Author Archives: Felix

Taking Credit Card Imprints: A Key Skill for Prostitutes

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

John Gapper finds the business angle in the Spitzer story: reading the official complaint, he concludes that "even this sort of business is just that – a business." My favorite bit is this: During the call, SUWAL and LEWIS discussed … Continue reading →

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Spitzer’s Legacy on Wall Street

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

Andrew Leonard mourns a (former) hero: I cheered him on. He was the unexpected underdog who comes out of nowhere and starts landing one uppercut after another into the chins of a murderer’s row of 800-pound gorillas. We called him, … Continue reading →

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Stocks: Risky, But Tempting

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

On Friday, I got an email from my friend James: If you had some $ to invest now, where would you put them? I’m considering going long some equities, but its a nauseating market out there… in the financials, does … Continue reading →

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Blackstone: Paying Normal Tax Rates

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

Heidi Moore, liveblogging the Blackstone conference call, picks up on something interesting: Puglisi tackles taxes. Regulators, are you paying attention? Here is what he says: “While our tax rates for the full year were approximately 15% for the fourth quarters … Continue reading →

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The Negative Externalities of Index Funds

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

Steve Waldman doesn’t like it when I defend passive investing. If everybody moved to a passive-investment style, he asks, then where would we be? We need active investors to make efficient markets and set prices. Passive investors, he says quite … Continue reading →

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Microfinance and Small Business: Not in Conflict

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

James Surowiecki, in this week’s New Yorker, makes a strong case for supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries. He notes: In high-income countries, these companies create more than sixty per cent of all jobs, but in the developing … Continue reading →

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Blackstone Datapoint of the Day

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

Blackstone’s shares fell below the $14 level earlier today, in the wake of a dreadful earnings report showing a net loss of $170 million in the fourth quarter. At $14 a share, it’s worth remembering, it would take a rise … Continue reading →

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Please, China, Sell Your Treasury Notes!

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

One more post on Krugman, if I may, and then I’ll move on. Check out the chart he reproduced on Saturday: it looks very much like it comes from the Economist, but I can’t find the specific article. In any … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: Setting the Agenda

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

Remember the Tim Geithner speech last week? The wires covered it, dutifully enough, but it didn’t get much traction beyond that, outside the wonkier end of the econoblogosphere. What makes me very happy, however, is that the wonkier end of … Continue reading →

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Jay Brown, Blog Commenter

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Felix

Remember how I liked the way that new MBIA CEO Jay Brown writes letters? Well he’s gone one better now, and actually started leaving comments on blogs – or at least a comment on Floyd Norris’s blog. Norris didn’t like … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: Gawker’s Payroll

Posted on March 9, 2008 by Felix

Jay Rayner has a profile of Nick Denton in the UK Observer, in which we find some interesting numbers: In January, New York-based Gawker Media racked up nearly a quarter of a billion page views… The monthly salary is an … Continue reading →

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Active Investing Datapoint of the Day

Posted on March 9, 2008 by Felix

The cost of active investing: $100 billion per year, according to Kenneth French at Dartmouth University. That’s up from just $7 billion in 1980, you can see why Wall Street has made so much money in the interim. In his … Continue reading →

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Why the Fed’s Interventions Aren’t Working

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Felix

If you’re a bank and you need to shore up your capital base, you have the option of raising new equity, by selling shares to the public or to your friendly local sovereign wealth fund. There are other options, too. … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Weekend Edition

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Felix

WaMu rewrites execs’ bonus plan to dodge subprime damage Remember the Alamo: The Epicurean Dealmaker on Carlyle Capital. Download Whitney Tilson’s slide show "Why We Are Still in the Early Innings of the Bursting of the Housing and Credit Bubbles".

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A Market Movers Milestone

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Felix

As I approach the end of my first year at Portfolio.com, I’ve now officially posted my 2,000th blog entry here. (In fact, they weren’t all mine: many thanks to Yves Smith for pinch-hitting for a few weeks last summer.) In … Continue reading →

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Should the Government Partially Refinance Mortgages?

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

Martin Feldstein has a bright idea: allow homeowners to refinance 20% of their mortgage balances with the government, where the new loans amortize over 15 years and reset every two years at the interest rate on 2-year Treasury bonds (currently … Continue reading →

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Did Lloyd Blankfein Earn $100 Million in 2007?

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

There’s a bit of buzz today over Goldman Sachs’s 2007 executive pay packages. It’s all a bit confusing: do you include previous years’ stock grants? How do you account for options? If you add up stock awards and options awards … Continue reading →

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Google vs Microsoft: Can You Tell the Difference?

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

Are Google and/or Microsoft interested in buying Digg? We don’t know: Google and Microsoft both declined to comment on whether they are interested in Digg, issuing identical statements that they do not address "rumors or speculation." Identical, you say? I … Continue reading →

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Shipping Datapoint of the Day

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

Scott Borgerson, in Foreign Affairs: Taking into account canal fees, fuel costs, and other variables that determine freight rates, these shortcuts [through the Arctic Ocean] could cut the cost of a single voyage by a large container ship by as … Continue reading →

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The WSJ’s New Magazine: An Obvious Money-Spinner

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

Irin Carmon today gets some hard facts about the WSJ’s new glossy magazine. WSJ.’s circulation of 800,000 will be targeted to the 15 largest metro markets, including subscribers with a median household income of $300,000 (15 percent higher than the … Continue reading →

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CDS: It’s Not About Credit

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

The FT has an excellent article explaining that corporate issuers are now being able to price new bonds off their illiquid secondary-market bond curves, rather than off their (wider) CDS curves. If you have real corporations borrowing real new money … Continue reading →

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Meme of the Day: 50% Housing Equity

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

Mark Stein picked up on it yesterday; the WSJ splashes it across the front page today; Whitney Tilson has included it in his 75-page slide show entitled "Why We Are Still in the Early Innings of the Bursting of the … Continue reading →

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Credit Market Quote of the Day

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

An anonymous London credit hedge fund manager, quoted in the FT: "Every time you buy anything it is worth less the next day. Eventually you stop buying." In theory, hedge funds, with their cash lock-ups and their higher risk appetites, … Continue reading →

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Payrolls: Even More Bearish Than the Headline

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

I’m not a big fan of the monthly payrolls report, which has a 90% confidence interval "on the order of plus or minus 430,000". Payrolls fell by 63,000 in February – something which I’m sure is going to be treated … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Friday Edition

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Felix

Municipal Bonds: Yeeeeaaaaahooooooo! "Smith Barney, Citigroup’s retail brokerage arm, supposedly had the best day for selling municipal bonds in their entire history on Monday. One large dealer I talk to regularly said they had sold every bond in their inventory … Continue reading →

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