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Author Archives: Felix
The Wolfowitz Ouster, Redux
Fox News journalist James Rosen has a long and largely sympathetic account of Paul Wolfowitz’s ouster from the World Bank in the November issue of Playboy. At the beginning of the piece he’s unambiguous: What happened to Wolfowitz was more … Continue reading
Posted in defenestrations, world bank
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Home Equity: Down. Home Equity Withdrawals: Still High.
A major driver of the US economy in recent years has been home equity withdrawal – individuals tapping the equity in their homes to fuel consumption. Obviously, total home equity rises very quickly when house prices are rising, and it … Continue reading
Bonus Watch, Goldman Sachs Edition
At Goldman, all is sunny: Many were celebrating Wednesday. “Are people happy? I think broadly yes. The message was that in a year when the firm has done well, it pays its people well,” said a delighted banker.
Why is the Fed Discriminating Against Investment Banks?
In ES Browning’s WSJ stocks report today, he mentions something I haven’t seen anywhere else: Traders pointed to several culprits for the stock pullback: warnings from Bank of America and Wachovia of more credit-loss provisions to come, a gloomy-sounding comment … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Extra Credit, Thursday Edition
Greenspan and Housing Inventory BofA Chief Sees More Pain Ahead The Magazine Subscription problem: Solved, in the comments, by Jason Kottke. How To Destroy An Analyst by POT Who is more independent than whom? John Gapper on ownership structures at … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Citigroup Should Cut its Dividend Now
Morgan Stanley thinks Citi will cut its dividend. CIBC thinks Citi will cut its dividend. And according to Alea, the markets think Citi will cut its dividend, too: Based on implied forward prices derived from options markets, a 40% dividend … Continue reading
There’s No Transparency in the Carbon-Offset Market
Adam Piore today profiles Tom Arnold of TerraPass, a for-profit company selling carbon offsets to guilty gas-guzzling liberals. TerraPass is very secretive about its "revenue, profits, or even how much it has invested so far in carbon-offset projects", which means … Continue reading
Posted in climate change
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The Fed’s Collateral Requirements: It’ll Take Anything
The Fed won’t just lend out $40 billion in an attempt to inject some liquidity into the banking system, oh no. It requires collateral. But, as jck says in the comments to my earlier blog entry, it seems as though … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Did Arminio Fraga Turn Down the Harvard Endowment Job?
The Harvard Management Company, under the interim leadership of Robert Kaplan, is looking for a permanent replacement for the departing Mohamed El-Erian. In the meantime, it’s taking a 12.5% stake in Gávea, the hedge fund run by former Soros fund … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds
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The Fed’s New Facility, Explained in English
When I said this morning that more details of the Fed’s Term Auction Facility would surely emerge over the course of the day, I didn’t expect Steve Waldman to be the person providing them. But I’m very glad he is. … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Still Awaiting In-Flight WiFi
JetBlue launched a crippled WiFi service yesterday – well ahead of schedule, since it seemed in July that JetBlue wifi wasn’t going to arrive until 2010. So props to them for getting this thing off the ground before Row44 and … Continue reading
Posted in technology
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Greenspan’s Legacy: The Housing Bust
Alan Greenspan accepts little if any responsibility for fueling the housing boom: I do not doubt that a low U.S. federal-funds rate in response to the dot-com crash, and especially the 1% rate set in mid-2003 to counter potential deflation, … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy, housing
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Fed: Second Rate Cut in Two Days
Greg Ip has the first best gloss on the Fed’s liquidity-injection announcement: The Fed said today it would create a new "term auction facility" under which it would lend at least $40 billion and potentially far more, in four separate … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Still Underwhelmed by Pandit
Vikram Pandit, it turns out, has something of an online fan club. When I described him yesterday as "a dull technocrat who has never achieved very much," I was immediately slapped down by commenters – most of whom spent much … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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How to Test the Accuracy of the ABX
The WSJ takes a look at the notorious ABX today, and although it’s more polite than me, it still shows how bad the index is as a gauge of the subprime mortgage market Wachovia Capital Markets analysts Glenn Schultz and … Continue reading
Posted in derivatives, housing
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Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition
Morgan Stanley: Recession Likely: Northern Trust, too, has a recession call. Realigning English into gobbledegook Saving Banks: How the Mortgage Bailout Strains Accounting I Agree With Clinton on Mandates
Posted in remainders
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The Best and Worst Bank Deals of 2007
Time’s Bill Saporito says that the takeover of ABN Amro by the RBS-led consortium was the 4th best business deal of 2007. Wha? RBS overpaid massively: the consortium decided to pay mainly in cash, but by the time the deal … Continue reading
WSJ.com Having Difficulties Correcting Stories
This is a cock-up, not a conspiracy: it speaks to the WSJ having a crap website, and not to any conscious attempt to downplay its mistakes. But if you do a search for Susan Pulliam’s erroneous front-page article on Merrill … Continue reading
Posted in Media
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How Blogs are Changing Business Journalism for the Better
Herb Greenberg is asked: Q: How do you see online business journalism changing in the next 10 to 20 years? A: More blurring of the line between what is and what isn’t real journalism. People whose backgrounds and biases haven’t … Continue reading
Posted in blogonomics, Media
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Fed, Citi: Mildly Disappointing
It’s obviously a day for mildly-disappointing expected decisions. The Fed has cut by a quarter point, and Citigroup has decided to appoint Vikram Pandit its new CEO. I doubt that many people can gin up much in the way of … Continue reading
Posted in banking, fiscal and monetary policy
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The Economics of the Harvard Tuition Announcement
Why did Harvard announce yesterday that its tuition fees, for students whose families earn between $120,000 and $180,000, would be 10% of family income? Frankly, I buy the official story: that those students were getting less than the maximum benefit … Continue reading
Posted in economics
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The SF Chronicle’s Atrocious Mortgage Conspiracy Theorizing
The San Francisco Chronicle published on Sunday a grossly irresponsible opinion piece from one Sean Olender, headlined "Interest rate ‘freeze’ – the real story is fraud". I would dearly like to hold someone at the Chronicle to account for printing … Continue reading
How Citi is Solving its SIV Problems
Citigroup was always understood to be the prime beneficiary of the SuperSIV plan. But yesterday, Eric Dash dropped hints that Citi had been working on a Plan B, saying that "Citigroup, the financial giant that first proposed the initiative, is … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans
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The Upside of Sloppy Drafting
Good lawyers draft contracts in clear English. Bad lawyers draft contracts in dense legalese. But here’s the thing: sometimes dense legalese gets the job done, where clear English would serve only to clarify the fact that the parties to an … Continue reading
Posted in law
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Who Says the Mortgage-Freeze Plan Doesn’t Benefit Investors?
(HT: Alea)
Posted in housing
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