Monthly Archives: June 2007

John Paulson Continues His Quixotic Fight Against Bear Stearns

The Bear
Stearns vs John Paulson saga
shows no sign of going away any time soon
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Lant Pritchett’s Big Idea

Advocating a huge increase in international labor mobility.
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A Closer Look at Cov-Lite Loans

Catherine
Craig
has a great, in-depth look today at the "cov-lite" phenomenon
whereby loans are increasingly being syndicated without the restrictive covenants
of yesteryear.
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Art Market Bubble Watch

I’m always very hesitant to call a bubble, but I’m doing that now, with respect to Richard Prince’s latest works.
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Why Europe is Right on Climate Change

Kay’s proposed solution is… well, Kay doesn’t have a proposed solution. Instead, he asks for “modesty of aspiration and acknowledgement that many uncertainties cannot be resolved”. In other words, absolutely nothing. We can – we must – do better than that.
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Fed: Still Credible

The market increasingly sees a rate hike as possible, but it’s a long way from seeing a rate hike as necessary. The Fed is still ahead of the curve here, which means that its credibility, at least for the time being, is not at issue.
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Outsize Returns From Investing in Microfinance

Early investors in Compartamos got 100% returns on their investment, compounded over eight years.
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Monetizing the Obesity Theme

Merrill Lynch has a research
report
up on its website on how best to invest in "the emerging obesity
epidemic".
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US Population Density Datapoint of the Day

"If every American were given a house on a quarter acre, so that every
family of four had a full acre, that distribution would not use up half the
land in Texas."
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How to Write About Companies

A WSJ article has 10 different numbers in the space of two paragraphs totalling 119 words.
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Regulating Subprime Mortgages

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog today attacks
Elizabeth Warren, who would
like to regulate
the subprime mortgage market. Given the name of the blog,
it’s quite easy to predict where it comes down on such matters. But in fact
the issue is not quite as black-and-white as either the Economist or Dr Warren
might like to think.
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Cash Offers vs Stock Offers

Even people who prefer cash, it
turns out
, are still more likely than not to hold onto shares if that’s
what they’re given
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Quebec Taxes Carbon

Quebec’s carbon tax isn’t really Pigovian, because it isn’t large enough to noticeably reduce carbon emissions. But it’s a good start, since it’s always easier to increase a “sin tax” than it is to implement one initially.
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Posted in climate change | 1 Comment

Don’t Invest in Hollywood

Only a fool would invest in the expectation of making a profit either
in films or in art.
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Ford’s Emotional Breakup With Jaguar

How emotional is Ford, now that it’s selling Jaguar and Land Rover?
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The Blackstone IPO, Net Worth Edition

How did Steve Schwarzman end up with so much more of Blackstone
Group than Pete Peterson?
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Lies and GDP Statistics

Statistics are at best an approximation of the truth.
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Goldman in Moscow

Goldman Sachs is a formidable force wherever in the world it operates. So it’s
likely to do well in Moscow, where it’s now announced
plans
to add another 25 bankers, at somewhere north of $5m per annum apiece.
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What Is Larry Summers Wearing?

David
Leonhardt
had an interesting profile of Larry Summers in
the NYT yesterday. Leonhardt reckons that Summers could (and probably should)
become a Democratic Henry Kissinger, intimately involved in policy decisions
despite not having an official government job.
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How to Make Money From Undrilled Oil

For $350 million a year, Ecuador’s offering not to drill for oil in the Amazon jungle.
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Inappropriate Behavior on Cable TV

The CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge is a horrible, meretricious abomination.
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Posted in Media | 5 Comments

Noise in the Markets, Treasury Sell-Off Edition

Trying to extract a signal from all the noise has become, to all intents and purposes, impossible.
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How to Deal With Rising Healthcare Costs

Should the rich get better care?
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Jeff Sachs’s Reality Distortion Field

I’m beginning to think that Steve Jobs’s famous Reality
Distortion Field
has a rival: that of Jeffrey Sachs.
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Detroit Shoots Itself in the Foot on Fuel Efficiency

With tougher standards, on the other hand, the Big Three will no longer need to worry about being out-competed on the gas-guzzling side of things, and they can invest more money in more earth-friendly cars. They should be lobbying for this bill, not against it.
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