Author Archives: Felix

Paying Readers Redux

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Felix

Since I offered to start paying my readers, the emails (to blogonomics@gmail.com) have not exactly been flooding in. This is good for those who asked for high amounts, since I’ve promised to pay the senders of the five lowest bids … Continue reading →

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Pearson Should Sell the Financial Times

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Felix

On what the news stories all insist on calling the "sidelines" of the Future of Business Media conference I had a very interesting conversation with Ien Cheng, the publisher of FT.com. I told him he should start blogging; he told … Continue reading →

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Buffalo: Doomed, or Part of an Economic Powerhouse?

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Felix

Richard Florida doesn’t explicitly mention Ed Glaeser in his column today in the Toronto Globe & Mail, but it can easily be read as a direct response to Glaeser’s pessimistic view of Buffalo in City Journal. Glaeser says that any … Continue reading →

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The Future of the WSJ

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Felix

Gordon Crovitz, the publisher of the WSJ, appeared at the Future of Business Media conference and did a reasonably good job of mumbling noncommitally about Dow Jones’s future within News Corp: he clearly hasn’t yet signed on to the Rupert … Continue reading →

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How the Economist Thrives in the Age of New Media

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Felix

I’m attending the Future of Business Media conference in Manhattan, and probably the most surprising thing so far is how impressive Susan Clark was, on a panel about business magazines. Clark is the global marketing director of the Economist, and … Continue reading →

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Ambani Joins Richest Man In World Stakes

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Felix

The "richest man in the world" stakes are heating up. With Bill Gates seemingly more interested in giving his money away than in accumulating more of it, it seemed inevitable that Mexico’s Carlos Slim would take his place at the … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Felix

Economics for Adults: David Warsh on pop-economics books. He really likes this one. How America must handle the falling dollar: Larry Summers on his favorite subject. Brad DeLong responds. Hank Paulson takes a close interest in vultures. No, not that … Continue reading →

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iPhone question

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

Sometimes I need to restart my iPhone. No big deal, it’s a computer, computers need to be restarted once in a while. But for some reason, when that happens, all my photos get wiped. Not the songs on the iPod, … Continue reading →

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Tech Money vs Real Money, Photo Edition

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

The difference between Facebook and The Entity: articles on Facebook (valuation: $15 billion) are illustrated with a pile of $20 bills, while articles on The Entity (valuation: $85 billion plus) are illustrated with a pile of $50 and $100 bills. … Continue reading →

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The Weakness of Quant Funds

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

In the wake of the MIT Techonology Review’s two–part story on the summer quant-fund blow-up, there’s a fascinating and high-level debate going on in the blogosphere about whether this marks the End of the Quant Era. Veryan Allen says it … Continue reading →

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Why Magazine Circulations Are Like Credit Ratings

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

If we’ve learned one thing from the CDO fiasco, it’s that in many cases investment banks put products together with more of an eye on the credit rating they could achieve than they had on real financial safety or viability. … Continue reading →

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Northern Rock: The Bidding Heats Up

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

If Chris Flowers thought he was going to have little competition in his quest to buy Northern Rock, he’s been comprehensively disabused of that notion at this point. The Virgin bid might sound a bit lightweight (a rebranding to Virgin … Continue reading →

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Merrill: Your Questions Answered

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

A very loyal reader writes: Why did O’Neal defenestrate while Cayne at Bear and Prince at Citi have managed to hang on to their jobs? Is a takeover of Merrill realistic, considering the handicaps of the few firms big enough … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: Ed Glaeser Is Too a Blogger

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

Ed Glaeser reads Market Movers! In my post last week about Tyler Cowen on blogonomics, I quoted Cowen on Glaeser, saying that he’s basically a blogger even if he doesn’t realise it. Glaeser has now responded – a very bloggish … Continue reading →

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How Imports Help Soccer

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

Dani Rodrik has a post today on the globalization of soccer, and poses what he calls an "interesting question": One question is what has the presence of foreign players in Europe done to the quality of the national teams. Following … Continue reading →

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The Return of Price Controls

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

In a move described by Dresdner Kleinwort as "even more predictable than the price surge that triggered it", Russia has decided to impose price controls on elected types of bread, cheese, milk, eggs and vegetable oil; the fourth word of … Continue reading →

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Fed to Cut 25bp on Wednesday

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

What was that about Bernanke being unpredictable? The markets might not have known earlier this month what the Fed was going to do at its next meeting, but they’re pretty certain now, with pretty much every house on Wall Street … Continue reading →

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When Cash Isn’t King

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

The WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro has an interesting article about what Jeff Bercovici calls the "Diller-Malone marriage": two media moguls fighting over control of a bunch of internet properties which presently goes by the unwieldy name of IAC/InterActiveCorp. IAC bought also-ran … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: Paying Readers

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Felix

Wherein I pay my readers.
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Ben Stein Watch: October 28, 2007

Posted on October 28, 2007 by Felix

If last week’s Ben Stein column was a reversion to mean, a bad column following a vaguely reasonable one, then this week’s is a momentum trade. You thought that Stein couldn’t get any worse than he was last week? Well, … Continue reading →

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Extra Credit, Weekend Edition

Posted on October 27, 2007 by Felix

The Joint Economic Committee report on subprime lending. Notes Calculated Risk: "In 2006, 29% of all mortgage loans were originated through mortgage brokers, but 63% of all subprime mortgages were originated through brokers." The Brazilian stock exchange, at the end … Continue reading →

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Subprime: It’s Still Really Bad

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Felix

Countrywide shares gained more than 32% today: that must mean the market thinks the subprime crisis is over, right? Not at all. For one thing, today’s close of $17.30 a share puts the company’s share price at pretty much exactly … Continue reading →

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Who Will Rescue Merrill?

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Felix

Peter Eavis joins the Tim Price/Lily Tomlin school of investment-banking analysis: It doesn’t look good that O’Neal was allegedly raising the possibility of a sale at a time when the brokerage was about to report over $8.3 billion of losses … Continue reading →

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O’Neal and Parsons Both Out?

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Felix

It’s not a good day to be a black CEO in America: both Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch and Dick Parsons of Time Warner seem to be on their way out, with the shares of both companies soaring as a … Continue reading →

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How to Spend $40 Billion

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Felix

The Sultan of Brunei pays his five PR people $12 million each. But still ends up with really bad press: The total bill was $40 billion. The gifts included $2,570,050 for masseuses and acupuncturists; $14,955,000 for a house supervisor in … Continue reading →

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