Author Archives: Felix

The Greenspan Defense

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Felix

Have you had enough Alan Greenspan yet? Just in case his interview with Greg Ip today isn’t enough for you, I should also point out his 1,638-word "response to my critics" over at Martin Wolf’s FT.com forum. There are some … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Felix

Jobless Rates by Education: Stay In School! Machiavelli meets the Big Apple: Ten reasons NYC’s congestion pricing plan went belly up. I Cahn’t (turn Motorola around) My Experiment With Incentives: Mike Moffatt used incentives to lose weight. And MSF still … Continue reading →

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Which Taleb is Right?

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Felix

Pablo Triana today wades back in to the Black-Scholes debate, and takes aim at Michael Lewis: Black-Scholes has been blamed in certain quarters for the subprime crisis. Essentially, the argument is that those blinded by the dictates of the model … Continue reading →

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Credit Card Datapoint of the Day

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Felix

Visa is truly the global leader in credit cards. It has a market capitalization of $50 billion, and has a total transaction volume of $3.5 trillion per year: it’s worth about 1.4 cents per dollar transacted annually. Diners Club (remember … Continue reading →

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Why it Makes Sense to Give the Fed More Regulatory Powers

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Felix

Bethany McLean makes a seemingly salient point in the latest Fortune: a year ago, in the Bloomberg-Schumer report, Chuck Schumer was saying that there was too much regulatory red tape on Wall Street. Today, he seems to support Hank Paulson’s … Continue reading →

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The Most Depressing Headline of the Day

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

Congestion Pricing Plan Is Dead, Assembly Speaker Says I hope Shelly Silver finds it impossible to show his face in his own district from here on in.

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The Plunging Schwab Bond Funds

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

As you might have heard, the largest bond fund at Charles Schwab, YieldPlus, is plunging in price. Suffering from massive redemptions, of the vast majority of its assets, it was forced to sell illiquid mortgage-backed securities at distressed fire-sale prices. … Continue reading →

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Housing Datapoint of the Day, Schadenfreude Edition

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

The Mortgage Bankers Association is having difficulties with its mortgage. (Via Campbell)

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Will Banks Ever Promote Financial Wellness?

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

There are very few things more stressful than money, whether you don’t have it or whether you do. Money problems destroy relationships every day, and I’m sure that all of my readers can think of quite a few people off … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Monday Edition

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

A Pro-Foreclosure Bill: The problems with the Senate’s housing bill. The euro’s rivalry of the dollar does not depend on tipping: Jeff Frankel on why the Fed should be worried. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A … Continue reading →

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Why Microsoft Will Buy Yahoo, A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words Department

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

(Via Jack Flack; photo by Jason Lee/Reuters/Landov)

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Eyeball Datapoint of the Day

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

Did you know that there was a $45 billion eyecare company called Alcon? I had no idea, until I saw that a controlling stake in it was being sold by one big Swiss company to another big Swiss company. On … Continue reading →

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Why JP Morgan Asked for a Fed Exemption

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

If JP Morgan Chase was so confident that it will "remain well capitalized" in the wake of the Bear Stearns acquisition, why did it go to the extraordinary length of asking the Fed to exempt it (or at least $400 … Continue reading →

Posted in banking | 1 Comment

Blogonomics: Breaking News

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Felix

I’m glad that Jeff Bercovici has fisked the NYT’s silly article on the hazards of blogging, because it means I don’t have to. Instead, I can look past the idiotic central thesis to one of the pieces of supporting evidence: … Continue reading →

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The Hedge Fund Atop a Modeling Agency

Posted on April 6, 2008 by Felix

According to a study by Stanford psychologist Brian Knutson, When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, … Continue reading →

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A Masterpiece from Murakami

Posted on April 6, 2008 by Felix

I went to the Takashi Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum last night, it’s well worth seeing. For me, the highlight is the painting above, 727-727, which unfortunately just doesn’t work very well in reproduction. In real life, it’s enormous … Continue reading →

Posted in Not economics | 14 Comments

Extra Credit, Weekend Edition

Posted on April 5, 2008 by Felix

The Most Liberal, Conservative, and Independents Sites in America, for Real Change We Can Believe In: Good and bad currency design. The Pressure is Building in Iceland Countrywide Wants To Sell You a House: Many of Countrywide’s new mortgages are … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: Valleywag Pay Slashed

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

Jordan Golson can’t be happy: Nick Denton has cut the amount of money he gets per thousand pageviews to $6.50 from $9.75. That’s a 33% pay cut, on a per-pageview basis. What about on an absolute basis? Well, the pageview … Continue reading →

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Jeff Koons Datapoint of the Day

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

The most expensive sculpture sold by a living at auction was Jeff Koons’s Hanging Heart, which sold for $23.6 million last year. It was also the most expensive artwork sold by a living artist at auction. The most expensive sculpture … Continue reading →

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Walking Away Without a Foreclosure

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

Remember youwalkaway.com? The idea there is that you stop making your mortgage payments but you can live in your house for 8 months or more before finally being evicted. Well now Barry Ritholtz has found a couple of articles, in … Continue reading →

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Bear Stearns: Why the SEC isn’t to Blame

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

I’m not a big fan of Floyd Norris’s column today, in which he essentially blames regulators in general, and the SEC in particular, for "letting leverage get so far out of hand" that Bear Stearns collapsed. We all know that … Continue reading →

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Why Did JP Morgan Need the Fed’s Guarantee?

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

I got a very good question in my inbox last night: If JP Morgan did cherry pick and dump the riskiest Bear assets on the Fed, then there’s no mistaking the significance of the Fed $29 billion guarantee. If, as … Continue reading →

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It’s Not the Fault of Hedge Fund Managers That They Make So Much Money

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

Andrew Clavell gets to the point on the subject of hedge-fund managers: I don’t begrudge the General Partners their loot one iota. What the academics fail to understand (choose to ignore?) is that the General Partners’ business model is "to … Continue reading →

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Adventures With Bear Stearns Stock

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

Aren’t SEC filings fun? According to this one, On March 24, 2008, JPMorgan Chase acquired 11,500,000 shares of Common Stock in the open market. The aggregate purchase price of $140,724,350 was paid out of working capital. That works out at … Continue reading →

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Which CEO to Blame for Citi’s Woes?

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Felix

When former Citi CEOs start sniping at each other in the press, you know things can’t be good. Today’s story in the FT is quite astonishing, for the quotes it gets from both John Reed and Sandy Weill: “The specific … Continue reading →

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