monthly Archives: January 2009

Merlot Contest

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Felix

After the wine contest and the Pinot contest, last night was the Merlot contest. And boy did passions run lower. I thought that there would be many more really bad wines, just because people don’t really know the grape, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Extra Credit, Friday Edition

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

The game changer: George Soros joins the CDS demonizers, but adds some substance to their arguments. Nouriel Roubini Partying With Intellectual Peers: Where’s Julia Allison’s high-tech name badge? Maybe her cleavage suffices. Ben Stein to Deliver Commencement Address: At the … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 2 Comments

When Bonuses Aren’t Discretionary

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

It’s becoming increasingly clear that if there’s a problem in the general economy with sticky wages — employers being unable to cut costs by cutting wages, and thereby going bust — then on Wall Street the problem is the other … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, pay | 2 Comments

How Deaccessioning Rules Doomed the Rose Art Museum

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

Shortly after posting my blog entry on Brandeis and the Rose Art Museum this morning, I received a series of unsigned emails, demanding that I take the blog down, asking that I hand over not only my own phone number … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 2 Comments

FT.com vs Blackstone

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

When I had lunch with the FT’s Rob Grimshaw, we spent all of our time talking about two sources of revenue: advertising, on the one hand, and subscriptions, on the other. Little did I imagine there was a third coming … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 2 Comments

Brandeis and Rose: The Numbers Emerge

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

Many thanks to Paddy Johnson for tipping me off to an astonishing article by Judith Dobrzynski at the Daily Beast, who’s managed to get the COO of Brandeis University, Peter French, to go on the record about his decision to … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 1 Comment

Nationalizing Bank Losses

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

Tyler Cowen has a new argument against nationalization: Say that banks are in the red by $2 trillion for ever and all eternity. Taking over the banks simply means that the government picks up these losses as owner. Government ownership … Continue reading →

Posted in bailouts, banking | 1 Comment

Crunched

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

There’s a small silver lining of good news in today’s atrocious GDP report: the New York Times has started linking to primary sources from its home page. And this isn’t one of those open-in-a-new-window links, either: it’s a proper link, … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, Media | 2 Comments

Extra Credit, Thursday Edition

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Felix

A Rich Income in ’06 Was $263 Million: With an effective tax rate of just 17%. ISDA Announces Agreement to Make J.P. Morgan’s CDS Analytical Engine Available as Open Source: Which makes it more dangerous, I think. Bush War on … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment

Davos Datapoint of the Day

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Felix

Alan Rappeport, who’s 4,000 miles away in New York, does some real reporting while the crowds of journalists at the schmooztastic gabfest play spot-the-mogul in the Kongresszentrum: ExecuJet, which is handling private business jets flying to the World Economic Forum … Continue reading →

Posted in Davos 2009 | 1 Comment