Author Archives: Felix

The Henry Kravis Monologues

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Felix

Michael Flaherty reveals today that "at some point in the last few weeks, bankers say that Citigroup Chief Chuck Prince paid a visit to the office of Henry Kravis… What exactly transpired between King Henry and Prince is anybody’s guess." … Continue reading →

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Worrying About Mortgage Servicers’ Fate

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Felix

Mortgage servicing is hot. Goldman Sachs is looking at buying the C-Bass servicing unit, and there are many other deals going through as well, such as Wilbur Ross paying $435 million for the servicing business of American Home, and Carrington … Continue reading →

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Beware Copyright Statistics

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Felix

Dean Baker is unimpressed by studies showing vast losses to the US economy from piracy of intellectual property. He picks on a Washington Post article by Frank Ahrens, which quotes a study concluding that "intellectual property piracy — theft of … Continue reading →

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Money Market Datapoint of the Day

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Felix

All that money has to go somewhere, right? I asked in September what was going to happen to all the money which used to be in asset-backed commercial paper and other short-dated asset-backed securities. It seems that a significant chunk … Continue reading →

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How Banks Calculate Their Write-Downs

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Felix

The WSJ has a fabulous "Heard on the Street" column today, worrying about all these losses being announced by big universal banks: Citi, UBS, Deutsche. Are they worried that the losses are so big they will damage the banks’ franchise? … Continue reading →

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A Brief History of HSX

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Felix

Ten years ago, I was working in an office on Wall Street with a small group of writers called the Teenage Mutant New Media Turtles. Officially, we were writing economic commentary for high net worth individuals to subscribe to on … Continue reading →

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Economic Paper of the Day: Buiter on the Baltics

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Felix

Academics love to niggle over small differences. Willem Buiter is an academic, and today’s he’s writing on the difference between three very similar things, with respect to the currencies in the Baltic states and other small European countries: A currency … Continue reading →

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How to Improve Commerce Bank’s Income

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Felix

DealBook asks today whether Toronto-Dominion Bank is overpaying for Commerce Bank. They’re both customer-serviced, says RBC analyst Gerard Cassidy, but they have very different profit margins: The difference, Mr. Cassidy told The Times, is that Toronto-Dominion, which operates in a … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: The Valuation of TechCrunch

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Felix

Sam Gustin slaps down Henry Blodget today after Blodget suggested that TechCrunch might be worth $100 million. That’s ridiculous, says Gustin: "I know CNET, and TechCrunch is no CNET." The whole conversation was sparked by Doug McIntyre at 24/7 Wall … Continue reading →

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Radiohead Roundup

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Felix

Thom Yorke reckons that the music industry has a "decaying business model," and so he and his band, Radiohead, have decided to opt out of it. Go to their website, and you can download their new album for whatever you … Continue reading →

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The Better You Look, The More You See

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Felix

It seems that Bret Easton Ellis was on to something when he invented Patrick Bateman: For men, every extra 10 minutes daily grooming increases their weekly wages by 6 percent. Interestingly, the effect is much smaller for women: there really … Continue reading →

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Solving the Dim White Kids Mystery

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Felix

Andrew Samwick is very smart, in an academic way. What he values is some combination of analytical intelligence, imagination, open-mindedness, and insight. If you’re looking for that combination, the academy is a good place to start, and graduate programs are … Continue reading →

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The Advisability of Real Estate Lending

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Felix

Where was Mike Milken when I needed him? I’m a veritable milquetoast compared to him: my view is simply that buying a home isn’t always a good idea, especially not when it costs less than half as much to rent … Continue reading →

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League Table of the Day

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

"It’s not my fault being the biggest and the strongest. I don’t even exercise." –Fezzick (André the Giant), The Princess Bride The top ten movies on iTunes, with their year of release Rank Title Year 1 The Princess Bride 1987 … Continue reading →

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Location, Location, Location

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

JP Morgan’s Michael Feroli says, in the words of the WSJ’s Real Time Economics blog, that all Fed politics is local. Which Federal Reserve banks wanted a cut in the discount rate? The ones where housing prices were looking weak. … Continue reading →

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Paul Collier in New York

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

I went to a great talk by Paul Collier on Friday, at the Cooper Union. I blogged his new book, "The Bottom Billion," in June, and I was looking forward to hearing him in person: after all, he comes impressively … Continue reading →

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Ag Prices: The Long Hemp, Short Corn Trade

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

A funny thing, government interference in markets. The US government, thanks mainly to the fact that the Iowa caucus is politically very important, is doing its best to encourage the market in corn ethanol. But front-page articles in both the … Continue reading →

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Adventures in Contextual Advertising

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

From Justin Fox’s Curious Capitalist blog:

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The NYT, the Dollar, and the Savings Rate

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

Back in August, the NYT editorial page displayed its economic ignorance by blaming the weak dollar, inter alia, on a low domestic savings rate. It got slapped down by both Greg Mankiw and Dean Baker: a low savings rate causes … Continue reading →

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Commerce Bank: An Expensive Strategic Asset

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

The $8.5 billion acquisition of Commerce Bancorp by Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank is being greeted with something of a shrug this morning. When Commerce CEO Vernon Hill was ousted in June, it seemed only a matter of time before the company … Continue reading →

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More on the NetBank Failure

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Felix

Last night I talked to Chris Coulthrust (not Colthrust) of Applied Cognetics, about the NetBank implosion. Understandably, for someone who’s just lost access to what he thought was money safely in the bank, he’s not a happy bunny. And equally … Continue reading →

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Blogonomics: RSS Feeds

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

Have I mentioned that I take requests? Today Sandy leaves a comment for me, asking me to explain the economics of RSS feeds; I’m happy to oblige. The comment keys off my description of FT.com’s decision to truncate its RSS … Continue reading →

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Poetic Justice in NetBank Implosion

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It hasn’t got a lot of headlines, but the US has now officially suffered its biggest bank failure since 1993. NetBank had $2.5 billion in assets, and somehow contrived to lose more than $200 million in 2006. Deposits were insured … Continue reading →

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Picking an Inflation Measure and Sticking With It

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It’s the Inflation Wars! Barry Ritholtz and Dan Gross and John Wasik and Johnny Debacle and dozens of others are elbowing each other out of the way to proclaim from the rooftops that we have a Serious Inflation Problem and … Continue reading →

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Is Brad DeLong Turning on Alan Greenspan?

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

Now here’s an interesting development in the Greenspan Wars. Brad DeLong, Greenspan’s apologist-in-chief, spends 884 words essentially saying "well, it’s not Greenspan’s fault he’s a political hack". Since Paul Krugman’s chief complaint about Greenspan is that he (Greenspan) turned out … Continue reading →

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