Monthly Archives: April 2007

When Banks Move Headquarters

Just as Barclays
is saying that it wants to move to Amsterdam, JP Morgan Chase is claiming
that it might consider moving to Stamford
.
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Subprime Mess: Small, by Dot-Com Standards

Bad subprime mortgages might be smaller than the amount of money that Intel stock fell in one day.
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Return of the Mac

There’s lots of excitement surrounding the iPhone. But I think the Mac could turn out to be just as big a story.
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How To Monetize Your Brands

At the moment, if you want to buy Coca-Cola
the brand, say, the only way you can do that is by buying Coca-Cola the company.
Eddie Lampert, as well as the people behind the new Intellectual
Asset Finance Society
, would like to change that.
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Cap-and-Trade: Can it Work for Water Rights?

If a cap-and-trade system works for sulfur and for carbon, it should be able
to work for water, too.
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RBS-ABN-Barclays: Things Get Complicated

RBS CEO Fred Goodwin is one of the few individuals who has
been through a bidding war for a bank in the past, when he bought England’s
NatWest. This deal is much bigger, and much more complex. But if anybody can
navigate the complexities, Goodwin probably can. ABN Amro’s shareholders will
be cheering him on.
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Private Equity Quotables

Quotes from David Rubenstein, Thomas Lee, David Bonderman, and Leon Black.
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Buy Canada!

Why to invest in that oft-forgotten country to the north.
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A Third PATH Station to Rise at the WTC Site

Has there been yet another Port Authority cock-up?
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Euphemism Watch

What to say when you’re stuck with a house you can’t sell.
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When Emerging Markets Change

If you track an index, beware the index itself changing.
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The Silver Lining to Banking Crises

Prosperity is closely linked to homeownership. But to get there, the occasional banking crisis might not be such a bad thing after all.
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Nuclear Proliferation Keeps Rupert Murdoch Up At Night

Can Rupert Murdoch help save the world from nuclear holocaust?
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The Effects of Illegal Workers on Productivity

Official employment figures are still very high in the construction industry.
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How Derivatives Caused the Property Boom

Sitting on the property panel with Bob Toll was Steven Green, of Greenstreet
Partners. He had a very good explanation for the run-up in US property values
in recent years: financial derivatives.
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Bob Toll on US Housing

Toll Brothers CEO Bob Toll gives his take on the US housing market.
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Immigration Datapoint of the Day

How immigration drives US prosperity.
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Will The US Adopt Principle-Based Regulation?

You expect to hear about "regime harmonization with Europe" when
the subject is something that Europe has a lot of and the US has none of –
carbon trading, for example. But today we heard it from Michael Oxley,
on the subject of something the US has a lot of and Europe has much less of:
capital-markets regulation.
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Posted in technocrats | 1 Comment

Why Can’t Small Companies Go Public These Days?

Whatever happened to the days when small VC-backed companies could exit onto the public stock market?
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New York Congestion Pricing: On the Way

New York will charge $8 to drive into Manhattan on weekdays.
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Hedge Funds: Just Misunderstood?

Meme of the day is whether all the current calls for hedge-fund regulation
come not because these funds pose some enormous systemic risk, but rather because
they’re simply not understood.
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Carbon Emissions: Regulation Versus Cap-and-Trade

John Kerry wants a cap-and-trade system. But until he can get one, he’ll use regulation instead.
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First Thoughts on the Barclays-ABN Deal

It’s good for Varley, good for Lewis, and good for Groenink.
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On the road

I had a glorious 35th birthday in Chicago on Saturday. The weather was absolutely perfect all weekend: bright and sunny without being too hot — great for architecture tours, bike riding along the lakefront, or just wandering around. Not that … Continue reading

Posted in Not economics | 3 Comments

Google: More Cash Than It Knows What To Do With

Google needs to spend money, because returning it to shareholders would barely have any effect on its overheated stock price.
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