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Author Archives: Felix
The 2.8 Million-to-One Winning Bet
A heartwarming story of a man who bet 50p on the horses and won £1 million. Except the odds were actually 2.8 million to one, which means he should have won £1.4 million, and he’s short to the tune of … Continue reading
Posted in gambling
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Chart of the Day: US Box Office Receipts
This is the best chart I’ve seen all year, it’s a bit like the NameVoyager for movies. It has time along the x-axis and weekly box-office receipts along the y-axis, which means that box office grosses are reflected in long … Continue reading
Posted in charts
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Manhattan Real Estate Datapoint of the Day
Josh Barbanel reports on a sale at Trump World Tower to Chinh Chu of the Blackstone Group: According to several people briefed on the deal, Mr. Chu paid an extra $5 million to buy a 1,200-square-foot outdoor space on a … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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Extra Credit, Weekend Edition
Monolines: Breaking up is hard to do, yet Bond Insurer Plans a Split to Protect Ratings Outdated Prices Blamed in Credit Suisse Error Real Choices: Why TIPS are attractive even at low yields. But I’m not sure I like the … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Credit: The Bandwidth-and-Hamsters Analogy
I’m not entirely sure what to make of Yvette Kantrow’s column today. On the one hand, I’m the only person she’s remotely nice about (I’ve "done a decent job," she says) in her review of the way the credit crunch … Continue reading
Posted in bonds and loans, Media
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Development: The Good News
Bill Easterly, in a nutshell, says that we’ve spent $2 trillion on aid over the past 50 years and have nothing to show for it. Charles Kenny says he’s entirely wrong, in a new paper saying that if you look … Continue reading
Posted in development
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Why All Consumer Magazines Should be Free Online
The Christopher Leinberger article in the Atlantic which I plugged at the beginning of last week is finally online. I moaned about such delays this morning, and got an email asking why exactly they’re so bad. I replied that Choire … Continue reading
Ethanol’s Not Green
How did I miss this, when it was published a couple of weeks ago? Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into … Continue reading
Posted in climate change
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Lloyds TSB: Not an Insurer
Let me be the second (after Carrick Mollenkamp) to congratulate Eric Daniels of Lloyds TSB on sidestepping the credit crunch and reporting 2007 profits up 17%. I am a bit confused however why Mr Mollenkamp chose to illustrate his blog … Continue reading
Posted in architecture, banking
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Counterparty Risk in CDS Auctions
Diana Henriques has a piece in today’s NYT about CDS auctions. There are opaque auctions, like one recently held for something known as "pay as you go" credit default swaps; there are also transparent aucions, held by Creditex and Markit. … Continue reading
Posted in derivatives
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A Plea
Can everybody please stop talking about this being "the worst housing crisis/recession since the Depression"? It’s the only housing crisis/recession since the Depression, at least if you exclude purely regional episodes. Thank you.
Chart of the Day: Stock-Bond Divergence
This is from a Goldman Sachs research report dated yesterday. The details: We compare the investment grade CDX spread to the implied volatility of a 25 delta put of an equal weighted basket of the stocks represented in the CDX … Continue reading
Posted in bonds and loans, stocks
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Magazines Still Don’t Get the Web
“We don’t hire editors anymore,” says Meredith publishing president Jack Griffin. “We hire content strategists.” As someone who gloried briefly as an official Content Strategist myself, I had to smile: it’s one of those titles which anybody with an iota … Continue reading
Posted in Media
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Credit Losses: The Good News
Where are the hedge-fund losers in the credit markets? That’s what Option Armageddon is asking, via an email from a friend in the hedge-fund industry: There have been some nice fortunes made from the spread widening (Paulson, Hayman, Blue Ridge, … Continue reading
Posted in bonds and loans
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House-Price Momentum: The Good News
John Authers looks at what drives house prices: Tim Bond of Barclays Capital points out that once house prices start to accelerate, people expect them to keep on rising at that rate. All other factors are swamped. As he says: … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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When “Underwater” Isn’t the Same as Negative Equity
The NYT has one of its big 2,000-word pieces on the housing market today, this time concentrating on the phenomenon of negative equity. The estimate the article cites is very high, and was greeted with some skepticism by Calculated Risk: … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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Extra Credit, Friday Edition
Pimco to run World Bank fund for bonds: Developing local markets and making money at the same time. Is there useful work in economics? Dani Rodrik thinks so. Peace through Superior Football: A proposal that Israel and Palestine should jointly … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Michelle Leder is a National Treasure
Roberta Yafie explains today how US bankruptcy judge Robert Drain slashed an $87 million bonus plan for Delphi executives to "just" $16.5 million. But don’t think they haven’t hidden all manner of other egregious overpayments in their 10-K: CEO Rodney … Continue reading
Posted in stocks
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Crowds: Stupid
Paul Kedrosky said this morning that he was thinking about "the anti-wisdom of crowds". I wasn’t sure what he meant, until this afternoon: The sort of things people want government to do to help the U.S. economy — cut imports! … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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Carbon Tax Arrives in British Columbia
Many congratulations to British Columbia and its finance minister Carole Taylor, who has introduced a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The sums involved are not insignificant: The carbon tax will start at a rate based on $10 per tonne of carbon emissions … Continue reading
Posted in climate change
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Zimbabwe Datapoint of the Day
Brian Latham reports: The currency slumped to 20 million per dollar, from 6 million yesterday, traders including John Tonganyika said in interviews today from the capital, Harare. It’s the biggest drop since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980, said … Continue reading
Posted in foreign exchange
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Chart of the Day: Oil and Gasoline Prices
Are you ready for a 40% hike in gasoline prices? According to Barbara Kiviat, if the red line converges up to where the black line is now, that would put gas prices at about $4.23 a gallon, or 40% higher … Continue reading
Posted in commodities
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TIPS: Great, or Terrible?
Min Zeng, on page C2 of today’s WSJ: With oil prices above $100 a barrel and countries from China to the U.S. reporting sharp gains in consumer prices, now may be the time to buy inflation-protected securities. Big bond investors, … Continue reading
Posted in bonds and loans
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How to Help Both Homeowners and Lenders, at No Public Cost
I really like this idea from the Office of Thrift Supervision: it looks like it can reduce foreclosures and help provide liquidity to struggling mortgage lenders at the same time. Here’s how it works: take a borrower who’s underwater, with … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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Monolines: Ackman’s Latest Plan
Has anybody not seen Bill Ackman’s latest plan for what should happen to the monolines? It’s been doing the email rounds for a couple of days now, but finally it’s hit the web: if you want to download the full … Continue reading
Posted in insurance
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