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Author Archives: Felix
Goldman: Unstoppable
We knew that Goldman Sachs had been very successful shorting the mortgage market; we also knew that Goldman’s asset-management arm was very unsucccessful this summer playing the stock market. And we’re also used, by now, to Goldman setting new records … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition
When a rose is not a rose: TAF is not "just" the discount window: "To call TAF the discount window without the stigma is like calling a person a corpse that is not dead." Subprime warning signs were made of … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Microlending in Mexico: Still Extortionate
BusinessWeek has a big (3,000-word) story on Mexican microlending, by Keith Epstein and Geri Smith. It’s heavy on the anecdote, and it comes down hard on one lender in particular: Ricardo Salinas’s Banco Azteca, which specializes in consumer finance. I’m … Continue reading
Posted in banking, development
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Illiquidity and Insolvency in the Commercial Real Estate Market
If you haven’t read Jesse Eisinger’s column on the CMBS market in the latest issue of Portfolio, do check it out – it’s very good. As a special bonus for Market Movers readers, I followed up with him this morning, … Continue reading
Posted in commercial property
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How Far Apart are Edwards and Obama?
Paul Krugman today lauds the populism of John Edwards, saying that the best strategy for a Democratic candidate is to "run with the populist tide". I wonder what he thinks of Matt Cooper’s latest piece in Portfolio, which says that … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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The Case Against Peak Oil
John Cassidy has a message for the peak-oil crowd: The tripling of oil prices since the summer of 2003 has unleashed forces that within the next two or three years will bring oil prices tumbling back down to below $50 … Continue reading
Posted in commodities
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Fishy Dealings in Trane Options
Trane is one of those invisible companies which is also omnipresent: it has operations everywhere from the Statue of Liberty to the Kremlin, and has even found its way into Portfolio’s offices in Times Square. It’s just been bought for … Continue reading
Posted in derivatives
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CMBS Market Claims an Australian Casualty
Foreign stocks are becoming increasingly popular among retail investors, for good reason, as the dollar continues to weaken. After all, if the US dollar slumps against the Australian dollar, say, then a stock which goes nowhere in Aussie-dollar terms can … Continue reading
Posted in commercial property
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Why Imports Should be Included in a Cap-and-Trade System
Judith Chevalier on Sunday took full advantage of the fact that her Economic View column in the NYT coincided with the end of the Bali climate-change conference. In it, she worries about "leakage" problems from a cap-and-trade system: the idea … Continue reading
Posted in climate change
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Extra Credit, Weekend Edition
Insolvency is philosophy, illiquidity is fact Church and state on the Journal masthead Q: What’s the worst thing you can do with an iPhone? Chris Anderson discovers iPhone international data roaming, and the atrociousness of AT&T customer support. Injecting Liquidity: … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Why Bloomberg Should Embrace Cap-and-Trade
Michael Bloomberg is not a man to shy away from brainless cliché: "cities are increasingly becoming incubators of change and drivers of innovation," he blathers meaninglessly in the Economist. But at least he’s on the side of the angels when … Continue reading
Posted in cities, climate change
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What do US Consumers Have to Fall Back On?
Even as the economy has been growing over the couple of decades, people have been feeling increasingly insecure, perhaps because they have less and less to fall back on. Lane Kenworthy puts it well: Households now appear to be more … Continue reading
Posted in consumption
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How Cerberus’s Cost Cutting Threatens the US Economy
There’s bad news at Cerberus, and that could mean bad news for all of us. Cerberus has lost a lot of money on its mortgage-servicer investments, and is now hoping to merge its main mortgage asset, GMAC, with Chrysler’s lending … Continue reading
Posted in housing, private equity
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VaR: For a Crappy Tool, It’s Really Important at Goldman Sachs
In Kate Kelly’s narrative of Goldman Sachs’s mortgage-trading gains, thrice the traders want to keep their bearish bets but are forced to unwind their positions by higher-ups. What fascinates me is the way in which value-at-risk, a very quick-and-dirty risk … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Tax the Privately Educated
Chris Dillow wants to tax the privately educated more heavily. I think this is a great idea. And in fact it’s not all that far from one idea which really has been taken seriously in the UK: a higher rate … Continue reading
Criminals in the CEO Suite, Jewelry Edition
We’ve all heard of CEOs who are convicted of felonies and go to jail. But it’s rarer to see the sequence reversed: convicted felons becoming CEOs. Is that the American Dream? In July 2004, Peter Bacanovic was sentenced to five … Continue reading
Posted in crime
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Citi: Still Partially Insulated from SIV Losses
Alea has the scoop on Citi’s SIVs: they’ll have to decline in value by $2.5 billion, or more than 5%, before Citi takes a penny in losses. No wonder Citi found it relatively easy to sell tens of billions of … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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Lufthansa: No Savior for JetBlue
In the wake of Lufthansa’s $300 million investment in JetBlue, it’s worth looking at how JetBlue CEO David Barger is doing after just over six months on the job. If you recall, he replaced founder David Neeleman in May, mainly … Continue reading
Extra Credit, Friday Edition
The next subprime: Reverse mortgages Lessons in demand elasticity: Daniel Hall on the politics of public-transport prices. Lehman’s 2007 Bonus Pool Rises Almost 10% on Higher Revenue Contest: Fun with Farecast — Home for the Holidays: Paul Kedrosky finds LA-Kansas … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Citi Bails In its SIVs
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, or something. Somehow – more by luck than judgment, I’m sure – I managed to call this one pretty well. December 11: If Citi can carve off some large chunks of … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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New Fed Window Still Carries a Little Stigma
One way of looking at the Fed’s new Term Auction Facility is that it’s the discount window without the stigma. But stigma, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder, and Dean Baker, for one, still seems to think … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Evelyn Davis and Rich Zannino: Frenemies Forever!
Kenneth Li was at the shareholder meeting where Dow Jones lost its independence and got sold to News Corp. To nobody’s surprise, shareholder activist Evelyn Davis was there too, and decided to turn the event into a pop quiz for … Continue reading
Posted in Media
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Why IEDs Aren’t Giffen Goods
I’m having a bit of a debate over at Zubin’s economics blog, and rather than continue it in the comments there, I thought I might as well hoist it up here, into its own blog entry. Zubin’s found a chap … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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Lehman Profits From Earlier Write-Downs
There’s an art to the write-down. On the one hand, you don’t want to scare people by writing down too much money unnecessarily. But on the other hand, you want to be conservative, and you certainly don’t want to have … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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The Schlubby Side of Stevie Cohen
Do you know what Stevie Cohen looks like? Time had an official photo of him in its "Time 100" feature earlier this year. He looks well-groomed, with a clear, level gaze. But today the NYT runs a picture of him … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds
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