Author Archives: Felix

Cognitive Dissonance at Skype

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

Here’s what I don’t understand about eBay’s Skype write-down; I’d seriously love it if someone can explain it to me. As I understand it, eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion upfront, with the sellers potentially getting as much as $1.7 … Continue reading →

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The Dow Hits a New Record. Yawn.

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

What craziness is going on in the stock market! The Dow is hitting new highs! The biggest-gaining Dow component is Citigroup, a company which just announced its earnings were going to drop by 60% this quarter! Justin Lahart can’t make … Continue reading →

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FT.com Still Doesn’t Get It

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

What on earth are the executives at FT.com thinking? Instead of boldly following the lead of the NYT and making the site free, they’ve arrived at a weird compromise: articles and data will be free to users up to a … Continue reading →

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The Ingredients of Richard Prince’s Success

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It makes sense that Deutsche Bank is sponsoring the Richard Prince retrospective at the Guggenheim. Prince is the ultimate art-world hot commodity: he was the first artist to break the $1 million barrier for a photograph, one of his cowboy … Continue reading →

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Debt Writedowns: The Universal Banks’ Turn

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It doesn’t make a whole lot of intuitive sense, on its face. The investment banks are up to their eyeballs in structured products and quantitative strategies, while the big global universal banks are heavily diversified among different products and countries. … Continue reading →

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iBrick Update

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Felix

It seems that it’s possible to downgrade a bricked iPhone and get it back into its pre-bricked state, complete with third-party apps and everything. But really. Is this whole cat-and-mouse game really necessary? The geeks, the early adopters, the people … Continue reading →

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Ben Stein Watch: September 30, 2007

Posted on September 30, 2007 by Felix

I’m a uniter, not a divider. I’m a lover, not a fighter. I don’t like to engage in the politics of personal destruction. But as Jonathan Landman might say, we have to stop Ben Stein from writing for the Times. … Continue reading →

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Song of the Year

Posted on September 30, 2007 by Felix

On the fourth day of Crisis the markets sold to me Foreclosure loans Three French funds Two structured notes and a sub-prime bankruptcy. From Tim Price, of course. Go read the whole thing.

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Could the UAW buy GM?

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

As part of the GM-UAW settlement, GM is paying $29.9 billion upfront into an animal called a VEBA, or Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association. It will also add somewhere between $5.4 billion and $7 billion more to that VEBA down the … Continue reading →

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Look Who’s Winning a Liberty Medal

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

A rock star receives the Liberty Medal yesterday in Philadelphia. With her is some Irish dude. (Via TED Blog. Photograph by Jim Young/Reuters/Landov.)

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Apple Solves International Roaming Problem

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

Thank you, Apple! The iPhone is a great product, but one of its biggest weaknesses was the fact that it was incredibly easy to run up enormous cellphone bills if you use the data services abroad, either inadvertently or on … Continue reading →

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Adventures in Aggregation

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

The entire econoblogosphere, in one place.

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Proof that Manhattan is Still the Capital of the World

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix
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Econowisecrack of the Day

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

Tyler Cowen: Mark Broski, a loyal MR reader, asks: If you woke up one morning and said to yourself, "You know what my problem is? My damn discount rate is too high." What would you do, if anything, to lower … Continue reading →

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The Economics of A-Rod

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

I neither know nor care much about baseball, which means I don’t read Will Leitch’s Deadspin. I did, however, read his excellent article in New York magazine about what’s going to happen to Alex Rodriguez’s contract at the end of … Continue reading →

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John Carney Doesn’t Like Shareholder Democracy

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

How much do you care about shareholder democracy? John Carney, of Dealbreaker, cares a lot. He’s a fan of people like Lynn Stout and Larry Ribstein, who say that shareholder democracy is a very bad idea, and he’s willing to … Continue reading →

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RBS Acquisition of ABN Amro More Likely Than Ever

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

In the battle for ABN Amro, the consortium of RBS, Fortis, and Santander has now clearly bested its rival, Barclays. The RBS consortium’s bid is about 20% higher than Barclays’ bid, thanks largely to Barclays’ sinking stock price, and Barclays … Continue reading →

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The Greenspan Irony

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Felix

Congratulations are due to Alan Greenspan, whose book still sits atop the Amazon bestseller list, and which sold, the WSJ says today, 129,000 copies in its first week. Or, to be precise, it sold at least 129,000, and probably more … Continue reading →

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Metaphor of the Day

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Felix

Nouriel Roubini: The literally plunging figures in new home sales – now down another 8.3% in August alone, the lowest level in seven years – are the last nail in the coffin of a housing market that was comatose until … Continue reading →

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Morgan Stanley’s Email Problem

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Felix

Morgan Stanley has been fined $12.5 million for not providing emails. The Wall Street journal also notes that the company was also fined $15 million in 2005 for not providing emails. It doesn’t note that Morgan Stanley was ordered to … Continue reading →

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When Bonuses are Contraindicated

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Felix

Should companies pay out performance-related bonuses? It turns out that such payments might well be counterproductive: The logic of bonus payments itself seems straight-forward: by paying a bonus on the condition of success, the successful outcome becomes more attractive to … Continue reading →

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The Search for Consistently Uncorrelated Assets

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Felix

Are you worried about your stock-market exposure? Buy into something even more bubblicious: natural resources! That seems to be the message of a recent article in the Journal of Financial Planning by William Coaker. Coaker went searching for one of … Continue reading →

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Something Smelly at the Fahey Fund

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Felix

Michelle Leder points out that the Fahey Fund’s web design leaves something to be desired, and might have tipped off investors to the sketchiness of the operation. She might have added that the email address for the fund manager was … Continue reading →

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An Interactive Guide to the Econoblogosphere

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Felix

Have at it.

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Why 2-and-20 is Here to Stay

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Felix

So here’s the weird thing about that Citigroup survey of pension-fund managers. Apparently the notorious 2-and-20 fee structure is doomed, even though the fund managers are going to increase their allocation to alternative investments: Almost 60% of managers surveyed indicated … Continue reading →

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